Image and Text on the Web
Do you use/like to see image and text on the web? (Christy1, 2/24/99 12:01:33 AM)
In Ekphrasis, one describes in writing the
characteristics of something visual. Some argue, that
increasingly in the computer medium, images explain
text. Thus the logic goes that this causes a crisis in
rhetoric, because traditionally that has been the locus
of control. I think many visual poets quite naturally
dive into the web. Visual poetry, however, has been
kept out of mainstream education. I also think text
and image can be balanced and a power struggle is
unnecessary. What do you think?
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Jeff Parker (jsparker, 2/26/99 12:05:43 PM)
This may sound pretty corny, but genre fusion seems to
me the silliest debate. I mean, of course the visual
and textual go together. What is text after all but
coded visuals.
One of the more useful ways to approach it I think is
with that old conversation we all have had and continue
to have about whether the book was better than movie.
Find a reader, and no matter what the flick, he or she
will tell you the book by far. But that's only because
there's no exact translation for what happens from text
to brain and visual to brain, or I suppose I should say
the syntactical filter is different. But where this
comes back to you're comment, Christy is that a
combination of the two, for me and you, seems the most
obvious interesting form for experimentation.
Personally I'm interested in combining visual narrative
(film, video) with textual narrative (novel or short
story).
Did I just say anything in all of that? Am I allowed to
just jump in here like this?
What I'm trying to say, since I think I didn't say it
is I think the Web is the place where genre fusion will
really catch its stride. There are problems with text
and any screen-based medium since we've been so trained
by D.J. Television to associate screens with images and
passivity. But it seems to me with our recent popular
associations with computers pre-Internet as suped up
word processors, the historical synergy is in place.
Add to that the computer's interactivity and you get
televison retreating or morphing into a computer-like
embryo itself--see digital TV and the options for
running in both Televison and Ethernet information,
remote control mouse and keyboard. Translate the TV
into a lens somewhere and all of a sudden you can make
it at least represent a museum or gallery or other
visual element to further encode or decode textually.
-parker (p.s. I don't spellcheck.)
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Sue Thomas (Sue Thomas, 2/26/99 12:49:49 PM)
Jeff
I think you're right. The web is just a place on the
way to somewhere else, in the same way that hand-copied
manuscripts had huge merit of their own but really they
were on the way to print.
This week i heard the most ridiculous discussion on the
radio where the presenter was trying to get the
Director of the Tate Gallery of Modern Art to fight
with a film person (didn't get his actual role) by
insisting that 'this century, film has contributed more
to changing peoples' view of the world than has
painting.'
The reason it was ridiculous is that, frankly, who
cares?
Painting and film (apart from being mutually
referential anyway) have both contributed hugely to the
way we have come to perceive the world this century.
Seemed to me just so banal and pointless to weigh them
in opposite hands and make a judgement.
That's not to say I don't think it's worth discussing
anything - if I did, I wouldn't be here - but I do
think that the UK(?) obsession with ranking just eats
up valuable creative energy.
Oh - and do i like to see image and text on the web?
Sure. BUT.... I am currently feeling very frustrated
because I would like to transfer some of the texts I
made in text-based vr onto a website but I am not a
visual person at all and so I know I will either make a
garish mess of it or the whole thing will be so
horrendously anal that nobody will be able to stand to
look at it :)
sue
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Christy Sheffield Sanford (Christy1, 2/26/99 2:20:11 PM)
I would really like to see text-based vr, Sue. Or a
combination. Concrete poetry's use of text has often
been cute or divorced from lyricism/meaning/emotion,
three of my favorite things. Would this be fiction or
phrases or?
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Sue Thomas (Sue Thomas, 2/26/99 3:24:09 PM)
Of course writing that post made me determined to get
on with it right this weekend!
I was commissioned by the Electronic Writing Research
Ensemble to write a piece, and then follow it up with
some kind of online discussion. I chose to do mine via
LinguaMOO and created a suite of virtual rooms there to
complement the text.
