Lars Elleström - Linnaeus University
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Lars Elleström
Linnaeus University
Film and Literature
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Linnaeus University
Language and Literature
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Lars Elleström is professor of Comparative Literature at Linnæus University, Sweden (http://lnu.se/employee/lars.ellestrom?l=en). He leads the Linnaeus University Center for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies (http://lnu.se/lnuc/linnaeus-university-centre-for-intermedial-and-multimodal-studies-?l=en), and chairs the board of the International Society for Intermedial Studies (http://lnu.se/isis).
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Papers by Lars Elleström
Representing the Anthropocene: Transmediation of Narratives and Truthfulness from Science to Feature Film
Ekphrasis
, 2020
The aim of this paper is to investigate the transmediation of scientific articles to very differe...
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The aim of this paper is to investigate the transmediation of scientific articles to very different media types, meaning that the form and content of scientific communication is transformed into other forms of communication-more precisely works of art or entertainment, as exemplified by the media type feature film. The focus is on transmediation of narratives and truthfulness. Specifically, the discussions centre around narratives of human actions changing the environment on a global scale. Such narratives are vital to scrutinize because they concern the conditions of future human existence. To make the discussions truly relevant, the complex issue of truthfulness in communication is also included. Different media types can be, and are often expected to be, truthful in different ways, and because of media differences it may well be the case that narratives and their truthfulness are corrupted in transmediation. Whereas communication in general has many widely different purposes, its function is sometimes essentially to get things right-to represent certain things truthfully. Therefore, it is imperative to explore the capacities of different media types to narrate truthfully. The paper starts with explications of some of the core concepts of the investigation-transmediation, narration and truthfulness-and continues with a discussion of general media differences between scientific articles and feature films. This is followed by a brief analysis of a scientific article ("The 'Anthropocene'", published by Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer in 2000), a somewhat longer examination of the transmediation of this article to a feature film (The Day after Tomorrow, directed by Roland Emmerich and released in 2004) and a conclusion.
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Different media types present varying truthfulness expectations, affecting interpretations of scientific content.
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The Role of the Body in Cognition and Signification
Bildgestalten. Topographien medialer Visualität
, 2020
This article consists of a brief overview of my view on the role of the human body in communicati...
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This article consists of a brief overview of my view on the role of the human body in communication. This view is very much informed by the fact that mind and body are profoundly interrelated. After a few words on how I conceptualize communication (Elleström 2018), I will highlight the body as a producer of media products, the body as a media product, and the body as a perceiver of media products. Finally, I will elaborate on the body in the mind perceiving media products.
Transmediation: Some Theoretical Considerations
Transmediations: Communication Across Media Borders
, 2020
In this survey I will first place transmediation within the broader frames of intermediality and ...
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In this survey I will first place transmediation within the broader frames of intermediality and transmediality and then recapitulate some of my ideas on transmediation. I will also continually relate all the chapters in this volume to my conceptual framework and to each other. However, it is not my task here to indulge in in-depth discussions of the chapters; I will instead pick out some relevant features in them that make comparison and overview possible.
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Transmediality encompasses shared traits across media types, indicating a fundamental communication process beyond content.
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Identifying, Construing, and Bridging over Media Borders
Scripta Uniandrade
, 2018
The article will center on the necessary but always problematic notion of media borders, which ha...
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The article will center on the necessary but always problematic notion of media borders, which has since long been scrutinized by intermedial studies. My initial observation is that it is impossible to navigate in one's material and mental surrounding if one does not categorize objects and phenomena; without categorizations everything would be a blur-difficult to grasp and to explain. However, categorization requires borders, and borders can and should always be disputed. The area of communication is not an exception: on one hand it is necessary to somehow categorize media into types, and on the other hand it is not evident how these categorizations should be made. My aim is not to argue in favor of or against certain ways of classifying communicative media, but to try to explain some of the functions and limitations of media borders. I argue, in brief, that there are different types of media borders and hence different types of media types; if these differences are not recognized, the understanding of media categorization will remain confused. Whereas some media borders are relatively stable, others are more subject to change; therefore, media borders can be understood to be both identified and construed. However, in the end virtually all media borders can be bridged over through our cross-modal cognitive capacities.
