[ENGL 527]

For class this week, we were to select a quote that was meaningful to us, and create a visual articulation/translation of it using any techniques we have discussed this semester related to document design, photo manipulation, data visualization or information graphics.

Using Inkscape, I created a photo manipulation of an image I came across from CERN (via the lectures of David Tong) in writing a blog post on quantum field theory and disicplinarity, and combined it with a quote from Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage, a text I returned to that served as catalyst for some of my early work in grad school/my first conference presentation on fluxus and page tectonics. While I don’t align with McLuhan heavily, he has touched the work of scholars I am deeply interested in composition, visual rhetoric, and new media studies.

After resizing and flipping the image to create a space for text alignment, I added a filter and experimented with font I thought represented McLuhan’s words in a style that honored his work/message, while also communicating my own. The layout of the text on the image was the most difficult part of designing this, and ultimately, I’m uncertain as to whether I find this satisfactory or not. I’m not sure the spacing, or even the layout as one column-esque shape, has the same effect as the break in the quote/phrase that McLuhan does over two pages of his text – it adds a pause that my spacing doesn’t seems to convey in the smaller break. As much as I played with the layout, I wasn’t satisfied with making the text fit the parameters of the image more fully; for example, I tried separating the text on the top and bottom half of the image (using the center as a sort of horizon) on alternating sides – left and right aligned. It’s something I would like to continue thinking about. The puzzlement over the text layout made me consider that the image could be root of the issue too – it spans beyond one side or the other, as well as the center, but doesn’t fill the field, leaving some white space, or in this case, black space (a black hole).

Part of the original text (re)presented:

Marshall McLuhan via cacophony