Far from representing a regulated universal language, emojis, as they have been configured, are characterised by their ambiguous, flexible and connotative nature. We approach them intuitively and, like a stroll, we wander through their palette until we stop at one. Almost without thinking, we choose it from the rest: that small image is ideal for encapsulating what we wanted to express.
In the WhatsApp smartphone app interface, we are offered the communicative resources of the qwerty keyboard and the emoji keyboard parallel to each other. This apparently inoffensive gesture has opened up a new framework that permits constant dialogue between word and image. But knowing that in WhatsApp words do not go far away, that they remain accessible at all times, allows us to find an expansive connotative and not simply denotative use for these little pictograms.
Letter and emoji live together in harmony on the same line. The emoji inhabits a textual medium, but its nature is undeniably visual. This work questions precisely the nature of emojis, which by their nature as a character are at a halfway point, in limbo between text and image.
Emoji: online image - Berta Fontboté Pradilla