Coherence and truthfulness in communication: Intracommunicational and extracommunicational indexicality
Semiotica
, 2018
The aim of this article is to construct a model that demonstrates how human communication, involv...
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The aim of this article is to construct a model that demonstrates how human communication, involving all kinds of media, may not only correspond to but also put us in contact with what we perceive to be the surrounding world. In which ways is truthfulness actually established by communication? To answer this, the notion of indices is employed: signs based on contiguity. However, an investigation of indices’ outward direction – creating truthfulness in communication – also requires an understanding of their inward direction: establishing coherence. To investigate these two functions, further concepts and various elementary categorizations are proposed: it is argued that there are several types of contiguity and many varieties of indexical objects, which invalidates the coarse fiction–nonfiction distinction.
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Intracommunicational indexicality fosters internal coherence in communication by connecting representations of objects within a virtual sphere.
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Modelling Human Communication: Mediality and Semiotics
Meanings & Co.: The Interdisciplinarity of Communication, Semiotics and Multimodality
, 2018
The article delineates a model of communication among human minds that is designed to work equall...
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The article delineates a model of communication among human minds that is designed to work equally well for all kinds of nonverbal and verbal significance. The model thus allows for detailed analysis of and comparison among all varieties of human communication. In particular, the transitional stage of communication, which is termed the media product, is thoroughly developed and conceptualized in terms of mediality and semiosis. By way of mapping basic media dissimilarities that are vital for differing communicative capacities, the model explains both how various sorts of significance can be transferred among minds, and why they cannot always be realized. The article furthermore suggests a semiotic framework for conceptualizing the familiar notion that communication is also strongly predisposed by surrounding factors such as earlier experiences and cultural influence.
A Medium-Centered Model of Communication
Semiotica
, 2018
The aim of this article is to form a new communication model, which is
centered on the intermedi...
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The aim of this article is to form a new communication model, which is
centered on the intermediate stage of communication, here called medium. The
model is intended to be irreducible, to highlight the essential communication
entities and their interrelations, and potentially to cover all conceivable kinds of
communication of meaning. It is designed to clearly account for both verbal and
nonverbal meaning, the different roles played by minds and bodies in communication,
and the relation between presemiotic and semiotic media features. As a
result, the model also pinpoints fundamental obstacles for communication
located in media products themselves, and demonstrates how Shannon’s
model of transmission of computable data can be incorporated in a model of
human communication of meaning.
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The medium-centered model involves three essential entities: cognitive import, producer's and perceiver's minds, and media product, vital for understanding communication.
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Bridging the Gap Between Image and Metaphor Through Cross-Modal Iconicity: An Interdisciplinary Model
Iconicity in Language and Literature
, 2017
Our minds are capable of perceiving similarities not only within the same but also across differe...
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Our minds are capable of perceiving similarities not only within the same but also across different sensory areas and different cognitive domains. Iconicity is representation based on similarity, and cross-modal iconicity, which is an extremely widespread phenomenon, should be understood as iconicity that crosses the borders of different kinds of material, spatiotemporal, and sensorial modes, and, furthermore, the border between sensory structures and cognitive configurations. For instance, a visual entity may resemble and thus iconically represent something that is auditory or abstractly cognitive. The aim of this semiotic study, substantially based on empirical findings in psychological, cognitive, and neurological research, is to suggest a general theoretical framework for conceptualizing cross-modal iconicity and relating different kinds of mono-modal and cross-modal iconicity to each other. Its chief argument is that perception and conception of images and metaphors should be understood as the two extremes in a continuum of iconic representation where cross-modal iconicity bridges the apparent gap between mono-modal, sensory-based iconicity and cognitive iconicity. It offers an outline of material, spatiotemporal, and sensorial modes and their interrelations; a thorough account of cross-modal iconicity; a conceptual structure for charting degrees of similarity and iconicity with the aid of cross-modality; an array of examples illustrating the continuum of iconicity from image to metaphor; and a brief discussion of the notion of image schema as an explanatory factor for cross-modal iconicity.
Transfer of Media Characteristics among Dissimilar Media
Palabra Clave
, 2017
A broad variety of media traits are transmedial in the sense that they can, to a certain extent, ...
