Visual Representations of Text...For When We Inevitably Forget How to Read

This weeks readings have us exploring the emerging prominence of images as communication tools and the corresponding decline in the usage of pure text.  This is a phenomena most clearly illustrated by the growing popularity of infographics. Infographics, put simply, are the the visual representation of data. What we used to call charts in an analog life. Today's infographics, however, go far beyond the pie and bar charts of the pre-digital age.  Check out this retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale as told  completely through the use of infographics.



Ok, so this one cheats a little because the author isn't presenting information per se but rather re-creating a fictional narrative.  Unless Little Red Riding Hood is actually a true account of a wolf attempting to eat a young girl while she was visiting her grandma. Nevertheless, the author (illustrator?) is very successful at telling the classic tale using visual as opposed to textual cues.  Also, note that this is quite different from the way in which the story would be told via a children's picture book.  Now, check out the data this infographic presents:



Again, likely not what you were expecting. No stats here but there is data, and this data is presented visually. Again the author succeeds in conveying the information he has chosen quite effectively while employing limited use of textual cues. This is a feat that would come as no surprise to Julian Stallbrass who wrote in 1996; "it is obvious that the visual is the pre-eminent arena of contemporary mass culture to the extent that literacy appears to be declining in many affluent societies, not only perhaps because of declining educational resources but because the skill seems less and less relevant to many people." (Kirschenbaum 137) Does the rise of infographics signal the impending doom of text and the universal illiteracy of humanity? I suppose only time will tell, though maybe there's an infographic somewhere that can shed a little light.

Like this one.

Affordances or Affordances...Art In Everyday Objects

In honor of our theme of affordance this week I decided to make my post a pictorial one. Even though each of the following objects are things that we use everyday, because of unusual design their actual identities may not be readily apparent. Let's see how many you can identify using the Norman definition of affordance. If that logic fails, try Gibson's.

Norman: When actual and perceived properties are combined, an affordance emerges as a relationship that holds between the object and the individual that is acting on the object (Norman 1999).

Gibson: An affordance according to Gibson exists relative to the action capabilities of particular actors. Therefore, to a thief an open window can have an affordance of "climbing through" (and subsequently stealing something), but not so to a child who is not tall enough to reach the window and therefore does not have the action possibility.

The Silent Tragedy of Digital Rhetoric

I saw this and it made me think of the longstanding debate in EMAC on the tragedy/triumph of newspapers being eclipsed by digital media.





How Will The End Of Print Journalism Affect Old Loons Who Hoard Newspapers?

The Unbearable Lightness of the iPad...Or Kindle

My birthday is coming up and my mom is getting me an iPad! Gasp! I think she is anyway, she mentioned it and a Kindle in the same sentence recently and was being kind of cryptic. In attempting to be the mature, self possessed young woman that she believes she raised I was forced to reply evenly to her hints with a gracious, "You don't have to get me a gift, mom, and those are both so expensive. Either one would be great." When I really wanted to jump up and down and scream: "iPad! iPad! iPad!" This week's readings have me doing a bit of self reflection, however, and lately I find myself questioning just what's so special about the iPad - or the Kindle for that matter - and what can I do with either of them that I can't do pretty efficiently already?

In reading the piece by noted American author Wendell Berry, "Why I am Not Going to Buy a Computer" I was particularly struck by the author's criteria for evaluating the utility of a new piece of technology in his work. (Incidentally the irony of reading this piece in a digital format on a computer is too delicious to ignore.) Notwithstanding that his article was written in 1987, prior to advent of ubiquitous internet access, Berry makes a fascinating and not un-useful argument. Here are his criteria for adopting new technology:

1. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.
2. It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.
3. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces.
4. It should use less energy than the one it replaces.
5. If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body.
6. It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools.
7. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.
8. It should come from a small, privately owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair.
9. It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships.

When I applied Berry's criteria to both the iPad and the Kindle both devices lost...badly. Actually when examined in the context of  Berry's criteria the utter failure of either device to satisfy a single one is pretty comical.  Take number 9 for instance. Cory Doctorow blogs about that one extensively in the similarly titled (coincidence?) "Why I won't buy an iPad (and think you shouldn't, either)" when he talks about how the iPad has corrupted the very essence of comic book reading - sharing. Says Doctorow:

I was a comic-book kid, and I'm a comic-book grownup, and the thing that made comics for me was    sharing them. If there was ever a medium that relied on kids swapping their purchases around to build an audience, it was comics. And the used market for comics! It was -- and is -- huge, and vital. I can't even count how many times I've gone spelunking in the used comic-bins at a great and musty store to find back issues that I'd missed, or sample new titles on the cheap.

