What is Literary Art: A Summary
What is Literary Art: A Summary
The Fences (2019)
Digital Collage
Jose-Noel Rocha
I wrote a horrible 25 page paper in college because I believe in expanding the possibilities of interactions between words and people. I’ll spare you the anguish of having to read through that paper, and summarize it here and hopefully provide something interesting along the way.
Article Summary:
Defining Literary Art
Explanation and Analysis
Personal Works
Defining Literary Art
Lets’s begin with a simple start, defining terms, Literary Art can be defined in two distinct categories: as a genre and as a composition.
The Definition of Literary Art as a Genre:
Literary Art is an interdisciplinary genre that intertwines practices from art and literature in application, theoretical approach, and experience.
- Jose-Noel Rocha
The Definition of Literary Art as a Composition:
Literary Art Compositions are multimodal and multimedia works that combine visual and narrative principles of art and literature in which language is used as both aesthetic object and signifier.
- Jose-Noel Rocha
That’s a lot of big words. Let’s break down a few more that you might need to sift through this blog:
Interdisciplinary: combining two or more disciplines, like Karate + Violin = Karolin.
Multi-Modal: having different modes of occurrence, like a car that’s also a boat.
These extra terms might help you in the next section of this article.
Explaining & Analyzing Literary Art
How to know what you’re looking at:
Literary Art Genre Scale
Infographic
MrFancyShoes.com
Can anything be literary art?
No, not really. Just like every song isn’t a symphony - there’s ways of signaling what is and isn’t literary art. We have to break down the definition to understand what literary art embodies. The Literary Art Genre Scale above can give you a rough idea of where to place literary art amongst work that can combine pictures and words. While the picture represents the intersectionality of the work, the definition can help us break down its physical manifestation.
Multi-Modal and Multimedia
Literary Art is about levels of intersectionality and conversation but primarily consists of two types of media: text and visual art. The combination both text and art makes the work multimedia, but what makes the work multi-modal is the capacity of the art and text to tell unique stories combined into one narrative. That’s one piece of the criteria.
Language as Aesthetic Object and Signifier
Let’s break this down in this way: to use language as an aesthetic object is to use text as a piece of the composition, to use it as a signifier is to use language as a sound, word or image. So your words as a literary artist must:
be a part of the artwork/it’s metaphor.
your words have to mean something, represent it.
Next we’ll look at a great example of an artwork that can be considered Literary Art.
Listening Post (2009) - Mark Hansen Ben Rubin
This work of Literary Art speaks on multiple levels and I’ll do my best to summarize and how they all coexist to fit within the criteria of literary art. What is this artwork?
Listening Post is an art installation that culls text fragments in real time from thousands of unrestricted Internet chat rooms, bulletin boards and other public forums. The texts are read (or sung) by a voice synthesizer, and simultaneously displayed across a suspended grid of more than two hundred small electronic screens. Listening Post cycles through a series of six movements, each a different arrangement of visual, aural, and musical elements, each with it's own data processing logic.
- MediaArtTube
Breaking this down by the criteria that we just went over we’ll use the MediaArtTube definition of the work. Using text and digital screens makes the work multi-media, but the artists add two additional components to the work by using spoken word to create a musical element. This allows the work to exist in three modes:
The text within its own narrative frame work.
The spoken word and it’s capability for musical harmony through social discord.
The digital screen to represent social isolation in the electronic age.
The language is used as aesthetic object in two ways, once within the art through the digital screen component to represent digital communication and also in the musical component as both a musical note for the composition and to represent the individual digital voices. The text used on the digital screens is also its own narrative, each selected text a small story of one anonymous person. This text is catalogued, and serves as a literary work signifying humanity both individually and as a collective discord of narratives.
This is a great example of literary art because it works in three modalities: through the digital screens, the electronic text, and the elements of sound/spoken words. There are many examples of literary art that work in only two modalities, art books like some of the great ones at Printed Matter are my favorite. You can also find a lot of others if you just look for artwork that has multiple statements held within, and incorporates text in some way.
Since you made it this far, I might as well tell you I’ve created some art books of my own, and made them free digital installations also.
Literary Art Work by Jose-Noel Rocha
Untitled - Literary Art Poetry made of unique vignettes taken and created on an iPhone 5. Each a uniquely interpretable work experienced as art in combination with page order, reading rhythm, and text composition.
The Importance of Chromium - A literary art essay that combines two different works of art that are placed in combination on top of collages from historical and scientific images. The texts analyze the strength of ethnic women in a patriarchal society as well as the historical trauma of further generations as they navigate in a post colonial world. Warning: Graphic.
Closing notes:
That’s the summary of my 25 page paper, it’s not the full grasp of what the paper was about or what it created, but it helped me explain the creative work I do and how to place it in the world.
Thank you for your support and I hope you like and share!
- MrFancyShoes