Tattoo: An art form of connected information

Abstract

This article is a reflection upon and a result of a research work developed at the Postgraduate Program in Information Science of the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), Brazil, which aimed to show the use and understanding of information through tattooing, and its behavior from an information point of view. From such perspective, the article converges with the theme of V!RUS Journal, "The construction of information", offering concepts on the "information" object from scholars such as Shannon and Weaver (1975), Wersig and Nevelling (1975), Abraham Moles (1969), among others. The article presents a tattoo as a body of information, which is synthesized through the subject's external and internal relationships in society, and also the criteria suggested by Coelho Netto (1973) and Moles (1969) to distinguish semantic information from aesthetic information. Finally, the journal's theme allowed us to present the “information” object based on the tattoo as a social product and a generator of meaning. We conclude that practices and better use of information build new products and, consequently, new information since the use of tattoos is unrestricted and covers multiple scopes.