Illustrating Alice

'What is the use of a book', thought Alice, 'without pictures and conversation?' Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

Via an academically unverifiable Google search, I discovered British copyright expired on Carroll's classic in 1907, allowing any publisher to release a new edition. Perhaps this explains why it is such a commonly illustrated book (see, for example, the list of hundreds of illustrations: http://www.lewiscarroll.org/illus.html). Anyone who has taught in an undergraduate art or design degree will recognise it as a popular text to illustrate/reference (I can think of at least two projects in which I used Alice references in my own undergrad degree – they were both fairly awful). Carroll originally created 37 line drawings to accompany his first draft and added text emphasis (boldness, underlining, shaped text boxes, etc), which demonstrates his concern for the typo/graphic elements of his story. The setting of the poem 'A Mouse's Tail' is a good example of concrete poetry. The original illustrations he commissioned John Tenniel to produce were a blend of cartoon and caricature, apparently using real life politicians as inspiration for some of the characters. Marie-Laure Ryan, editor of Narrative Across Media: The Languages of Storytelling, describes Tenniel's illustrations as a successful case of "the verbal and visual [blending] in the mind of the reader-spectator into one powerful image, each version filling the gaps of the other." (139)

This tradition has been maintained by later illustrators; Barry Moser and Ralph Steadman use quite obvious likenesses to contemporary figures (Moser's March Hare looks an awful lot like Ringo Starr). Is this a case of illustration functioning beyond (but always in tandem with) the written text? Something I'm thinking about at the moment. Almost all children's books use illustration in this way, but we lose that with adult literature.

It's occurred to me that writing this (tenuously relevant) post is a less productive activity than finishing my semester progress report, but if I write the word 'taxonomy' again I'm going to scream. I'm finding the blog a good way to digress (alright, procrastinate) at the moment, though some of my posts are becoming less productive than my earlier epic rants. I think this is a good thing.

Why not semiotics?

The process of reading an image is wholistic, not linear - the component parts only makes sense in relation to the whole (hermeneutic?) So how can you conduct a semiotic analysis (breaking it into a 'grammar' of compositional parts) to an image?

How do you analyse a found image, something that hasn't been consciously composed for the context you put it in, using a semiotic model?

Further to why I'm not focusing on semiotics, a quote from Kate Sweetapple's PhD thesis:

"Although the application of semiotic theory to the field of design has enabled a greater understanding of how meaning is produced in visual communication it does not account for how the designer affects the type of engagement the viewer has with the material, which is a significant aspect of the communication process. The absence of such an understanding results in designers having limited control over the viewer response to their messages, which in turn compromises the intended viewer experience."

Semiotic analysis interprets existing images by coding/decoding the elements (signs) within those images. It does not (to my admittedly limited understanding) account for the process of creation; the intention of the creator to affect the way the viewer/reader responds to the designed outcome (image or document).

Kate's thesis develops a model based on literary theory and the notion of 'distance' to identify four types of visual narrators (idiosyncratic, implicit, imperative and esoteric) and provide a new understanding of the relationship between the designer and their visual outcome. She provides "a theorised model of practice, and a method of visual analysis".

Rhetoric

The notion of rhetoric keeps raising it's head.

Rhetoric is the art of finding and employing the most effective means of persuasion on any subject, considered independently of intellectual mastery of that subject. Booth, The Rhetorical Stance.

Considered in relation to Safran Foer's assertion: “Most of what I do in my books I do exactly because I can’t explain in any other way.” (Gerber & Triggs 2006) Are there elements of narrative that are more persuasively articulated through visuals? Consider the 'flip book' ending of Safran Foer's book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, where a man's body floats back up to the top of the Twin Towers, 'reversing the tragedy' – this technique asks a rhetorical question (what if?) in a visual way. Is this appropriate because, for so many of us, the experience of the S11 attack on the World Trade Centre was primarily a visual one, through television and the internet? If contemporary experience of current affairs (tv news, papers, websites) and entertainment (films, television, games) occurs through visual media, is the way we reflect on these experiences going to increasingly involve visual rhetoric?

Revised attempt at writing a methodology: 2

* I just need someone to make this for me.

Text, paratextual, intertextual (of a book)

Text: To define the two terms below, I need to establish that when I say 'text' I am only referring to the written content of a book (words), and not the entire book as an artefact (content and form).

Para-textual: Elements outside the text, 'packaging': jacket (book cover), blurb, prelim pages (imprint page, title page, dedication, etc), folios, running heads/feet. Chapter head illustrations? Picture sections? Elements added after the author has written the text; material generally generated by the publisher/editor/designer?

Inter-textual: Non-verbal elements within the text, supplementary (?) information: photographs, diagrams, illustrations that are integrated into the text. Conceived or generated during the composition of the text (or can they be added afterwards where necessary?)

The creative role of the book designer (where the designer has creative agency) generally involves para-textual elements (book cover design, typesetting design). If a designer is involved in generating inter-textual elements, these are usually producing illustrations/diagrams from a fairly strict brief (what I would call rendering rather than creating). In fiction with integrated (inter-textual) graphic elements, does the designer or writer maintain creative agency?

Revised attempt at writing a methodology

Presenting research – the difference between research and practice

A criticism of my doctoral assessment was that I came across as defensive and perhaps overly confident – at the perceived risk of not listening to feedback and being wedded to my own conclusions before testing them properly. I think this criticism is due to two factors: firstly, nervousness and secondly, the difference between presenting in professional settings and presenting research.

Firstly, when I'm nervous, I lose my sense of humour. I speak with a humourless gravity that may be misinterpreted as false confidence. A colleague suggested a couple of drinks beforehand may help, but no one likes a humourless drunk. I think experience in presenting my research is all that will help me here.

Secondly, and more importantly, I think there is a vast difference between what is expected from a presentation of professional work in progress and what is expected from a presentation of research work in progress. As a practitioner returning to academics, it's a been a distinction I've only come to understand recently, but an important one. If I'm presenting my work (often to a marketing department rather than a 'client' as such), it's in my best interest to gloss over uncertainties and speak with unwavering confidence; in many instances, I am presenting work in progress to an audience who are not visual thinkers, so when presenting unfinished work, the client/marketing department needs to be verbally convinced that I will produce an effective and well polished outcome. A good marketing department/client can sniff out uncertainty and will savage a work in progress like a pack of wolves (perhaps a slight hyperbole, but not entirely unwarranted). With research presentations, on the other hand, glossing over uncertainties and speaking with unwavering confidence does exactly the opposite of inspiring faith in your abilities to perform the research effectively.

I said that there are two factors that influence this criticism of me, but if I'm being completely honest in my reflections, there are actually three: it's sometimes true.