Why Not Use Pictures??? Research #2

In Marcel O’Gorman’s “E-Crit: Digital Media, Critical Theory, and the Humanities,” Chapter 2, he discusses various topics about the need for the “Republic of Scholars” to develop beyond the papyrus and “ink interface” it clings to so completely. Our technology currently enables us to cite work online via links to the work (so long as it is available online and not in an exclusive database), yet I still have a MLA citation at the bottom of this blog. Perhaps a compromise would be to keep the citation, yet make the title (within the citation) a link to the book on Amazon? Although I feel this development of the Republic of Scholars into a more digitally acceptable form is inevitable, I still think it is a long time coming. Writing has remained the same way since its inception; changing it will be quite a feat.

Moving away from the “Republic” and its changes, I’d like to discuss “imagetexts” since they are more relevant to my Senior Project work on digital elegy. O’Gorman describes the interplay that happens when placing text and pictures together as an imagetext. The words and the pictures each have their own message, but they also create a new message through their combination. A constant struggle exists, but by using the pictures and text specifically to compliment each other, the combined message overcomes the individual messages of the pictures and text, and creates a deeper, richer meaning and experience for the audience and the author when used as a digital elegy. By combining images with text, the need for historic knowledge of the culture and society the work was produced in lessens. Pictures can tell us what we need to know about the history associated with the text. My imagetexts, digital elegy, will be the layering of literary elegy on top of digital photographs and film in the hope that the literary will be enhanced by the digital. I want the subject of the elegy to become more alive to the audience through the addition of significant images.

The other image related term O’Gorman focuses on in Chapter 2 is “hypericons.” In class we discussed bathroom signs (basic figures of men and women to denote who can enter which bathroom in a public place) as possibly being the beginning of hypericons. These signs, as well as many other types of signs, have a basic idea associated with them, and it is just one idea not many. Hypericons have many possible ideas associated with them. They require some interpretation on the part of the viewer and cannot be lumped into one category or another. Generally speaking, hypericons are saturated with possible ideas and meanings that are related to the image. The key difference between an imagetext and a hypericon is the lack of text in a hypericon; the textuality of a hypericon is entirely interpretive for the viewer rather than being a layering of text onto a related image. The first picture in Chapter 2, “The Eye Socket,” by Stephen Gibb, can be viewed as a hypericon in that it radiates multiple possible interpretations. (I would have provided a link to the specific picture, but I cannot find one on the net. I assume Stephen Gibb’s artist site, linked above, will have this picture in the archive once it is complete.) We see the electrical socket, the eye, the plug… but the combination of images gives off various messages. My personal interpretation is based off of the thumbnail version of the image (on the first page of Chapter 2) since you cannot see the eye. To me, the electrical outlet already displays a certain fear and disgust at the idea of being “plugged.” The shape of the individual holes in the socket look slightly skewed, implying feeling and personification without the eye pictured below it. Once I looked at the full image I was amazed at how much more disturbing the image became. This painting epitomizes hypericons in its ability to project thoughts, ideas, and meanings to its audience without the aid of words.

The chapter as a whole was eye opening, to use a pun. The idea that images can communicate better than words has been glossed over in the past. However, the advent of the internet requires our societies movement toward pictorial communication. We began with merely television, but now everything we mentally consume is available on the net and we don’t like it if it doesn’t include pictures, animation, or some variant of eye candy. If pictures are what we continue producing, then pictures will become the norm for communication regardless of the desires of the Republic of Scholars.



O'Gorman, Marcel. E-Crit: Digital Media Critical Theory and the Humanities. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Incorporated, 2006.