It might be a little difficult to see, but here is my explanation for it. My infographic explains the book Sprawl by Robert Fitterman. I was interested in his poem "Directory", which led me to choose Fitterman as the subject of my infographic. The first part of my infographic explains what the book is about generally. Basically, Robert Fitterman created a book of conceptual poetry that physically and visually represents a mall. There is a photo of the poem "Directory", which shows how Fitterman has copied the mall directory in one of his poems. The next section describes his process: besides copying the mall directory he has taken reviews from each store in the mall off the Internet and dedicated a poem to each store. The next section offers some interpretations on Sprawl. One of the main interpretations is that Fitterman is creating a social commentary about modern, digital, commercial, urban societies. I included an excerpt from one of the poems about a store in the mall, which shows what I am talking about. By copying some of the language of consumers in the context of a mall, Fitterman is making fun of the culture by exposing the shallowness of materialism. The next section expands on the interpretation, explaining how Fitterman is also exposing the wrongs of urbanization and the detrimental effects it has on the environment. Finally, Fitterman also utilizes deconstruction of the aesthetic by stripping all visuals from his poetry. For example, he has ripped text straight from the mall directory and placed it in his new context, which takes away the visual aspect of actually being on the directory. Finally, I offer an alternate interpretation which shows that Fitterman is celebrating urban culture by showing it for exactly what it is.
Some visual choices went into creating the infographic that I like to think enhance the viewing experience. For example, the title section shows the urban aspect by depicting a city skyline. I also made one section look like a mall directory by including a map of a mall. The last section is interesting because it lacks any visual value, doing exactly as Fitterman has done, deconstruction of the aesthetic.
I hope you guys also find this infographic as well as Robert Fitterman as interesting as I do. I would also enjoy seeing your infographics.
I really like how you used the infographic spatially! It made it very east to read and follow. I looked at Robert Fitterman's work Holocaust Museum and he did a very similar thing! He takes all of the visual aspects from these texts which surround around the visuals and puts them on a blank page to let them fend for themselves! I had really only looked at Holocaust Museum when I was writing that first long blog post but seeing that this sort of recontextualization is a pattern for him is very cool!
ReplyDeleteFor my infographic I looked at I RL YOU RL by Sophia Le Fraga. She takes a whole bunch of things from the her world on the internet and puts them in print. One really cool thing about her is that she combines a bunch of literary worlds. Her work can be read as conceptual, alt lit, or even to some extent flarf! While I analyzed the text, I tried to look at it from all of those angles. Each one gave the text a meaning of its own. I am unable to post it to this comment for some reason so I will explain it more when I post it to the main stream of the blog!