viz. - posters

The visual (after)life of Infinite Jest

Kendall Gerdes — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 14:00:00 +0000

"Tropium" — Image Credit: WebMD

Infinite Jest (IJ) is more than a novel, as anyone who has carried a copy around for awhile will attest.[1] Elsewhere I have argued that IJ is a performative utterance, following J.L. Austin, that IJ turns readers into addicts on the one hand and then thwarts the jones for textual mastery on the other. Here I wish simply to invite you into the tropium den[2] so you can see what it's like to cook up some of the visual texts that having been using Infinite Jest. I begin with the work of designer Chris Ayers, who created a tumblr called "Poor Yorick Entertainment" with the aim of "bring[ing] some kind of visual life" to the world of Infinite Jest (according to the site's "About" page). Many of the visual artifacts featured on Ayers's blog are also available for incarnation into the physical world through purchase.

"A Sampler of PYE movie posters: Blood Sister, Valuable Coupon, Medusa, Fun with Teeth" — Image Credit: Chris Ayers

Ayers lives and works in an old haunt of mine:[3] Phoenix, AZ, whose metro areas including Scottsdale and Tempe make their own appearances in the mainly Boston, MA- (and Tucson, AZ[4]-) centric world of IJ. But thanks to Ayers, the world of IJ makes its appearance in our own. The fascinating movie posters are not the only way James Incandenza's filmography has actualized—a 2010 Columbia University art school exhibition ran work in several media including film that was based on the filmography.

Image Credit: "Various Small Flames," adapted by William Santen 2010

And then but Incandenza's filmography is only eight and a half pages of endnote out of a 1079 page book, so Ayers and other artists have plenty of fictional world to select from and actualize. Ayers's site has featured posters for IJ's germophobe President's election campaign, its Southwest junior invitational tennis competition,[5] and even Michael Pemulis's dorm room décor.

"A Sampler of PYE posters: Johnny Gentle, Whataburger Invitational, Paranoid King" — Image Credit: Chris Ayers

What all these visualizations have in common is a rhetorical force of inventiveness. It may be highly specific, but each of these images extend the world of the fiction into our non-fictional world. I consider this one in a portfolio of ways that IJ complicates the logic that separates fiction from non-fiction:[6] by "multiplying its figures, in complicating, thickening, delinearizing, folding, and dividing the line precisely by making it increase and multiply."[7] Digital images become material objects: in addition to a huge print of Ayers's "Visit Tucson" poster, I'm also the proud owner of an Enfield Tennis Academy t-shirt, emblazoned with last name of SOVWAR Air Marshal[8] Ann KITTENPLAN, the only actual character in the entire novel to whom the adjective "butch" gets attributed (p. 330) and so the only character I actually feel to be my own kith and kin.[9]

"Kittenplan" — Image Credit: Kendall Gerdes

The digital images become material objects, and the material objects exert their own kind of force on the world, in the way we move through it, and the way we think about ourselves moving through it. They change our relations to the text, and they generate new relations to one another. I entitled this post "The visual (after)life of Infinite Jest" in part in a nod to IJ's own haunting: the wraith, whose possible measure of very slow wraith-time agency could be responsible for the odd behavior of objects around ETA. But I leave you with Lyle's exhortation for Ortho Stice, the tennis cadet most moved (and disturbed) by the odd behavior of ETA's objects: "Do not underestimate objects, he advises Stice. Do not leave objects out of account. The world, after all, which is radically old, is made up mostly of objects" (p. 395).

[1] The printed text weighs in at nearly 2 lbs.[^a]

[^a] Yes, I'm adopting a gimmicky imitation of DFW's endnotes, due in part to the pleasure I take in this digressive style, and due in another part to the disruptive and probably frustrating reading requirements it attaches to the normatively breezy blog post.

[2] Cf. Avital Ronell in Crack Wars: Literature Addiction Mania, p. 29.

[3] I find the fact of Ayers's and my shared territory striking because of the way the relation between people in the same city who never know each other there itself forms the basis for several of IJ's subtler collisions (and near-misses) of plot.

[4]Tucson demarcates yet another striking-shared-territory coincidence since it is both my hometown and the site of DFW's MFA in creative writing,[^b]as well as the location of Steeply and Marathe's spy-rendezvous.[^c]

[^b]which MFA he received the year I was born (though I was not born in Tucson but relocated there two years later)—

[^c]Cf. Ayers's rendition of the scene as a WPA-inspired tourism poster:

"Visit Tucson" — Image Credit: Chris Ayers

[5] The competition's held in Tucson.

[6] Not a job for "any simple logic"—as Derrida argues in Limited Inc (p. 75).

[7] This is the method Derrida adopts for deconstructing the line between human/animal in The Animal That Therefore I Am (p. 29).

[8] See photos/video of Air Marshal Ann Kittenplan's horribly misguided casting for The Decemberists "Calamity Song" Video in Foley's 4/1 viz post.

[9] --however precarious the thread of identification I've established.

