The icon is the type of sign connected to efficient representational features, and its manipulation reveals more information about its object. The London Underground Diagram (LUD) is an iconic artifact and a well-known example of representational efficiency, having been copied by urban transportation systems worldwide. This paper investigates the efficiency of the LUD in the light of different conceptions of iconicity. We stress that a specialized representation is an icon of the formal structure of the problem for which it has been specialized. By embedding such rules of action and behavior, the icon acts as a semiotic artifact distributing cognitive effort and participating in niche construction.

With the development of new technologies, new dynamic epithelial artifacts (new tattoos) are designed, enabling new types of situated and embodied multimodal communication. New tattoos (NTs) turn the skin into a source of dynamic and reversible inscription, possibly responsive to finegrained organic variations, and dependent on oriented local perturbation. As new aesthetic-cognitive artifacts, NTs alter the operational and semiotic dimension of the skin, transforming it into a new frame of interactive interface. This paper aims at introducing some epithelial prostheses based on new biocompatible materials and technologies.

The skin can be described as a niche structured by semiotic artefacts (tattoos) that work as symbolic–indexical devices (dicisigns). New biocompatible technologies responsive to organic and environmental variations change the role of the skin as a semiotic niche. New devices are transforming the skin into a niche of interactive interfaces. In this article we introduce a variety of techno-scientific artefacts, which are readily available, and their main characteristics. We are interested in the recent proliferation of devices based on biotechnologies that can be coupled to the body, especially epithelial (superficial or invasive), and how they change what we know as ‘embodied communication’.

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