Imagery, processed in a special component of human working memory, performs upon and with its reader. I am investigating the interpretational processes supported by imagery, especially as an aid to reasoning and learning across disciplines. To consider the processing of imagery in cognitive terms is to address interaction in the most meaningful sense. Following the work of educational psychologist Joel Levin and others, I am developing a taxonomy of performative image function, a classification system that describes images exclusively in terms of how they are processed by readers. It is inherently user-centric. Currently the performative image function taxonomy describes thirteen distinct functions.

How to Do Things with Pictures: The Experience of Challenging Imagery in Visual Media

Dialectic, 1(2), 2017

Pages 14–35

(Inset illustrations by Sander Weeks)

Open access PDF ↦

Abstract: Some imagery poses an interpretational challenge that must be met in order to fully process it in the context of goal-oriented visual media. To evaluate such imagery it can only be considered in terms of a reader’s experience, an interpretational sequence that plays out in time. Pictures that are “challenging,” as discussed here, qualify as “integral experiences” according to Dewey: they have meaning, they are best understood as processes rather than elements, and they promote conceptual change in a reader. Four kinds of pictures that represent challenges to the reader are identified: problematic, linguistic and creative imagery, and visual metaphor. The experiential impacts of text–image relationships are discussed. Boundary examples of imagery are addressed to distinguish challenging imagery from other types and to establish the distinction of “performative” imagery, that which instigates and targets particular interpretational processes. The types of challenging pictures presented here qualify as performative in that they do more than repeat textual content or offer a moment of distraction.

The Production of Narrative through Static Imagery: Examples from a Peculiar Medieval Illustration

Visual Communication, 18(2), 2019

Pages 279–293

(Inset illustration by James Wisdom)

Journal ↦

Abstract: Certain images perform upon and with their readers. Among the performative capabilities of imagery is narrative function, where the reader actively constructs a sense of time from an otherwise static surface. An extraordinary medieval illustration of Saint Margaret’s emergence from the belly of a dragon is used to demonstrate the range of narrative imagery. (Some consideration is given to the original conditions of this “Margaretene,” as it was designed for a medieval readership.) The degree to which the setting of narrative imagery is graphically constructed or natural impacts the work necessary for the reader to interpret it. The artist’s gestural repetition of figures can more directly cue the reader to the narrative, while the absence of repetition requires a more astute reader. Figures and spaces are considered in a strategical axis of narrative imagery. In increasing degrees of naturalism are graphic projective, partitioned, graphic repetitive, natural repetitive, intrafigural, and evidentiary strategies. Alternate versions of the Margaretene, rendered by artist James Wisdom, are included to illustrate the six narrative strategies.

How Imagery Models Interpretation: The Classification of Image Function

13th Annual Hawaii Conference on Arts and Humanities Proceedings, 2015

Complete Paper (PDF) ↦

Abstract: Much imagery is merely decorative or intended to be relevant and appropriate. But some imagery, on its own or situated within a meaningful layout, involves its reader more deeply, performing upon or with her. The image can model reader interpretational processes in the sense that the reader’s creative construction of knowledge is guided by its structures. Otherwise inert imagery, when activated by a reader, can become metaphorical, exploratory, constitutive, narrative, comparative and computational, among other functions. These classifications of performative image function represent a range of possibilities for the designer, advertiser and visual artist. Performative image function is a means to look at visual representations anew, by focusing on the seconds and milliseconds of the image’s effective “life.” The typology builds upon the work of cognitive psychologists, such as Joel Levin, who sought an honest assessment of the efficacy of textbook illustration for learning. Performative image function conceptualizes all imagery as designed for learning, as the reader seeks to make sense of the representations she encounters.

How Imagery Can Directly Model the Reader’s Construction of Narrative (Including an Extraordinary Medieval Illustration)

13th Annual Hawaii Conference on Arts and Humanities Proceedings, 2015

Complete Paper (PDF) ↦

Abstract: Certain images perform upon and with their readers. Among the performative capabilities of imagery is narrative function, where the reader actively constructs a sense of time from an otherwise inert surface. Narrative imagery can be classified according to five fundamental strategies, all of which have long been explored. At its most conventionalized, the passage of time can be implied through a framed sequential strategy, where distinct moments are sectioned off from one another graphically, across which figures and spaces are repeated. The reader performs closure across and between frames. In graphic repetition and natural repetition strategies, figures are repeated in space without frame-based separations. Here the reader must recognize repeated figures as representing a single figure’s change over time, and not a set of independently acting twins, triplets or quadruplets. With the intrafigural strategy, the reader is not faced with any repeated figures. Here the passage of time is implied through changes internal to a figure or interacting figures. A final evidentiary strategy provides the reader with clues to past events in a single captured moment in time. The active reader must make a series of deductions. An evidentiary narrative image is entirely natural, and is as such far removed from the conventions of a comic strip.

Performative Image Function (excerpt)

This is a position paper, not written for publication. It outlines the performative image function typology and utilizes exemplar images (in the process of being properly documented) to demonstrate the range of each function. Attached here are the introductory pages and the section on metaphorical imagery. A future publication will properly document all cited images.

Pages 1–3, 16–18, & 27–28

2014

Excerpt PDF ↦