“The narrativity of pictures is virtually a nontopic for art historians.”
This was absolutely my experience as a student of art history. We were taught to examine clues for narrative structure yes, but more important was the iconography, the form and the symbolism. Most of my professors abhorred contemporary artists like Thomas Kinkade (painter of light); an artist who falls into the literalist category of narrative painting. I also agree with Steiner’s quote because I loved studying the modernists and pop artists, of which, a clear ready understanding was usually not immediately apparent (this is the very same reason that I think modern and contemporary art tends turns off casual museum goers – they would prefer an immediate explanation of what they’re seeing).
Hogarth’s series “Marriage a la Mode” was an interesting example. It’s a classic morality tale, similar to a political cartoon. But it’s wrapped in a package (the title and genre setting) that would imply otherwise. As Ryan explains: Hogarth illustrates (rather than tells) us a story. I think (or at least hope!) that these same storytelling methods can translate to a web interface. The question is in the delivery. A website doesn’t really loan itself to pictorial narrativity, in that it’s very transient by nature. We aren’t expected to consume it with the same level of detailed analysis as we do with one of Hogarth’s paintings.
However, as products of our own culture, we have been conditioned to consume certain visual cues universally. An example: in Japan, children draw (and build) their snowmen with two snowballs instead of three. Why do they do this? They’ve been culturally conditioned to view two snowballs as a proper way to create a snowman just as we Americans have accepted that three is the standard. I think this same principle can be applied to pictorial narrativity on the web, we just have to develop these universal visual cues with the immediacy of the web in mind.
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Also (on an unrelated note) our reading this week on Neilson’s survey reminded me of a little story I’d like to share:
My roommate has Xbox live. He’s teaching me how to play “Halo” and using the live technology we can set up battles against people playing remotely from all over the world. When you first log into a new battle, a dialogue box appears next to a few players’ avatars and you can hear them talking. We usually choose to mute it immediately – I don’t need to hear anyone gloat about how many times they killed me. I made a comment a few games in that I was surprised how many women’s voices I heard over the system before we muted them, as I assumed most of the players on a war game like “Halo” would be men. “Those aren’t women” he said “they’re little boys.”