That'll show 'em: The Rhetoric of Didactic Kitsch?

ebfrye — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 04:36:54 +0000

Image Credit: Scouting magazine, via Gizmodo

The poster from the Boy Scouts of America’s Scouting magazine is all smiles and no foolin' about its anti-illegal downloading message, but can you take it seriously?

Megan’s post from last week has led me to ask whether posters as a visual form wield any didactic power anymore if the image is not shocking or if the lesson at hand is not presented with a palpable degree of irony. The posters she includes from Every Day Posters Every Day all move to a similar message of joy in the banal even as they take joy in mocking the mere presentation of the banal. Must we reach any pictorially depicted message through a self-aware sort of glibness?

The poster from the Boy Scouts of America’s Scouting magazine is quite serious about its message. Gizmodo quarrels with the logic of the message given to parents—rather than spend time teaching your kids the difference between legal and illegal downloads, you should only play CDs you bought at the mall. That’ll show ‘em.

Yet, especially when read in contexts outside of the magazine, the combined slogan and retro image can be taken as a bit ridiculous for other reasons. Its visual method recalls the retro irony of products we frequently encounter. See the Anne Taintor image below:

Image Credit: Anne Taintor

The ubiquity of images of this kind condition a viewer to interpret many, if not all, mid-century-themed posters with a sense of play. Consequently, the image utilized by the Boy Scouts appropriates a mode laden with millennial snark. To use such a mode without any nods to the ironic appears to ignore audience expectations outright. Or, does the image appear to transcend the ironic as it insists on poising the sentimental charm of a by-gone era against today's burgeoning music theives? Is a self-aware sense of humor a necessary characteristic of an effective retro style?

Celebrating the Everyday

Megan Eatman — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 20:42:13 +0000

Image credit: Peter Stults, Every Day Posters Every Day

While I know it sounds cheesy, a lot of us here at UT are thinking about appreciating the everyday in the wake of the week we've had. The website Every Day Posters Every Day provides an interesting example of such a celebration, and one with potential pedagogical use.

Image credit: Peter Stults, Every Day Posters Every Day

Every Day Posters Every Day is a Tumblr site devoted to "tak[ing] trivial activities and promot[ing] them with posters to give them a sense of importance they ordinarily would not have." Highlighting the routine nature of these actions through the contrast of presenting them as special events, EDPED suggests that these activities are worth celebrating because of, not in spite of, their mundaneness.

Image credit: Steven Masuch, Every Day Posters Every Day

I particularly like the poster above because it celebrates two daily events without making them seem particularly enjoyable. This poster, along with another for "Road Rage," suggests the sensationalism of a horror film in everyday life. The hyperbolic drama makes the mundane and sometimes unpleasant task of inserting and removing contacts actually seem funny.

The last poster is my favorite, because it plays on the fantasies and instincts that make what we euphemistically call "gossip" one of life's guilty pleasures. The image of an attractive woman whispering into a man's ear invokes sensuality and intimacy; the close-in shot suggests that the viewer is in an exclusive group. The curled font could be spelling the title of a romance novel or a soap opera. What it actually advertises, however, is a genre of entertainment much older than the either of those.

Image credit: Peter Stults, Every Day Posters Every Day

These posters could be useful in teaching students to talk about humor in visual rhetoric. Students will obviously be familiar with the activities discussed and likely with the genres invoked as well (some of these seem to be movie posters, some concert posters, etc.), so no background is needed to engage with the images. The incongruous rendering of everyday activity in special event form combined with a sometimes hyperbolic highlight of the silliness or unpleasantness of the event make these items potentially fruitful sources for class conversation.

Victory Gardens and Retro Propaganda

fc — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 17:16:02 +0000

Image Credit: Joe Wirtheim

In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that I have always had a soft spot for "victory gardens" and mid-century propaganda. It may be a result of the countless times I watched Bugs Bunny steal carrots from the Saturday-morning victory gardens of my childhood (how many of us were introduced to serious political concepts like shortage, rationing and military conscription through the Flatbush intonation of Mel Blanc?). It may have been the vintage singns and posters ("Loose Lips Might Sink Ships") hanging on the wallls of the local burger joint that was a favorite haunt of my grandfather. Whatever the reason, my eye is always drawn to the bold fonts, severe angles and jingoistic slogans of WWII era posters, particularly those aimed at action on the home front. This week, while trolling for vintage design and espirit d'corps, I came across "The Victory Garden of Tommorrow," Joe Wirtheim's modern day art/propaganda campaign that repurposes and reinvents the genre. More on Wirtheim's project, refurbished propaganda and mobilizing the population after the break.

Wirtheim describes his work as "an art project posing as a propaganda campaign for new, American homefront values. The message style draws from American mid-century homefront propaganda, and the messages essentially draws from 21st century needs as found in the current environmental sustainability movement. The campaign is designed to access America’s history of ingenuity to overcome adversity, and apply those values to fighting modern problems." Wirtheim does much more than repackage or redeploy turn of the century images. He borrows from the iconography of the era, and simultaneously participates in the urgency of the earlier propaganda and gives us a wink through their campiness. Compare Wortheim's "Break New Ground" with this New Zealand contribution to Great Britain's "Dig for Victory" Campaign.

