Phenomenological dream. Allucinazione semiotica e manipolazione digitale

The aim of this paper is to test (and somehow stretch) Peirce’s notion of iconicity in order to explain digital visual morphing as a cognitive (and interpretive) process. While arguing about the fundamental role played by that sort of “phenomenological hallucination” perceptually induced through the realistic and indexical status of (supposed) photographic images, we find that in visual morphing any aesthetic profiling of qualities is thought as deeply constrained by a potential Dynamic Object, albeit it is grounded in its primarily iconic nature of manipulative surrogate stimulus (in Eco’s sense).