Proposal

My project is set out to explore and critique the relationship between text and image, focussed specifically on music reviews and the visual image they often try to create. Is text or image even relevant or helpful? To achieve this, I aim to take a mixture of existing music reviews and pieces I have written and had published myself in order to determine whether or not the medium of the music review in its current, arguably limited state really serves the purpose it's set out to do. If this is not the case, how image can possibly develop and improve the output?

I will predominantly collect and modify images from the internet in order to create an image in Photoshop that corresponds with a particular review, in a visual translation not too aesthetically dissimilar to Neurath's Isotype, providing a recognisable corresponding image to accompany key points made within the text. These points will be determined by identifying the most significant visual imagery used in each review.

Does the mental imagery within the text serve its purpose when trying to define music? The project will not rely on skilled artistry, but rather the actual issue of whether or not the images I produce gain the same reaction that the text version sets out to achieve. A key aim in my approach is to highlight the difficulty in visualising a format with no physical entity, and to highlight how the images created largely reflect the style of music they are based on, or even the particular writer's skill in their work itself. Drawing upon theoretical influence from Tufte's idea that data presentation should not be limited by its original format, I aim to focus on the possibilities that Web can provide to break down the barrier that the journalism industry currently adopts.