SCRIBO Seminars 2023: "Talking Images" in Italy & online

SCRIBO Seminars 2023
Talking Images
12/06/2023

The fourth and final series of SCRIBO will go beyond our usual topic, namely writing, and will look at the multi-modal communication potential of images, drawing examples from the past, the present and the future.

We will invite leading experts on visual modes of communication, graphic design, as well as semioticians, sociologists, and archaeologists working specifically on images. We will try to unpack the meanings associated with the graphic properties of images, symbols and icons, and the interaction between visual and written codes.

Since the very beginning of their history, images, and writing too, have been used to convey all sorts of human messages. But this series aims to go beyond what writing does stricto sensu, to showcase how language may or may not be part of a code, how images can be standardized and understood by a social group, and how figural objects aimed at conveying specific meanings can be part of a communicative exercise. Rather than addressing this through language, we aim to show the many colours that an image can take and investigate its potential as an effective vehicle.