I am, and have been for several decades ... a technologist-victim.
Contributed by Floyd Wray
after dead-tree publishing ...
The bones on which the practice of scribing hang have been around for millennia.
Case-in-point. The cave walls in Lascaux depict visual narrative, similar in many respects to what we witness in today’s practice of scribing. What you see at Lascaux is visualized meaning … graphics with intentionality.
We inevitably hear the bromide, a picture is worth a thousand words. And it’s true. Partly. But also untrue. Take a tour of the cave; track the various images, dating back 17,000 years or so, then ask the question: what were the “authors” of these images trying to say? We can guess, of course. Perhaps the graphics were associated with magic, or remembrance of a specific hunt, or event. More than that, who knows.
The visual narrative at Lascaux, as fetching as it may be aesthetically, does little to advance the reason for its creation. It is conversely true: a thousand pictures may not be worth a simple sentence.
Take a string of raw, lovingly rendered graphics, throw them into a stream of associative-text, however, and something with incredible potential jumps out of the mix. Text and images, together, have the power to accelerate understanding. Power to conjure real magic.
Proceed to the next step. Add “time” to the architecture. Animation. Let the text reveal itself. Allow the graphics to construct intent through revelation and motion. Tease the user into acts of interpretation, evaluation and judgment. Engagement at this level is the highest expression of interactivity there is.
Today’s language client has been formed to a standard of high-velocity graphics, spectacular story-visions and cult-icons in starring roles. Scribing taps into this mindset. Lately, we’ve learned something else. Graphics for scribing don’t have to be spectacular, to work. Comingling graphics, video and animation as textual-modifiers, however, endow an author with a stunning new launch-pad for meaning, built with bones that have been around forever.
© Copyright 2010 by Floyd Wray, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED