The question of the immanent organization of several semiotic modes in one cultural artifact remains unanswered. That organization cannot be ignored for a number of historical and systematic reasons (1), as some examples on the specific problem of visuality and visibility may show (2). As a preliminary step towards an answer that considers the heautonomy and the dynamic processuality of that organization, I suggest two mediating concepts (3): that of stacked media, and that of productively unreliable semiotic modes.