Who is David Burns? I know that the name 'David Burns' can signify the lecturer at the Royal College of Art. I only know this because I have been taught to make this connection. The name alone, as a signifier, bears no resemblance to the signified - it is only a symbol, as per Charles Sanders Peirce's classification.

Though I have learned to make this connection, machines have not.

Taking the first page of results for the search term 'David Burns' from each site listed on Wikipedia's 'List of online image archives,' The Semiotics of David Burns looks to show the connection between the signifier and the signified that archival search tools have been trained to make. Whilst highlighting the inefficiency of the symbol - in this case a particularly common name - as a search prompt, the project also reveals the rabbit-hole potential to lead users far from their original line of query, from photographs of other signified persons, to images capturing politically-charged events from both recent and historic times.

In failing to find the David Burns that I am familiar with in the archives, I have instead found a vast range of images exposing the fracture between, and the fragility of, the signifier and the signified.