Forum for Intermedial Studies

There are no “pure” media forms: all types of media and forms of art are related in various ways. Photographs, films, written text, dance, computer games, daily newspapers, and etchings are all experienced using the sense of sight. Music, speech, poetry recitals, and television programs are all experienced using the sense of hearing. All types of media are perceived in a time perspective and, from a cognitive point of view, spatial structures are important. However, some types of art and media forms are primarily temporal while others are mainly spatial: oil paintings and posters are frozen in time, while moving pictures and musical works can only be realized in a temporal flow. A comic strip has two spatial dimensions whereas a sculpture is three-dimensional. Many types of media, however, can create virtual time and virtual space: in a normal flat photograph one usually experiences a visual depth and sometimes also a sense that the picture is a moment frozen in time as part of a chain of events.  

Most types of media and art forms have strong elements of conventional meaning while others work primarily in an iconic manner. Verbal language in all forms of writing and speech are built upon conventional linguistic structures but also contain onomatopoetic elements. Music and all sorts of pictures, diagrams, and figures are often very much iconic in that they “resemble,” in various ways, that which they represent but they also contain clearly conventional elements. Additionally, the same technical media forms such as books, computers, television sets, paint and paper, can be used to mediate different qualified media. Books contain both various kinds of text as well as tables and pictures. We can use computers to watch films, play games, read texts and view pictures. The human voice can produce a variety of sounds, which are generally characterized as either music or language.

One problem within modern universities is that extreme specialization has prevented an open understanding of the in-depth interactions between the various forms of media and arts. During the last few decades, however, studies of intermediality and multimodality have been established at certain higher learning institutions in Europe and the USA. The intermedial studies are historically preceded by aesthetics, philosophy, semiotics, comparative literature, media & communication studies, and inter-art research, while multimodality research is rooted in sociosemiotics, education studies, and linguistics. These two developing research areas are both based upon the multimodal character of media but nevertheless they entail almost separate academic circulations.

One aim of the interdisciplinary research environment Forum for Intermedial Studies (Ims) at Växjö University is to deepen awareness of the basic nature of all forms of media by mixing intermedial and multimodal theories and research methods. The forum is a platform for the many researchers who work within these fields, primarily at the Schools of Humanities and Education. Ims has strong links with both Nordic and international intermedial research, and activities include theory seminars, text seminars, and conferences.

In March 2010, the volume Media Borders, Multimodality and Intermediality will be published by Palgrave Macmillan (see www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID=379824). In late September 2010, Ims will arrange an international symposium called Multimodal Learning.

In June 2011, Ims will arrange the Eighth International Symposium on Iconicity in Language and Literature.

From spring term 2006 the seminars in Language and Literature are presented in a combined schedule.

Following international evaluation and in competition with other profile areas at the Växjö University, the Forum for Intermedial Studies (Ims) has been awarded special research grants by the Faculty Committee for the Humanities and the Social Sciences for the period 2006–2010. Research will be carried out during this period within the field “Intermediality and the Medieval Ballad.” Please see the research plan for further details and information.

Another major research project that is to be implemented during 2006–2010 is “Visualization in Swedish Modern and Post-Modern Lyric Poetry: A Study of the Interaction between Word and Image,” which is financed by the Swedish Research Council.

The School of Humanities has run a number of courses in the past, at the undergraduate, advanced, and postgraduate levels. At present there is an optional intermediality course as part of the School’s Masters Program and new postgraduate-level courses are currently being planned. At the School of Education, the Arts Managements Program contains a course entitled “Art Forms Interacting.”

Are you interested in taking part in our work? Questions, ideas, information and suggestions are welcomed by lars.ellestrom@vxu.se.