Wysocki, “Awaywithwords”

Wysocki,
Anne F. "Awaywithwords: On the Possibilities in Unavailable Designs."
Computers and Composition 22 (2005) 55-62.

In this brief article, Wysocki complicates the dichotomy between image
and word, a division reinforced in the work of Kress, who partitions
words
and their "temporal and sequential logic" from "image-presentations"
and their "spatial and simultaneous logic" (56). Because alphabetic text
is arranged, it calls "visual attention to itself" (58) and because visually
designed objects are constituted with temporal strategies, we must recognize the
material constraints that bear on any composition. That is, we should
always try to recognize that which is taken to be natural, while
detailing the social and historical constraints involved in
any design. Finally, rather than asking what is lost, Wysocki focuses on a more
constructive angle: what is possible?

^Vocabulary persists as a problem here. Likening image and word is
useful from a design perspective, but how can we qualify our use of those terms
without reinscribing the dichotomy?

Key terms: embodied worlds (57), spatial memory (57), naturalized,
unquestioned practice (57), Kress’ image-representations (57), image and logics
of space (58), real affordances (60), perceived affordances (60), NLG’s
unavailable designs (60).

"The lesson is that things can be put to many uses, often
neither just nor humane" (55).

"I have learned in the process of developing communications that it is always
worth asking how our materials have acquired the constraints they have
and hence why, often, certain materials and designs are not considered
available
for certain uses" (56).

"Did you read my title as "a way with words" or "away with words"?"
(56).

"That is why, then, I wish to question what becomes unavailable when
we think of word and image as Kress has suggested we do, as
bound logically and respectively with time and with space"
(56).

"If we are to help people in our classes learn how to compose texts that
function as they hope, they need consider how they use the spaces and
not just one time
that can be shaped on pages" (57).

"Instead, we should acknowledge that when we work with what is on pages or
other surfaces, alphabetic text is always part of what must be
visually arranged
and can be designed to call more or less visual
attention
to itself (with the current academic and literary convention to be
that of calling less attention to itself)" (58).

"And so to use image to name some class of objects that
function in opposition to word is thus either to make an arbitrary cut
into the world of designed visual objects or to try to encompass a class so
large the encompassing term loses function. To say that all these objects rely
on a logic of space is to miss their widely varying compositional
potentials
" (59).

"By focusing on the human shaping of material, and on the ties of
material to human practices, we might be in better positions to ask after the
consequences not only of how we use water but also of how we use paper, ink, and
pixels to shape–for better or worse–the actions of others" (59).

Related sources:
Drucker, Joanna. The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art,
1909–1923. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Mitchell, W. J. T. Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1986.
Norman, Donald A. "Affordances and design." <http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/affordances_and.html>.