Reflect on your research in your learning log.
I must admit that I look for help at other students blogs. Really great blog is MOVED BY BREATH where I search when I feel That I am lost somehow. The blog focused me on key word Graphic Novel and it help me to search on google and Tate web site. When searching for deeper meaning of Graphic Novel I found Eric Shanower's article The Art of Graphic Novel which helped me where to start research history and which media and authors are worth to focus. I ordered some books and still I am waiting for them. Anyway some of them were on iBooks and some frames I put in previous contributions.
It is obvious how valuable the historical paintings are. They can transfer information how man lived and what made for their living. Examples of cave paintings show animals probably it is image of hunting. The time and place is not represented. When see it in front of my desk on monitor I can admire it because of the information it is 35.000 years old and from France. Without these information I would miss these paintings. There would be completely other feeling to see these paintings in the France. We can see crafts and rituals in Egyptian's paintings, we can see figures, what they wear, how they fight but the place and time is not readable, we need more information.
The Bayeux tapestry has written information which tells when and where it happened. Illustration show us creatures, an architecture, object such as ships, weapons. Without the written information we were be able to determine the century and maybe the place because of the shape of ships, architecture and clothes.
In Graphic Novel A Contract With God by Will Eisner we know where we are and in which year. The illustrations depict the atmosphere, the people, they tell the story frame by frame. The story is supported by written information, there are bubbles with written speech, we flow through the story. I like this novel because of the great deep human being stories.
On the other hand there is graphic novel by Klimowski where we have a story without written information. We can determine that the time is contemporary and the place where the story happens is a town and flat of blocks. Klimowski greatly sends his message and let the viewer to his imagination. I really like that approach.
So, it depends on the sender/author what message in which context and time he would like to communicate. If he/she needs to be precise where (space) and when (time) the story happens the receiver/audience must get enough information about it. If we want to send a message where we need to open viewer's imagination we just send less information maybe without words as it is in Klimowski's Secret novel. The viewer more participate to finish the story. It remind me McLuhan's cold and hot media. In this example I have feeling that story where we get a lot of information is more cold than the story where we have not enough information is hot in McLuhan definition between photography and caricature. The A Contract With God is photography and Secret is caricature. I need time to think about more. I am waiting for another Graphic Novel books and I will see if there are another examples of that idea.
This exercise helped me to realise how information are important to convey a story. The graphic novels are amazing, I love them when I was child and still I love them. Graphic novel is a story frame by frame and we need to fulfilled the missing frames to be a film medium in our mind.
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