on 9/3/03 2:20 PM, Susan M. Hagan at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> If I include visual information within the body of the text, which I do, I
> may run the risk of not always being taken seriously by the more word
> centered portion of my audience. You may say, why worry about them, but in
> my area of interest, words and visual information contribute equally. I do
> not know who will want to hire me once I defend, but if it is an English
> department, I need to be persuasive with that audience. For that group (and
> I am not talking about everyone in the humanities, but a group that is
> large enough to concern me), the examples should be in an appendix. That
> audience rightly expects the words to show I know what I am talking about.
> They are right in terms of the genre, but those genre conventions undermine
> my argument.
I think part of the problem you raise is an historical/technical one.
Bringing images and text together on a page was very difficult and expensive
before digital technology and I think that gave greater emphasis to words.
There is, however, a much more profound issue and that is to do with deeply
held views about the relationship between thinking, words, speech, writing,
and images. To discuss that would take us off on a very interesting tangent.
There are, however a number of people in the information design field who
have done some quite remarkable work in bringing text and images together in
a discursive mode. Robert Horn's work is particularly notable and has
received quite a lot of public attention. Have a look at
http://www.stanford.edu/~rhorn/
One of Robert's most interesting projects was to do a visual representation
of the arguments about artificial intelligence. He has done quite a lot on
public policy debates, as well.
Cumulatively, this work helps towards legitimising the integration of text
and images in 'discursive practices' (to use the jargon). I think it's worth
pushing this, particularly in the design area. I've seen some highly
original and exciting work of this kind in Coventry PhD's. I suspect others
too would support such work.
David
--
Professor David Sless
BA MSc FRSA
Co-Chair Information Design Association
Senior Research Fellow Coventry University
Director
Communication Research Institute of Australia
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