VISIT JAPAN OR WHERE TRADITION MEETS THE FUTURE – Branding a Nation Digitally Seen from the Perspective of the 4.0 Industrial Era and Semiotics

Abstract

Using the TPM is a process of meaning creation; the viewer will select cultural content from (one of the) three paradigms, tradition, modernity, and nature, and, thereafter, combine the selected cultural content into a sequence. Via the selections and combinations of the viewer (completed by the algorithm of the TPM) a message comes into being; the message is the map and the list. The map is an iconic sign, a diagram, with more semiotic functions; hence, the map not only represents different locations – rather, the map, furthermore, represents cultural content, and, thereby, we can understand the map as showing the viewer a (possible) path within that part of the “Japanese encyclopedia”, which concerns tradition, modernity, and nature. The TPM, furthermore, potentially, relates to the travel notes made by the European tourists which have been to Japan; hence, the travel notes have the status of (potential) interpretants mediating between the viewer and the cultural content by communicating, emotively and referentially, for example, the emotions, attuites, and evaluations of the European tourists concerning the cultural content as well as referring to objective, factual circumstances. The travel notes, therefore, become a supplement to the meaning of the 360-degree VR movie and TPM. In the above we have, more than once, mentioned the Zeitgeist of the 4.0 industrial era; and the VJEW seems to be “something appropriate to the spirits of time” involving simulation and “smart digital planning” in order to convey cultural content and to brand a nation; perhaps, thereby, also, making that nation stronger.