Rear View Mirror

Research output: Contribution to journalConference proceedings published in a journalpeer-review

Abstract

The traditional context for illustration is changing rapidly, with digital platforms offering us the possibility of moving images and audience interaction. Illustration is in a position to shape the nature of visual communication as it develops in this regard, if we identify the strengths of the field and use these to challenge the boundaries of what is expected from both the work and the medium. This paper seeks to explore one quality of illustration, time, in order to argue for an identifiable contribution from our field to bring to these interdisciplinary opportunities. Digital poster sites and the screen based gadgets we carry with us offer visuals that are often timebased seemingly for the sake of being able to do so. Our visual environment has been plastered indiscriminately with Adobe After Effects, and to offer an alternative the temporal feats performed by static works will be explored. These examples characterise illustration’s relationship with its audience differently, and include sequential illustration in book form, the use of unstable materials, and (in the case of music and literature) the development of a relationship between viewer and illustration over a timescale influenced by the work it accompanies. The wider implications of these achievements within illustration will be highlighted, namely the contribution of complex performative examples showing different ways of negotiating time within practical work to extend the debate that uses time as a defining feature of the age we live in. Thereby arguing for illustration’s place as generative of ideas, not ‘merely illustrating’ them.
Original languageEnglish
Number of pages0
JournalDefault journal
Volume0
Issue number0
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2012

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