Sunday, October 16, 2005

Eloquent Images I

Bolter - "Critical Theory and the Challenge of New Media," 20-36
In this brief article, the first in Hocks and Kendrick's Eloquent Images, Jay Bolter begins with a historical overview of the image-word problem.  He traces a larger outline of new media by propping up a series of artificial dichotomies: visual-verbal, theory-practice, critique-production, ideological-formal (34); the project of new media is to collapse these terms.  Bolter explains that unlike film and television, which few cultural critics conceived of as full-scale replacements for print, the web and its hyper-blended forms of discourse introduce a different kind of contest between old and new media forms. Yet it would be a mistake to view new media forms and print as strict teleological trajectories, each edging out the other, competing for a mediative lead.  This matters differently if you're the CEO of a Weyerhaeuser, I suppose, and maybe there's something to the race track metaphor (one car to each, one driver, one big-dollar sponsor) that admits or allows for the capital backing of media forms.  That's not really Bolter's point here. He explains, "It is not that there is some inadequacy in printed media forms that digital forms can remedy: New digital media obviously have no claim to inherent superiority" (24). 

Early in the essay, Bolter suggests that writing studies scholars are doing some of the most important work in new media because they merge practical and theoretical dispositions. In writing studies, scholars can work with a practical understanding of the increasing presence of digital writing technologies and also put them to use, activating the new media in compositional practices and pedagogy.  And, according to Bolter, it's not necessary to eschew political orientations, disregard cultural studies or neglect critical theory along the way (25). New media productively unsettles what writing studies does.  Elsewhere in the article, Bolter points out the irony of so much new media scholarship reverting to print forms for circulation; he refers specifically to Postmodern Culture as an exception among academic journals and notes that many articles on new media hold to the conventions of print even when they are published online.  He also highlights some of the exciting work in new media among his colleagues in Ga. Tech's School of Literature, Communication and Culture (formerly, the English Dept.), which houses the new media studies program. 

Quotations: "To approach new media as practice is to appreciate the cultural significance of images and sounds as well as written words" (27).
"Although publishing a linear essay on the Web is not suspect, creating a hypermedia artifact may be, precisely because it involves media forms that cultural theorists have come to associate with corporate software and entertainment giants" (25).

Terms: distinction between repurposing and remediation (29)

I'll have a few more entries on articles from EI (2003/2005) later today and in the days ahead.  I want to note, too, how impressed I am with Hocks and Kendrick's introductory frame for the book.  Beyond the brief overview of each article (a commonplace for introductions of collections), I found it especially interesting in "From Word/Image Binaries to the Recognition of Hybrids" (3), which makes use of Latour's theorization of hybrids to articulate the fluctuation between word and image, between print culture and visual culture. How can I fit Latour into my reading this semester?

Bookmark and Share Posted by at October 16, 2005 1:00 PM to Reading Notes
Comments

By cutting something else out. Any nominees? ;-)
cgb

Posted by: collin at October 16, 2005 7:19 PM

For starters I could quit clinging to the TV on Sunday afternoons for updates on the Lions. But because that's not likely to happen, I think I have devised a way to bring in Latour in the 691 project (something concerned with SNA and ethnography).

Posted by: Derek at October 16, 2005 7:55 PM