In this way I can connect some meaning to the term pictorial turn. When Mitchell says, “there is nothing outside the picture” he is making the same claim about pictures that Derrida is about text. The claim that when a picture is made, the impact of the picture maker in the process of making the picture, his/her inspiration, ideas, strategies in forming the image and surrounding details about the construction of it, is as important to understanding the meaning of picture as the content of the picture itself. The context of the picture, in my reading, extends itself to include all of the background details of the artist in reality as well as what they have included in the actual art.
This doesn’t quite cover it though. There is still something missing for me. I’m getting about two steps closer to spitballin’ here but the term pictorial turn has another connotation that hasn’t been addressed and is sort of nagging away at me. It seems to imply something inherently social. A movement, or a change in the way the population seems to interpret things at some point in history. Mitchell writes, “The ‘New World’ designated by the title is not the abstracted world of the autonomous, alienated artist, but our world, a world that is not merely represented by pictures, but actually constituted and brought into being by picture-making.” Mitchell states in pages 11-13 of “Picture Theory” (not in our reading) “it does seem clear that another shift in what philosophers talk about is happening, and that once again a complexly related transformation is occurring in other disciplines of the human sciences and in the sphere of public culture. I want to call this shift “the pictorial turn.”
·
Mitchell, W.J.T. 1995. Picture Theory. Chicago:
University of Chicago
Press.
pp. 11-13.
Joe,
ReplyDeleteYour post on “Pictorial Turn” seemed to present an interesting issue. The concept of “pictorial turn” is indeed one that is rather abstract, it is simplified a great deal once you read through J. David Bolter and Richard A. Grusin’s “Remediation.” I was specifically fascinated with relating these two terms together when I began reading about “projective geometry” and the way that space can reach beyond its intended surface. Bolter and Grusin took this concept and related it to the way a computer user interacts with their computer interface as well as how this interface has changed in order to create new meaning.
I would like to agree with the claim that you made in your second paragraph in regards to the term “pictorial turn,” and the phrase’s relationship with external sources. Pictorial turn establishes a sort of synchronization between the creator’s intent and the way that a reader or viewer processes the information, thus helping to strengthen the bond between text and reader. I believe that this is why Bolter and Grusin discuss the importance of medieval illuminations within manuscripts, they assist the reader by helping to create a new, deeper, dimension within the text. “a medieval illuminated manuscript, a seventeenth-century painting by David Bailly, and the website for CNN news are analogous but disparate expressions of a fascination with media” (Bolter 3). This theme of a deeper dimension is established yet again when the Bolter and Grusin discuss the application of the how the pictorial turn is applied in our modern world. By discussing the concept of an “interfaceless interface,” Bolter and Grusin bring up the concept of reader and material interacting in an organic fashion. “What designers often say they want is an ‘interfaceless' interface, in which there will be no recognizable electronic tools, no buttons, windows, scroll bars, or even icons as such. Instead the user will move through the space interacting with the objects "naturally," i.e., as she does in the physical world” (Bolter 4). The concept of an “interfaceless interface” would blur the lines between computer and real world.
While it is obvious that I am struggling with the concept of “pictorial turn” as well, I was provided with a great amount of understanding by reading and exploring the article, “Remediation,” written by J. David Bolter and Richard A. Grusin. I hope that me wrestling with this concept along side you helped to better clarify and elaborate on the problem you are dealing with.
Works Cited
Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. “Remediation.” Configurations 4.3 (1996): 311-358. Available at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/configurations/toc/con4.3.html.