The original lecture, "Imagining a Stone", which was
about virtual landscape and the artist Andy
Goldsworthy, plus the log-file of the tour, can be
found at my homepage
but the actual
rooms are only accessible via the trAce room at
LinguaMOO.
This weekend, spurred on by this conversation, I will
retrieve those rooms and make a site for them.
thanks for your encouragement
sue
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text and vision (Saada, 2/26/99 4:54:34 PM)
This subject always embarrasses me. When someone asks
me if I have read a book I can never remember whether I have read it or
seen the film.
Words seem to turn into pictures instantly. Although I
could always talk about a book's theme and characters I could never use
quotations to prove a point which was a bit disastrous when sitting
English exams.
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reiner strasser (restra, 2/28/99 11:26:34 AM)
hi christie:)
we see with our eyes ...
we recognize with our mind ...
do we dream in pictures
and
think in words ?
well
i can dream in words
and
think in pictures,
too
:) ..... reiner
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Christy Sheffield Sanford (Christy1, 2/28/99 3:35:18 PM)
I like these ambidextrous types because I am one. I
sometimes dream in French and since I am not fluent,
this is pretty surprising. And do the words float
through the dreams? What a pleasant thought.
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Christy Sheffield Sanford (Christy1, 2/28/99 4:01:46 PM)
Sue, that is one of the loveliest lectures I have ever
read. A model of how pleasurable the text can be.
Thanks for sharing the address. I discovered
Goldsworthy on line and enjoy his work very much.
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Sue Thomas (Sue Thomas, 2/28/99 4:06:26 PM)
Thanks Christy - glad you enjoyed it
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Jennifer Ley (jley, 3/2/99 9:40:42 AM)
mmmm - I part of the original quesiton - unless I read
it wrong - had to do with 'acceptance' of visually
based work, ie. many of the visual/text poets I can
think of are thought of, and hired as, artist/teachers
= Johanna Drucker, Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer. The
poetry 'world' can sometimes be very resistant to
including poets within its ranks who use visual
elements in their work - with the exception of the
language poets, who have been a bit more generous in
this regard.
I think the web IS breaking down this barrier of
'perception' - in that many poets and editors are
embracing visual elements when they design websites.
At the same time - certain aspects of current web
presentations mimic much early experimental film work -
ie. the medium is new but the gestalt isn't. The
difference? in the 60's, not that many people were
going to run out and view Stan Brackages (sp?, sorry)
films - distribution, etc was a real problem. The web
solves the distribution problem, placing visual/text in
any surfers' hands.
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Christy Sheffield Sanford (Christy1, 3/2/99 12:35:36 PM)
Yes, Jennifer, the web solves the distribution problem.
I think you are right, too, about art forms being
transferred to the web without understanding that this
is a new medium, Visual poetry has a long history.
Karl Young at Light and Dust has archives of many
experiments in visual Poetry. That knowledge and
history never has been widely accepted in mainstream
academic curricula. Thus when confronted with text and
image opportunities, many are starting from scratch as
though that body of knowledge did not exist. I watched
the same thing happen with video. Many videographers
had no knowledge of the experimental film work that had
been done; consequently, many were starting from zero.
Reinventing the wheel.
Yes, I agree, too, with Jeff, the web is a readerly as
well as visual/cinematic medium. That is why I love it
so much! Christy blowing kisses to the web.
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reiner strasser (restra, 3/3/99 2:48:40 PM)
poetry
Magritte's paintings are poetic
Klee's paintings are poetic
.
.
.
so esp. here i see no boundary
[i like to break boundaries]
web.work
brings together different media
...
colour, form, composition ... from the painter
words ... from the writer
moving pictures from the film maker
sound, music ....
[nothing is new, but the combination
-
is our mind 'new' at the end of the 20th century?
.... surely we can perceive faster cuts in video
but do we think faster?]
multi media + the interactive aspects
and
do not forget
it is an intimate medium
you are/can be very close to the viewer
(Jeff ... you may also look at the films
of the avantgarde of the 20th/30th)
reiner