0.
guide 1.
introduction 2.
method as field of discussion
3. practice
4. theory
5. conclusion and further discussions
| 4.
theory |
4.1 the dialectic of “reading” and “writing” Media Education 4.2 the novelty and distinctiveness of digital media forms Digital Media Research |
4.3 multimodal digital media and visualised culture A matter of method? 4.3.1 New critical moves towards visualised culture 4.3.2 Visualisation driven further by digitalisation The gap between the concepts and objects of both visual design and performance art, may illustrate a general risk of misrepresentatied visual culture – a risk of misrepresentation that may become more acute when visual culture merge with digital technology. As mentioned earlier on digitalisation with reference to Fagerjord (2002), aspects of rhetoric were usually given by technological constraints or conventions of the medium. In a digital culture, few of these constraints or conventions are given. Instead, they are ranges of choices to the author/creator. Put simply, one might say that the general tendency of visualisation is augmented by the digital possibilities of multimodality. This means that the potential of language-based theories of communication and meaning are challanged from from two sides, from two evolving features of our culture that empowers each other, that is visualisation and digitalisation. Elaborated in Reading Images (1996), Kress´ notion of visual literacy had no references to digital media. Digital media and new forms of communication technology has however an inevitable impact on Kress´ notion of visual literacy. In the later, “English” at the Crossroads. Rethinking Curricula of Communication in the Context of the Turn to the Visual (1999), Kress questions the metaphoric extension of terms like “grammar” and “literacy”, and describes the shift in communication as a “tectonic shift” (Kress 1999:69) with interesting links to the Di Benedetto´s description of Wilsons spatio-temporal works - “ a shift from a temporal sequential logic of spoken and written language to a spatial-simultaneous logic of the visual (Kress 1999:68), a “shift in communication from narrative to display” (Kress 1999:82), echoing Arnheim´s notion of visual thinking and the simultaneity of spatial structure: (…) multimodal texts/messages need a theory which deals adequately with the processes of integration/composition of the various modes in these texts: both in production/making and in consumption/reading. (…) a semiotic theory which is too much tied to and derived from one particular mode – for instance, our conventional language-based theories of communication and meaning-will permit neither an adequate nor an intergrated description of multi-modal textual objects, nor of multi-media production (Kress 1999:84). As dominant theories of semiosis – in linguistics by and large – are theories in which language is seen as a stable system of elements, categories, and rules of combination, according to kress (1999:84) he suggest, that an apt, plausible theory that may deal adequately with multimodality, will be founded on “innovation, on constant transformation and change” (1999:67). To be precise, Kress suggest such foundation of critical theory, not practice, and with interactive, visual and verbal modes in electronically mediated communication as his focal point (1999) [58. conceptual convergence]. But even without the kind of interaction between the user/viewer and the digital application, categorised here as interactive compared to interaction [see previous endote 34], there may be a need for complementary methodological moves towards digital, multimodal production/making and consumption/reading that involves innovation, transformation and change. The following second part of this section on multimodal media and visualised culture will try to show why, by reference to the collaborative production and piece, Proximal, as this piece may question the potential of language-based tools and theories of communication and meaning in particular, both on the subject of production/making and consumption /reading. |
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The both horizontal and vertical moving boat in the dynamic animation just displayed, is a hands-on example of the overall non-representational digital scenography in Proximal. In order to make the mediated material more complex, hoping that this would direct attention from live movement towards the mediated artifact, I needed a moving object to deflect the fairly stationary animation. As a dummy, I drew a boat. Throughout the process we decided to stick with the dummy. The drawing of a boat and its bizarre navigation may be experienced first and foremost as form, as moving shape with a certain rhythm and direction - not as a traditional, scenographic representation of marine environment. Similar to Bolter”s example of submitting words into images, to regard words themselves as images, the shape termed “boat” was meant to “insist on its visual form rather than its symbolic significance” (2003a:19). Within the frames of performance art, conceived as marginal practice marked by creative processes that cannot easily be contained by disciplinary paradigms (Birringer 1998), digital multimodal media may perhaps be even less adequately approachd by stable systems such as conventional, language-based theories of representation and meaning. 4.3.3 Multimodal Culture 4.3.4 Practice based confrontation of language-based tools in Proximal 4.3.5 Evolving preference of display and multimodality. A matter of method? 4.3.6 Recap Chapter 4. Preparing for final section 4.4 |
4.4 “artifacts of expression” and “expressive artifacts” Exploring theory through practice |
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Practice-based Method. Exploring Digital Media through
the Dynamics of Practice, Theory, and Collaborative, Multimedia Performance
Hovedoppgave i mediavitenskap for cand.filol
graden, Universitetet i Oslo, Institutt for medier og kommunikasjon, Mai
2006, Idunn Sem
