TY - CHAP

T1 - Introduction

AU - Michelsen, Anders Ib

AU - Wiegand, Frauke Katharina

PY - 2021/9/1

Y1 - 2021/9/1

N2 - The Transvisuality ProjectIn little more than a decade, visual culture has proven its status and commitment as an independent field of research, drawing on and continuing areas such as art history, cultural studies, semiotics and media research, as well as parts of visual sociology, visual anthropology and visual communication. Visual culture is now a well-established academic area of research and teaching, covering subjects in the humanities and social sciences. Readers and introductions have outlined the field, and research is mirrored in networks, journals and conferences on the national and international level.The argument in current debates on visual culture is essentially three-sided: (a) that the visual makes up an increasing element of contemporary culture; (b) that it forms independent systems of meaning to be understood by new theoretical approaches and research methodologies; and (c) that it is possible to work on the visual in purposive ways, e.g. in the design of digital imagery or other visuals, which may in turn change approaches in research and education.This creates a positive background for books that further penetrate the fundamental challenge of the visual, in particular with regard to further exploration of current definitions of ‘visuality’. The implicit interdisciplinarity espoused by the argument that ‘the world we inhabit is filled with visual images’, ‘hopelessly miscellaneous or happily inclusive’, still stops at neighbouring disciplines such as cultural studies. It may seem a paradox that in order to achieve an enhanced focus on specifics of visuality it is necessary to aggregate interdisciplinarity by collecting many and varied approaches to the visual. However, we see a need for not only a focus on visuality as interdisciplinary potential, with a potential that must be made explicit in its own sense, but also for feeding varied topics into this process of explication. The three volumes in the Transvisuality project aim to create synergies between different and at times controversial positions.The project focuses on three areas which expand on the basic three-sided argument for visual culture, transcending a number of disciplinary and geographical borders. The first volume, ‘Boundaries and Creative Openings’, explores the implications of a cultural dimension of ‘visuality’ when seen as a concept reflecting and challenging fundamental aspects of culture, from the arts to social life. The second volume, ‘Visual Organizations’, presents articulations of visuality as organizations in the contemporary entangled world. The present and third volume, ‘Purposive Action: Design and Branding’, follows purposive organizing, defining visuality in terms of design, management and creativity.Etymologically, the prefix ‘trans’ can be defined as meaning ‘across, beyond, to go beyond, to go through’; it can refer to the act or state of going over, writing over, as in transcribe, to carry over into as in translate, to climb beyond, as in transcend, to convey across, as in transport. Visuality, a visual object or organization, traverses in all these ways: it is transverse. The ‘trans-’ in transvisuality implies an act of translating as in taking across, an act of change as in transform; it signals an overcoming of the limits of a given organization or figuration. These varieties of trans-ing form an apt description of how the cultural dimension of the visual today allows for multiple and varied issues and organizations, articulated in situ and in purposive organizing.

AB - The Transvisuality ProjectIn little more than a decade, visual culture has proven its status and commitment as an independent field of research, drawing on and continuing areas such as art history, cultural studies, semiotics and media research, as well as parts of visual sociology, visual anthropology and visual communication. Visual culture is now a well-established academic area of research and teaching, covering subjects in the humanities and social sciences. Readers and introductions have outlined the field, and research is mirrored in networks, journals and conferences on the national and international level.The argument in current debates on visual culture is essentially three-sided: (a) that the visual makes up an increasing element of contemporary culture; (b) that it forms independent systems of meaning to be understood by new theoretical approaches and research methodologies; and (c) that it is possible to work on the visual in purposive ways, e.g. in the design of digital imagery or other visuals, which may in turn change approaches in research and education.This creates a positive background for books that further penetrate the fundamental challenge of the visual, in particular with regard to further exploration of current definitions of ‘visuality’. The implicit interdisciplinarity espoused by the argument that ‘the world we inhabit is filled with visual images’, ‘hopelessly miscellaneous or happily inclusive’, still stops at neighbouring disciplines such as cultural studies. It may seem a paradox that in order to achieve an enhanced focus on specifics of visuality it is necessary to aggregate interdisciplinarity by collecting many and varied approaches to the visual. However, we see a need for not only a focus on visuality as interdisciplinary potential, with a potential that must be made explicit in its own sense, but also for feeding varied topics into this process of explication. The three volumes in the Transvisuality project aim to create synergies between different and at times controversial positions.The project focuses on three areas which expand on the basic three-sided argument for visual culture, transcending a number of disciplinary and geographical borders. The first volume, ‘Boundaries and Creative Openings’, explores the implications of a cultural dimension of ‘visuality’ when seen as a concept reflecting and challenging fundamental aspects of culture, from the arts to social life. The second volume, ‘Visual Organizations’, presents articulations of visuality as organizations in the contemporary entangled world. The present and third volume, ‘Purposive Action: Design and Branding’, follows purposive organizing, defining visuality in terms of design, management and creativity.Etymologically, the prefix ‘trans’ can be defined as meaning ‘across, beyond, to go beyond, to go through’; it can refer to the act or state of going over, writing over, as in transcribe, to carry over into as in translate, to climb beyond, as in transcend, to convey across, as in transport. Visuality, a visual object or organization, traverses in all these ways: it is transverse. The ‘trans-’ in transvisuality implies an act of translating as in taking across, an act of change as in transform; it signals an overcoming of the limits of a given organization or figuration. These varieties of trans-ing form an apt description of how the cultural dimension of the visual today allows for multiple and varied issues and organizations, articulated in situ and in purposive organizing.

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 9781800857186

VL - III

SP - 1

EP - 23

BT - Transvisuality : The Cultural Dimension of Visuality : Volume III

A2 - Michelsen, Anders

A2 - Wiegand, Frauke

PB - Liverpool University Press

CY - Liverpool

ER -