Image Credit: Joe Wirtheim

Image Credit: Imperial War Museum

While the pitchfork and foot in "Break New Ground" are certainly an homage to the British series, Wirtheim has translated the poster's wartime austerity into a new aesthetic register. The posters share essentially the same goal-- they both want you to start growing your own food-- but they rely on substantially different rhetorical appeals. The paucity of the British campaign is well suited for an audience facing the shortages, rationing and hardships of a protracted war. There are no unneccesary embelishments, just the bare earth, the blank sky and the task at hand. It resonates with both the English stiff upper lip and the mid-century penchant for martial drama.

Wirtheim's poster presents another argumenta altogether. His cityscape teems with life as plants sprout not only from the ground but (prophetically) from every roof on the skyline. As urgent as America's food crisis may be, Wirtheim isn't speaking primarily to people who are confronted daily with scarcity and want, so he presents growing your own food as an inviting pleasure rather than a stern duty. (The Chuck Taylors give us a pretty good hint about the range of his intended audience). The friendly-looking worm (who appears to have stopped by to watch the digging and chat with us) and the plump little fly add a playfulness and whimsicallity that would be entirely inappropriate in the British campaign, but they are pitched perfectly for an urban gardening movement that idealizes compost and earthworms. The brown-and-green palette reinforces the "dirt and plants" focus of the poster and fit within a recognizable iconography of organic farming and environmental awarness. The patch on the trouser leg makes a subtle argument about living a non-consumer, environment friendly lifestyle that borrows from the WWII era concern with scrap, necessary trips and "making do" in general (a sentiment that was sadly not shared by the Bush administration that encouraged Americans to buy on credit while it began borrowing heavily to finance two foreign wars).

Image Credit: NH.gov

Wirtheim also borrows from post-war iconography to craft his new American propaganda. His project is, after all, not just any victory garden: he presents the Victory Garden of Tomorrow, and several of the posters draw heavily on the campy futurism of the 1950s and 60s. As he does with the war posters, Wirtheim updates and revises the images while holding onto a tongue-in-cheek version of the original sentiment (in this case, unbridled Jetson-esque optimism).

Image Credit: Joe Wirtheim

This last poster works in yet another iconic image and emphasizes Wirtheim's conscious connection to the environmental movement. Over the shoulder of the Meyer-lemon growing lego-spaceman, Wirtheim includes a version of Earthrise, a photograph taken by William Anders on the Apollo 8 mission and often viewed as one of the single most galvanizing images of the environmental movement.

Image Credit: NASA.gov

Earthrise reminds us in dramatic fashion that our earth is a tiny island home in the cold, dead vastness of space. Wirtheim's image--a mix of space-age camp and environmental realism, reminds us that (since none of the mid-century dreams of space colonization by our century have panned out) the way we grow our food-- and the way we treat the earth in the process-- has lasting effects for us as individuals and for the entire planet.

Obama poster art

kathrynjeanhamilton — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:59:33 +0000

"The Thinker," by gausa

A recent New York Times "Campaign Stops" blog brought my attention to the incredible variety of poster art being produced in support of Obama. The blog post I link to here discusses a few of the images in detail, but it leaves a lot untouched.

At the Design/ers for Obama site, graphic designers submit their pro-Obama poster designs, visitors to the site rate the posters, and anyone can print them out. The group, founded by two seniors at the Rhode Island School of Design, seeks to "bring the spirit of grassroots style organizing and collaboration to poster design." It's visually stunning, interactive, provocative, free -- and also very weird. My thoughts on a few of the posters follow.

This one was a big hit among viewers, garnering a score of 3.3 out of 5 (which seems to be quite high, given the preponderance of 1.4s and 2.1s). It's a beautiful poster, but what bothers me is the way Obama and the American flag bleed into each other. Are metonymic assertions of Obama as nation any more excusable than attacks on his patriotism? Here, Obama's trademark sun on the horizon hovers above his head like a halo, and he has the glow of virtue and the determined look of the anointed on his face. It was just this kind of image that got under my skin so much during the primary race.

"Obama Commemorative," by Changethethought

While most of the posters are pro-Obama in that they tout his accomplishments, character, and potential, some of them are pro-Obama in that they are anti-McCain/Palin. This one didn't get a particularly good score on the site; viewers thought that it went too far in poking fun at the Palins' youngest child, Trig, who has Down Syndrome. What startled me about it before I even noticed the "baby"'s face was the caption. "We don't need another Bushbaby" -- ? Who was our first Bushbaby? And is the reference to "the bush," i.e. wilderness, purposeful? Is Trig a bush baby because he comes from the wilderness of Alaska?

"Bushbaby poster," by ameyer

I found this one eerie, but asking viewers to consider the historical connections between Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama is a powerful move.

"Abraham Obama," by aperryz

Though this one's arresting, I can't help but agree with the comment a viewer left below it: "is he like underwater? in a tank?"

"Hope in Our Reach," by mikewirthart

And then there are some that don't look professional at all.

"Obama Earth," by amypb

But that's the fun of it, it seems -- a democracy of the visual.