Erika Grigoravičienė (PDF)
https://doi.org/10.53631/DIS/2016.7.9
The article examines multimedia art of the 21st century, made up of texts and images. Considering the peculiarities of image and text as an art practice and theoretical concept, the interaction between images and words in these works of art is analysed in terms of expression and content.
Although it would be quite difficult to find a contemporary picture without letters or accompanying phrases, multimedia artworks are still suspicious marginalia in the visual arts, evoking associations with popular culture and mass communication. Material files for such images and text are still being invented and almost always, look like a temporary exception. Three artists under discussion, Staselė Jakunskaitė, Marta Vosyliūtė and Rūta Spelskytė, try to figure out how to include the meaning of sentences in their works without spoiling the pictures or engravings with such texts. For those interested in image and word relations in multimedia works, it would be logical to expect the dominant distribution of element functions characteristic of cinema or comic books. Nevertheless, the relations between images and words in the works under discussion are closer to metatextual, intertextual and intermedia relations. It could be related to the fact that this type of art is intertextual and intericonic, exposing introspection, the often criticised traditions of art dissemination and producing narrative fine art. Such an interchange between visuality and figurativeness becomes the subject of the works. Multimedia works, or images and texts, are well suited for educating an industrious, emancipated viewer because they allow us to follow the perception process, which lasts for a long time and treats it as a job. The aspiration for freedom, sovereignty, and peaceful coexistence of words and images in this art of dual expression could also be considered political.
Keywords: multimedia, marginalia, intertextual, intermedia, visuality