21.124 word and image

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 21, No. 124.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
  www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/cch/research/publications/humanist.html
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

         Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2007 13:56:22 +0100
         From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty_at_kcl.ac.uk>
         Subject: word and image

  From Siegfried Zielinski, Deep Time of the Media: Toward an
Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means (MIT, 2006),
originally Archaeologie der Medien: Zur Tiefenzeit der technischen
Hoerens und Sehens (Hamburg, Rowohlt, 2002):

>Natural scientists in general are far better at presenting their
>ideas orally and visually than scholars in the arts and humanities.
>There are various reasons for this, including, in the last decades,
>a certain trend toward the Americanization of academic institutions.
>A deeper reason for the pressure to communicate in a way that is
>intelligible to all is to impress the disbursers of public and
>private funds and to legitimate for the taxpayer the enormous sums
>required for ambitious projects. Furthermore, academics in the arts
>and humanities have come to rely much more exclusively on the
>written text, which they regard as their original and privileged
>medium. For scientists, on the other hand, it is a matter of course
>to argue their case using graphic presentations and images. So far
>no one has produced a history of the media innovations that natural
>scientists and engineers have dreamed up to captivate their
>audiences in lecture theatres, though such a study would be well
>worth the effort. (pp. 128f)

Comments?

Yours,
WM

Dr Willard McCarty | Reader in Humanities Computing | Centre for
Computing in the Humanities | King's College London |
http://staff.cch.kcl.ac.uk/~wmccarty/. Et sic in infinitum (Fludd 1617, p. 26).
Received on Sat Jun 23 2007 - 03:42:55 EDT