About Digital Ekphrasis

This is a blog on my postdoc-project about ekphrasis, literature and digital interfaces. The project aims at rethinking the dynamic relationship between word and image with a special focus on how digital technology shapes, transforms and reconfigures literary representation. The significance of the rhetorical concept and genre of ekphrasis (the verbal representation of a visual representation) will be re-examined through different digital interfaces.

A peer-reviewed article “’A Visual Sense is Born in the Fingertips’”: Towards an Ekphrasis for the Digital Age” has been published in the Norwegian journal Ekfrase (2009). This article presents a rethinking of the concept of ekphrasis ­– the verbal representation of a visual representation – with a special focus on how digital technology shapes, transforms and reconfigures the dynamic relationship between word and image. The ancient and rhetorical practice of ekphrasis and the concept used in modern literary criticism belong to fundamentally different systems. The ancient definition emphasizes enargeia and the impact on the listener. The visual referent is less important. The modern definition of the term, developed for the analysis of written texts, engages with the visual mainly as referent. This discrepancy between the two systems elucidate why new media theorists dismiss the use of ekphrasis as a critical tool for analyzing digital artifacts. In my article the significance of the ancient definition of ekphrasis is re-examined through digital art and electronic literature. I show how an ekphrasis of the digital age, with its emphasis on enargeia and on the viewer/reader/user-bodily interaction with the work of art convey an aesthetic of tactility.