Sian’s comments on one of my visual artefacts has got me thinking about the arguments of Gunther Kress. In this post I want to summarise a couple of the key points Kress has been making for the last few years and in greatest detail in Literacy in the New Media Age.

But first, here’s what Sian wrote:

But isn’t Kress’s point not so much that the written text is dead, but that contemporary (digital) texts are designed according to the ‘logic of the image’. In other words, even if they are mainly textual, there are multiple ‘entry points’, user-defined reading paths and many ways in, in terms of where we start with making meaning. And this would apply to the YouTube screen, to the hypertext or to the new visually-informed print textbook design equally?

Firstly, I do think that Kress is arguing that the textual is being eclipsed by the visual as we move from printed pages to digital content viewed on screens (the ‘new Media Age’):

Two distinct yet related factors deserve to be particularly highlighted. These are, on the one hand, the broad move from the now centuries-long dominance of writing to the new dominance of the image and, on the other hand, the move from the dominance of the medium of the book to the dominance of the medium of the screen. [...] language-as-writing will increasingly be displaced by image in many domains of public communication [emphasis mine]. (Kress 2003: 1)

I think a problem with Literacy in the New Media Age is that, published in 2003 and therefore pre-dating the extraordinary developments in Web 2.0 and social media, it hasn’t the chance to absorb the array of new textual practices (tweets, status updates, tags etc.) associated with or enabled by those technologies. Kress views writing, as what he calls “lettered representation”, as on the way out for all bar political and cultural elites. However,  from the vantage point of late 2009, text looks in rude good health (how many txt msgs, tweets, status updates per day from ordinary folks?). It’s way too soon to inter textuality.

Secondly, I have a problem with the distinction Kress makes between text and image and the two very different ‘logics’ that inform them:

The two modes of writing and of image are each governed by distinct logics, and have distinctly different affordances. The organisation of writing – still leaning on the logics of speech is governed by the logic of time, and by the logic of sequence of its elements in time, in temporally governed arrangements. The organisation of the image, by contrast, is governed by the logic of space, and by the logic of simultaneity of its visual/depicted elements in spatially organised arrangements. (Kress 2003: 1-2)

I think my problem with the distinction Kress makes is that I’m not sure I apprehend visual elements on a multimodal web page as simultaneously as he claims. Rather, my eye is drawn to one page element – for example, an embedded video on a YouTube page – and then on to another page element – for example, thumbnail images of video responses to that video.

What I’m saying is that I read a YouTube page as a ’sequence of elements in time’ (first the video, then other parts) just as I might read a web page allegedly informed by the textual logic of temporality, sequentiality and linearity. There aren’t multiple entry points – the embedded YouTube video is located centrally and at the top precisely to gain the viewer’s attention to what is the core part of the screen (its entry point) – although I’d acknowledge there are multiple reading paths on the periphery (I can scroll down to read comments, or click on related videos, to find out more about the user who created and/or uploaded the video).  The same goes for Flickr which also enables users to create slideshows – i.e temporally arranged sequences of images.

In short, then, I’m not buying the distinction Kress makes about time-based (text) and space-based (image) logics either.

I’ve been having an interesting exchange with Jen about the cabinet of curiosities recently.

Although it comes carrying some big, heavy ideological baggage, the concept seems attractive still to a lot of visual ‘creatives’ drawn to the idea of a space in which to display in close physical proximity a range of artefacts.

Here’s a cabinet of curiosities from my friend Jake, who’s an illustrator:

I texted him last night for a picture of his cabinet of curiosities and got the reply “Wot? Cabinet wot?”. Was Jake feigning ignorance as part of a comic distancing himself from what the Wunderkammer represents? Is it possible to rethink the notion of a display space for disparate/dissonant artefacts of idiosyncratic interest purged of historical baggage?

Really loved Jen’s visual artefact but I felt that there was something not quite right about the ‘cabinet of curiosities’ metaphor.

Cabinets of curiosities or Wunderkammern are collections of ’strange’ and ‘primitive’ artefacts – some natural, some hand-made -  acquired and displayed by mainly wealthy collectors. They belong to a culture of aristocrats, gentlemen or aspiring gentlemen and are also part and parcel of the phenomenon of the grand tour. To be one of the curiosi, is to reveal a fineness of sensibility, an appreciation of the sublime but also an understanding of what’s really art – and what’s just … well …  ’strange’ ( a ‘curiosity’).  So, I see them as being one of the ways in which a particular class of men distinguished themselves aesthetically, and through this, socially.

Cabinets of curiosities reveal a fascination with the Other – with Otherness in all its forms – but reek of a patronising and superior attittude towards the cultures whose artefacts are collected.

I don’t think Jen’s cabinet did this – I suspect her digital cabinet of curiosities is more informed by surrealism and its reappropriation of the wonder cabinet to articulate an aesthetic based partly on the strange (”the beautiful is always strange”, said Baudelaire) and on bizarre juxtapositions. There’s a nice scene in André Breton’s Nadja (1928) where the narrator describes his trips to the flea market (I think it’s the one at Clignancourt – still open, Métro Porte de Clignancourt): “on the lookout for these objects one cannot find anywhere else, outmoded, fragmented, unusable, almost incomprehensible, ultimately perverse in the way I appreciate it or like it”.

Breton, by the way, had an amazing cabinet of curiosities, bits of which (maybe all, I’m not sure) can be seen in the Pompidou centre.

Anyway, all this to say that I think the cabinet of curiosities/Wunderkammer is not simply a collection of objets trouvés but found objects of a strange, grotesque, and hybrid quality that are always Other.

Maybe commonplace book is a better metaphor?

I couldn’t embed my Flash animation into a blog posted so exported as an avi and uploaded to YouTube.

I tend to revolt when I hear talk of a digital revolution.

So here’s my sarcastic take a – 4-second Flash movie called Gutenberg.

I prefer the metaphor of a ‘digital turn’. Similar metaphor to ‘revolution’ I guess although I imagine it more like an oil tanker changing course (slow, so very slow) or a flower turning (tropism?) towards the sun.

Andy has been posting some funny YouTube videos. Given this week’s stress on visuality, I thought you might enjoy this:

Fred & Sharon: Who needs a movie?

I’m 99.9% sure it’s a spoof but there’s a faint, nagging doubt that it’s for real. Anyway, I think there’s a lot to learn about video production in this gem of a vid. Enjoy!

My most recent attempt to create a visual artefact uses Flickr and is called Attachments. I’m happier with it than I have been with the videos or the PDF in spite of my reservations about its personal content.

I’m trying to explore some of the characteristics of digital texts that Merchant identifies.

I’ve been having a go at doing visual artefacts this week: a couple of rough videos – one made on my iPhone another on my Mac from iPhone pictures; a makingsenseofimages PDF on a Flickr photo and I’m also going to have a go at Prezi (a tool I already dislike).

It made me realise that I’m not very good at the visual. I think I’m not a ‘visual person’. Before anyone jumps on me for naive essentialism, I want to say that I think being a ‘visual person’ is something that gets developed – or not – over time.  Here’s an illustration one of my contacts in our Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture  did in 30 mins to use in the publicity materials for the then new digitisation service:

I thought it was a pretty neat  visual explanation of the service – pages of a book taking flight like birds. It made me think of the Craig Raine poem about the ‘Caxtons’ – an association that reinforces my perception of myself as someone happier making things with words than with images.