Ninth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

Text and Image are frequently brought into conversation in tertiary art & design contexts. Specifically, this paper sets forth some visual exemplars that challenge traditional formats for dissemination of scholarly artwork and images. For example, Higher Degree Research submission often means adapting creative works into text-based documents for assessment purposes. Complexity in such spaces of representation frequently results in unsatisfying outcomes. The concept of “more than representation” Lorimer (2005); Thrift & Dewsbury (2000) and Connell’s (2017) sense of the significance of alternative spaces is used to contextualise a range of visual encounters. Encounters are conceived as a way to interrupt stability of past recording platforms and to enable interventions in everyday routines. The focus is on visually emergent and unremarkable actions, shared experiences and serendipitous dispositions. Rather than traditional representational traits such as uncovering meanings and linear progress narratives, case studies of image/text seek to pay attention to the fleeting and the unexceptional. Each case presents a diverse visual format (artworks, animations and multichannel video) using performative conversions of text and image. In the age of big data, visual intelligence and “readings” that interrogate representational formats are crucial in uncovering the situated mechanics of production. Speech and text conceived as artistic devices open novel opportunities for change. Each case recognises constrained acts of speaking/voice within cultural displacement for example in working with International students in Higher Education. How artists devise altered encounters to countermand prior invisibility or disparagement is highlighted, challenging contested ideas across geographies of place and time.