So what does Marvel do to "enhance" its comics? They take away the right to give, sell or loan your comics. What an improvement. Way to take the joyous, marvellous (sic) sharing and bonding experience of comic reading and turn it into a passive, lonely undertaking that isolates, rather than unites. 

Just try "trading" an iPad app. And while the Kindle does make some allowance for sharing  between devices hosted on the same account it is under Amazon's strict control and can only take place within pre-defined parameters.  Hmm...

Interestingly a few years ago when the Kindle was first introduced I wanted one just as badly as I wanted the iPad when my mom mentioned it to me.  However I never bought one because I couldn't justify the expense for a device that would allow me to read many of the very books that I already possessed, or could just as easily and cheaply acquire without tethering myself to one comparatively expensive and restrictive delivery platform. A platform that would be pretty quickly eclipsed and obsolesced by a new platform at any moment. Enter the iPad.

Having only been pretty close to an iPad on a few occasions I can't say that I'm well versed in all that it can do. However, I do know my content consumption habits. And frankly I'm pretty good at consuming exactly the content I want, when I want it, right now - sans iPad. Just don't tell my mom!

Either device would make for a terrific gift, but necessity, maybe not so much. Also, I can't help but wonder what comes next? Perhaps the innovation announced here:


Apple Fans Chopping Off Hands In Anticipation Of New iHand

Yikes! If I were presented this as a gift option I'd actually mean it when I said "You don't have to get me a gift, mom."

Remediating Remediation

One of our assigned readings this week is Remediation by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin. The central premise remediation theory is generally defined as the ongoing remixing of older media forms by newer ones in a never ending effort to establish perfect immediacy.  Per Bolter and Grusin:

The contemporary entertainment industry calls such borrowing "repurposing": to take a"property" from one medium and re-use it in another. With reuse comes a necessary redefinition, but there may be no conscious interplay between media.  The interplay happens, if at all, only for the reader or viewer who happens to know both versions and can compare them. (17)

For this post I attempted to "remediate" the concept of remediation.  Now you may be asking yourself just how one might accomplish such an undertaking? Well I started with a very old media form: the stage play, and a very old text: Romeo and Juliet. Then I scoured the web for modern day digital re-interpretations of the text. Why Romeo and Juliet? Well the tale itself, at least in it's most popular iteration by Shakespeare, is actually a remediation of ancient Italian folklore.  Per Wikipedia:

Romeo and Juliet belongs to a tradition of tragic romances stretching back to antiquity. Its plot is based on an Italian tale, translated into verse as The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke in 1562 and retold in prose in Palace of Pleasure by William Painter in 1582. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from both but, to expand the plot, developed supporting characters, particularly Mercutio and Paris. Believed written between 1591 and 1595, the play was first published in a quarto version in 1597.

So what does a digital reinterpretation of a medieval reinterpretation of a prior work of prose which remediated an ancient folk tale look like? Let's see:




This first piece could best be described as a hypermediated remediation of the story.  The viewer experiences the story via a vast mix of media, genre's and styles. Seemingly random at first the various clips actually begin to make sense and tell a coherent narrative, particularly if the viewer is familiar with the tale. And who isn't? Interestingly if you look closely enough you can actually see a clip from the Leonardo Dicaprio version of Romeo and Juliet which in itself was a hypermediated remediation of the tale. Here is a clip of that one:



This film adaptation remediated the tale in two ways, first by preseting it via film (though it's hardly the first film adaptation of the tale), and secondly by juxtaposing the original Shakespearean language against a twenty first century post apocolyptic Los Angeles setting. In this film version the warring Capulet and Montegue familes are re-imagined as rival gangs. The score for the film used contemporary pop music to narrate the tale. The costume design is eclectic, at times contemporary and at other times ethereal seemingly borrowed from a bygone era. The conscious mixing of old and new presents a hypermediated remediation of the ancient tale. Interestingly this particular hypermediation though vastly different from the one before it achieves the same effect. However in this version even if the viewer is unfamiliar with the tale the story is greatly aided by the cues from the film's music and settings.



This remediation uses a particularly analog form in a new way. Simple hand drawings presented in meticulous sequence tell the tale via a rather simple but remarkably effective animation. There is hypermediation present here also, though less apparent than in the above samples. Can you guess what it is? The hypermediation here is represented by the appearance of digital captions and subtitles superimposed at times over the paper flip book.

In these examples we witness remediation occurring in both form and content. It could be argued that infinitely greater immediacy is achieved in these samples, (well the first two anyway) but what about perfect immediacy. By manipulating the conventions of style, dialogue, genre and setting, have the respective filmmakers actually achieved the penultimate goal of remediation?  I suppose that would depend upon how successful each iteration is at drawing the viewer into the narrative. What are your thoughts?