Traces, Information and Sense-Making. Deploying Visual Trace from Indexed Retention to Writing

Our analysis seeks to establish a structured approach regarding the notion of trace in the light of the literature that widely considers that everything is a trace or everything can become a trace. In an info-communicational approach and following the work of Roland Barthes, six qualifying levels are identified and described: the Spectrum, the Res, the Studium, the Documentum, the Punctum and the Scriptum. A twofold method is set forth in this approach. First, it involves gathering documentary evidence based on a review of authoritative works. Second, a direct observation is put in place of visual, filmic and/or photographic traces, on the one hand, and traces of presence, on the other hand. In the constructionist vision that is adopted here, it is not the residual mark that characterizes the trace, but the tracking down of its production process via the spectral diaphoric retentions that it causes.