Abstract
In this study, we examine how image and language are used today via the internet meme, a multimodal object with global (even extra-terrestrial ––see Elon Musk’s recent shenanigans) circulation. Pithy, continuously remixed and recirculated around the globe, memes rely on a tension between text and image, enhancing visual literacy while often encapsulating complicated subjects. They are, however, not an isolated phenomenon unique to the digital age. By reframing the meme in broader historical and theoretical contexts of communication technologies, we demonstrate how this highly consumable object can be understood as a development on postwar visual language projects associated with concrete poetry. During the early 1950s, inspired by then-modern technological innovations (e.g., the speed of transportation, automation, advertisement, mass media), concrete poets around the world announced it was time poetry established greater visual impact in society by delivering information quickly through the fewest words possible. Through extreme reduction of language and the visual relationship of graphic elements, the concrete poem claimed to be both a universalizing aesthetic and supranational language. Similar to, yet arguably more successful than the concrete poem due to global tech infrastructure and interconnectivity, the internet meme has immeasurable capacities to transcend borders, languages, and cultures. Indeed, its form is doing some heady political and ideological work as it proliferates on social media and image boards like 4chan and 8chan. Drawing on canonical and contemporary theorists alike, from Eugen Gorminger to Legacy Russell, we discuss the visual/cultural language of the meme, focusing on parallels, problems, promises and potentialities.
Presenters
Maggie RosenauLecturer, Department of Modern Langauges, University of Colorado Denver, United States Kelly Drumright
I write and make art, Independent Scholar and Media-maker, Colorado, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Memes, Media, Communication, Globalization of Visual Language, Translanguage, Transliteracy, Universality
