Word-Art
a Davidson College course on words, images & the interplay between them. Study & create word-image texts. Use your mind & imagination.
Read Morea Davidson College course on words, images & the interplay between them. Study & create word-image texts. Use your mind & imagination.
Read MoreIn the mindfullness/meditation workshop on Wednesday, Kristen Eshleman guided us through some “gamestorming” exercises that might be helpful for you as you dig into your hybrid projects. Gamestorming is a “set of tools for rule breakers, innovators and changemakers” developed to stimulate creative problem-solving in the business world. The principles and practices can also be applied to the academic world. We’ve actually been using this process in the development of the hybrid… Read More
In class we discussed the provocative and disturbing sculpture on the cover of Claudia Rankine’s Citizen. In Citizen Rankine creates a sense of disconnect between white readers and the stories she tells with authoritative use the second person. Hammons, like Rankine, creates a similar disconnect in his artwork. In his latest exhibition, “David Hammons: Five Decades,” disconnection and incongruity are everywhere. Hammons is very particular about his exhibitions; everything has a place… Read More
In the Citizen Hack assignment, many of us found unique ways to do close reading and annotations of Claudia Rankine’s Citizen. Some of us used traditional annotation methods while others incorporated quotes and excerpts from other sources, created erasure poems with the text, framed the text with images of our own, or super imposed our own words on top of Rankine’s. As it turns out, we aren’t the only ones using word… Read More
In your midterm evaluations, some of you raised questions about how the different units of the course fit together. We can certainly do more to highlight the connections during the second half of the semester. I also thought it might help to offer a narrative explaining the logic behind the Calendar. My hope is that when you read this “story,” you’ll gain a clearer “picture” of how I plotted the course design… Read More
What is the difference between writing and illustrating? The NY Times Book Review has authors write short pieces reflecting on their work. This Sunday I read the “Author’s Note” by Edward Carey, an English writer and illustrator. His note, “Drawing Inspiration,” is very interesting, and I have copied a few excerpts below… “I can’t imagine working any other way. I don’t draw at first to create a work of art — I’m drawing… Read More
Thanks, Graham, for your expert sketch-noting about the possible relationships between words & images. If anyone took notes of our definitions of “word” and “image,” please take a photo of your notes and add it to this post, or transcribe the notes here. Here are the definitions I came up with, but you had good additions, elaborations, and complications: WORDS: Units of characters that operate in verbal language system to convey meaning;… Read More
In their partner project “What emotions do these represent?”, Jane and Cordelia raised some interpretive issues surrounding popular emoji’s. Last week, Facebook released an updated version of the “Like” button to include “Reactions.” Like emoji’s these also raise similar interpretative questions. In Emily Dreyfuss’s article “Linguists Not Exactly Wow about Facebook’s New Reactions” explains some of the problems with this new form of expression. Like emojis, this simple system is not flexible… Read More
In Florence this past semester, I took Intermediate Painting: Special Topics. Each semester, our professor chooses a different theme for her students to focus on. Our theme was Sacred and Profane Art, paired with the Palazzo Strozzi’s Divine Beauty Exhibition. We also worked directly with Palazzo Strozzi’s Educational Department and their student exhibition: “Holy! Holy! Holy!” For my project, I turned to the Book of Judith. I wanted to explore how sacred texts can be interpreted to fulfill… Read More
The digital New York Times has been upping its image-text game ever since it published the groundbreaking multimedia story, “Snow Fall,” by John Branch. Incidentally, “Snow Fall” is the first digital narrative that made me believe I actually might be able to read online—really read, in the fully immersive way I get absorbed in a book. It actually made me think that a well designed digital narrative could not just be as… Read More
Thanks to someone with tastes much better than mine, I was exposed to the singer/poet Jamila Woods thanks to her work on Chance the Rapper’s song, “Sunday Candy.” Listening to Woods’ voice led me to looking up her twitter page, where I found a poem she wrote on February 19th, 2016 called “On Display.” The poem originated in Woods creating a playlist composed of female singers whose, “lyricism, style choices, political views, and…bold commitment… Read More
While working on my bibliographic essay on Mary Ruefle’s erasure book An Incarnation of the Now, I came across this article which offered her perspective on the value and merit of [her] erasure poetry. I have extracted the most interesting passages and put them here to hopefully help us answer some of the questions brought up in class about homage/sabotage/originality/art vs. text… Her definition of erasure poetry:“An erasure is the creation of a new text by disappearing the old text… Read More
These sketch notes attempt to extract useful principles and concepts from W. J. T. Mitchell’s “What Is an Image?”—a chapter that surveys various definitions and theories of images and deconstructs them to show that all images (like words) operate within a system of language. Mitchell does not claim that words and images are exactly alike or operate in the same ways, but he insists that the divisions between them are not hard… Read More
I tried doodling an SSR of Mitchell’s essay “Word & Image” and now I understand it like never before. You have the option of doing your SSR on McKenzie in Doodle form, as long as you upload a clear, cropped, downsized photo that shows you’ve analyzed the structure of the entire argument. The photo should be big enough that when we click on it, we can read it, but not so huge… Read More
Thanks to Jenna for alerting us to the tradition of Hourly Comics Day: The gist of it is that you draw a short comic for every hour you’re awake about whatever you did during that hour. – Jenna Rules for us: No stick people. Build characters out of simple shapes: circles, characters, rectangles. Minimal features, rudimentary limbs are ok as is basic pattern on clothing. Comics do not have to be professional… Read More
It is interesting that many of our paradigm shifts occur when we hear statements from children. In the two podcasts we listened to, a child was presented with information previously unknown to them and afterwards, could not see the world in any other way (The sky was blue/oppression and violence towards the black race). While it may have been jarring for a little girl to suggest segregation in church, based on the information she was… Read More
Our reflection on images, representation, and power is connected to painter Gunduz Aghayev’s series of illustrations titled “Imagine.” He uses his illustrations to reimagine historical photographs taken of children ranging from the Vietnam War to the death of young Syrian boy, Aylan Kurdi, who’s body was photographed after washing up to shore (Lomento). One photograph/illustration pairing we specifically choose to focus on was Kevin Carter’s Pulitzer Prize winning photo taken in 1993 of an… Read More
This image reflects the notion of white spaces and black spaces as articulated in “This American Life” podcast assigned for class. As white people, we are rarely conscious of our race, that is until we find ourselves in a black space. As Dr. Churchill mentioned in class, the experience can be lonely, unwelcome, and even scary–a lone pebble. It is, however, often just as jarring when we realize that this is the… Read More
In “White Debt,” Eula Bliss recognizes the power of privilege when observing her son. She points out that although he recognizes the horrors that were inflicted upon slaves, he will grow up, work hard, and believe that his hard work was the sole factor in his success and not acknowledge the system that granted him better conditions. A huge part of privilege is not recognizing that the opportunities that arise are not… Read More