Abstract

“Inform-Transform-Inform” explores the translation of image analysis to text in fictocritical writing practice.Specifically, it discusses image analysis pertaining to this writer’s Doctorate of Creative Arts research output - a fictocritical representation of the life of Amalie Dietrich, a German naturalist who spent almost ten highly productive years in colonial Queensland, Australia. “Inform-Transform-Inform” explores how understanding and perceptions can alter after image analysis and considers a photographic representation of Dietrich's collected specimens as exemplar. Utilising Roland Barthes’ semiotic method, aspects of Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction theory, pareidolia and contextual analysis as tools for creative enquiry, connotations and multiple layers of meaning within the image will be exposed and translated to text. This image decoding will complement literary research of the historical period and textual analysis on writings of Dietrich’s life. In this paper, images will be critically dismantled then re-assembled using black graphemes on white pages (images themselves?) to enrich textual creativity and reveal the impact that image analysis has on fictocritical writing practice. Critical dismemberment and reconstruction of images has implications for fictocritical composition and links to the fragmented structure and multidisciplinary ethos of the genre as well as providing translation of image to text.