Language Amplifications and Visualisations in Michael Joyce’s was and Alexandra Grant’s babel

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Published: May 1, 2014
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/syn.16175
Keywords:
Michael Joyce Alexandra Grant hypertext intermediality
Tatiani G. Rapatzikou
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Abstract

This article focuses on Michael Joyce‘s novel was and Alexandra Grant‘s painting babel in an attempt to explore what changes occur when moving between media, language codes and materials. Grant‘s painting is a response to Joyce‘s print-bound novel. Her work serves as a remediation as well as a reconceptualisation of Joyce‘s textual endeavor. In examining these works, we can locate a dynamic relation across the patterns of visual and verbal communication that they create. Joyce‘s and Grant‘s collaboration breaks new ground not only in terms of understanding how different media function but also by introducing an experiential and participatory form of narrative development. Through their engagement with different media, these works create narratives that are visually, verbally, spatially and conceptually challenging.

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Author Biography
Tatiani G. Rapatzikou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Tatiani Rapatzikou is Assistant Professor in the Department of American Literature, School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Her publications focus on contemporary American fiction and poetry, technological uncanny, cyberpunk/cyberculture, digital technologies and print convergence. In 2009, she was awarded a Fulbright Visiting Scholar grant for her research in contemporary American fiction and digital media (M.I.T. Comparative Media Studies program). In 2012, she was a Visiting Research Scholar at the Literature Program (Duke University), and winner of the Alumni Engagement Innovation Fund international competition for her project "Urban Environments in Transition" (www.asrp.gr/urban). She is currently coediting a special issue for GRAMMA: Journal of Theory and Culture with Philip Leonard (Nottingham Trent University) with the title Digital Literary Production and the Humanities (forthcoming in 2015). Her current research addresses multimodal narratives and digital writing.
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