Selected highlights from my ongoing blog: "The Visual Linguist." Please add a comment if you have anything to add!

Popular label threads

Art vs. Language • Theory • Visual Grammar • Linguistics • Iconic Bias • Definitions

About defining "Comics" in contrast to "visual language"

Re-un-defining "Comics"
"The reality is that a notion of 'comics' is not entirely grounded in aspects of structure (text/image, sequential images). 'Comics' are not 'juxtaposed sequential images,' nor are they 'text/image relations.'"

"Comics" is not a medium nor a mode of expression
"Though I frequently hear statements of faith in McCloud's definition and the propagation of it. However, I have still not received any good argumentation for why "comics" equals "sequential images with/without text." Frankly, this hasn’t surprised me, since I don’t think its possible to reasonably make such a claim."

Subjectivity and a rant on Comics Scholarship
"[M]ost essays on anything comics-related feel the need to define what a comic is in the paper – whether or not the paper is about how “comics” are defined."

"Comics" needs less nouns and more adjectives
A proposal for an alternative vocabulary to talk about sequential images with: by getting rid of the word "comics."

About meaning-making in sequential images

Problems with Panel Transitions
"Really, Eisenstein's montage and McCloud's closure are kind of like the film/comics equivalent of ether; a magical "mental" substance that doesn't really exist that glosses over any real substance the mind might actualy be contributing."

Problems with Closure

Part 1 - "Closure as a psychological notion ... is largely about 'image constancy,' which means that you can have a single image with pieces missing and still understand the whole. McCloud extends closure to do this unification across two separate images."

Part 2 "Artistic Freedom" - "Because “Art” is supposed to be about innovation and interpretation, anything visual is regarded as free from constraints of any sort."

Part 3 "Absence of Mind" - "Since no mind is found in the actual images, its placed instead between the images. Transitions just become a surface grafted onto this encompassing unifying process, where the 'mind' 'fills in the gaps.'"

Part 4 "The Veil of Iconicity" - "[Because] images are most often iconic, meaning that they derive their meaning through resemblance to what they reference,... we forget that it actually requires a mind to understand these images, and thereby discount its contribution to understanding."

About the treatment of images in culture

Visual Fluency...aka "Pissing off Writers"
A discussion of the perception of fluency for graphic communication in culture.

Art v. Language
A concise summary of my beliefs about the cultural forces brought on by the "Art" mentality of treating graphic images

Naming the System
"[O]ur culture has never really identified there being a system of graphic communication."

Shojo Manga
Some thoughts about the intersection of visual language and "Art" motivated by an art exhibit of shojo manga

Iconic Bias

Part 1 - Details the influence of the cutural notion that people learning to draw should imitate from real life: "Iconic Bias"

Part 2 - The underlying assumptions of the belief that drawings should imitate life leads to derision of other approaches to drawing because they don't see a variety of styles as separate graphic dialects

Part 3 - This Iconic Bias leads people to treat drawing as a matter of "skill" as opposed to "fluency"

Imitation is bad!... in the immediate
Looking closer at Iconic Bias, this post examines the sentiment that "copying other artists' styles" is bad.

Mannerism, Imitation, and Iconic Bias
Continuing from the above post, I further examine the role of imitation and Iconic Bias in relation to the Art theory notion of Mannerism.

Linguistics

Thoughts on a visual e/i-language
A discussion of the extant to which drawings are an object of culture versus an object of cognition in relation to various notions from linguistics.

Sorry, there will never be a universal writing system
This approach combats the theory behind the variety of attempts there have been to create a universal writing system. It explains how universal writing system fails with regard to every major field of the structure of language.

Dunkin' Pictograms
Expanding on the previous post, I use an ad campaign from Dunkin' Donuts to show why pictographic writing can't work.

License Plate Linguistics
I examine some ambiguities of a lisence plate reading "OYABABY," and the implications of each interpretation.

Miscellaneous Others

Burnt City animation VL
In 2005 there was the rather striking discovery out of Tehran of a 5000 year old "animation" of a goat found on an earthenware bowl. Through examination of the animation released by the researchers and photos of the original bowl, I show how the claims of it being an ancient "animation" are false, misleading, and scholarly irresponsible.

Superheroes are not Mythology
"Superheroes are not modern myths in any real sense comparable to the cultural functions that myths serve."

Making Comics by Scott McCloud
A review of Scott McCloud's latest non-fiction offering.

The System of Comics by Thierry Groensteen
A review Thierry Groensteen's translated book on comic theory (pdf version).