Bolter: Part 2

Bolter's discussion of Ekphrasis really addresses an important point about how a newer media can remediate an older one. I think that a lot of popular writing has, as Bolter points out, taken a turn toward the visual in the last decade or so. The current ENG 111 Textbook comes to mind as a good example. So much of this text is purely visual explanation - flowcharts, photos, textual blurb boxes - and the raw textual elements, in many cases, are secondary to the visual elements, serving only to clarify what the visual has expressed. It's ironic, and beside the point of this reflection, that I still can't seem to get my students to open the book and "read" it.

I really enjoyed Bolter's example of Ekphrasis from the USA Today blurb about how often men shave on the weekends. From an information design standpoint, it actually makes a lot of sense to make use of the item being represented in the representation of some dataset about that item. Although, I'm sure there are scenarios where this could cause more harm than it does good, but it's still a revealing idea to think about.