Wysocki, Anne Frances. “Seriously Visible.” Eloquent Images.
Ed. Mary E. Hocks and Michelle R. Kendrick.
Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2005. 37-59.
In this chapter, Wysocki begins by stating that “it is old and not uncriticized news” that many people subscribe to the idea that hypertext allows the readers to become more active and engaged participants and that documents that rely heavily on the visual are often taken less seriously than those that are strictly textual. In other words, there are obvious flaws in these lines of thinking, but her point in this piece is to provide two specific examples that demonstrate how hypertext documents vary in their effects on readers, and the visual can be as complex and intellectually stimulating as traditional academic prose.
Wysocki analyzes two pieces of “interactive computer-based multimedia.” The first, published in 1995, is titled Scrutiny in the Great Round, and it is a collaborative, multilayered digital exhibit of the visual art of Tennessee Rice Dixon, accompanied by the sounds created by audio designer Charlie Morrow, programmed by software designer Jim Gasperini. Wysocki carefully takes the reader through her interactive experience with this multimedia text, and highlights the concepts behind the work while demonstrating how the visual aspects of the piece relay a complexity of theme and structure. The other piece she examines, Throwing Apples at the Sun, produced by graphic designer Elliot Earls, was also published in 1995 and “provides an edgy Lyotardian, postmodern counterpoint to Scrutiny in the Great Round” (49). In her analysis of this piece, Wysocki concludes that its “inventiveness and curiosity are finally proved scratchy, nothing great or all encompassing, but still worthy of pleasurable engagement (at least for some). . . . There is no way to encompass everything all at once in some great understanding . . . [she] get[s] piecemeal views, bits of things that suggest possibilities of new connections, which are always broken by being in different windows or scratched over” (56). Further, the interactivity provides interest but does not engage the viewer with the outside world. Ultimately, Wysocki makes the argument that new media cannot be broadly generalized or categorized to function one specific way or the other, but each individual work should be analyzed an interpreted on its own merit. The visual does not always rival the print, nor does print always rival the visual, and hypertext does not always “encourage readers into more active and engaged relationships with texts and thus each other” (37).
I find Wysocki’s work to be extremely useful in that she leads by example. Applying the theoretical concepts of the scholars writing in the field of new media studies, Wysocki analyzes two multimedia texts by giving thorough descriptions of her experiences with the texts and detailed examples of how the texts convey meaning. The value here is that she provides a model for researching and analyzing multimedia texts. Her thoughtful commentary highlights strengths and weaknesses of the interactive media, and provides a good foundation for the scholarly examination of multimedia as academic texts. I will be able to use this piece as a guideline for writing about my research that will examine student-produced documentaries as extensions of academic writing in the composition classroom.
Be First to Comment