What is meaning? And how do we know when meaning takes place? We know that we can read something, or that we are being spoken to, but what if the words find no resonance? What if text becomes an unpronounceable image? How to decode language without symbols, music without sounds, gestures without verbalisation? We live in world of signs, and yet we don’t often interrogate the processes of conveying and creating meaning through which we define our own existence. Each in their own way, the films and videos in this programme analyse and deconstruct those processes, exploring the limits of human communication. Combining historical and recent works, Vital Signs examines the connections and tensions between significance and representation, communication and understanding, meaningless and meaningful – the “spaces between” where meaning breaks though the outer form in which it’s bound up. Gestures to be heard, images to be read, sounds to be deciphered.