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A broad variety of media traits are transmedial in the sense that they can, to a certain extent, be transferred among media that differ in fundamental ways. This article presents a new theoretical framework for studying media transformation, which should be understood as transfer of transmedial characteristics. The goal is to explain how meaningful data are changed or corrupted during transfer among various media. Initially, I launch a few fundamental theoretical distinctions concerning the creation of meaningful media data. The most fundamental distinction is that between mediation and representation. Whereas mediation is the material prerequisite for representation in media, representation should be understood as a semiotic operation, that is, the creation of meaning in the mind. On the basis of this division, I also distinguish between two kinds of media transformation: transmediation and media representation. The article then continues with a section about the transmedial basis. All media have basic and universal (material, sensorial, spatiotemporal and semiotic) properties that are shared to some extent. Furthermore, media form compound characteristics (such as narrativity) that are more or less transmedial, which means that they can be transferred among media to some extent. Finally, a model for analyzing media characteristic transfer is sketched.
Adaptation and Intermediality
The Oxford Handbook of Adaptation Studies
, 2017
The aim of this essay is to investigate the relation between adaptation and intermediality and to...
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The aim of this essay is to investigate the relation between adaptation and intermediality and to demonstrate why adaptation studies would profit from a broad intermedial research context. A list of ten ways of delimiting the notion of adaptation within the broader field of intermediality is presented and thoroughly discussed. The goal is to pinpoint border zones of adaptation that are only partly recognized as such by adaptation scholars. It is argued that failing to reflect on these borders ignores relevant neighbor disciplines, and that insufficient attention to related theoretical fields reduces the possibility for adaptation studies to produce research that is relevant for a broader range of phenomena and a broader field of scholars. The essay also briefly investigates some core issues of intermedial research, and hence of adaptation studies, and summarizes some vital notions that are helpful for investigating essential similarities and differences among media and for capturing the material and semiotic conditions for adaptation.
Visual Iconicity in Poetry: Replacing the Notion of “Visual Poetry”
Orbis Litterarum
, 2016
This article argues for the advantage of applying the analytical perspective of “visual iconicity...
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This article argues for the advantage of applying the analytical perspective of “visual iconicity in poetry,” rather than trying to delimit the problematic old category of “visual poetry,” which has been understood to be a type of poetry that deviates from normal poetry in and through its visual characteristics (for instance, poems looking like physical objects). However, all written poetry is obviously perceived by the eyes, and the notion of visuality has proven to be insufficient for accommodating the features of “visual poetry”; it is visual iconicity rather than simply visuality that must be investigated.
Whereas visuality is a sensory category, iconicity is a semiotic category consisting of meaning created by way of resemblance. When these two categories are conflated in poetry studies, so that visuality is understood to be the same as or to automatically include iconicity, or when iconicity is not recognized as a decisive notion for understanding how meaning is created in visual (written) poetry, the result is confusing. I therefore argue that all media, including art forms, must be understood as being based on four media modalities (essential categories of media traits): the material modality, the sensorial modality, the spatiotemporal modality, and the semiotic modality. Media differ in one or more of these four modalities. Some are visual, others are auditory, some are spatial but static, others are spatiotemporal, some are primarily based on conventional signs, others are based on iconic signs, and so forth.
Written poetry is generally based on conventional, verbal signs, but most poems are also iconic to some extent; and not only poems that are categorized as “visual.” Visual iconicity in poetry can be based on, for instance, empty spaces between words and between verses, lineation, typeface, letter size, and word order. Since there are many types and degrees of iconicity, I present a semiotic framework based on the idea that meaning can be produced by all kinds of resemblances between visual, auditory, and cognitive structures (abstract relations that form concepts and ideas in mental space). Visual iconicity in poetry is a specific part of this rich field of iconicity.
Finally, I analyze two poems that differ in their visual iconicity. No scholars refer to Sylvia Plath’s “I Am Vertical” as “visual,” but in addition to being visual this poem possesses a certain level of iconicity. Eugen Gomringer’s “Wind,” on the other hand, is a standard example of so-called visual poetry. Also this poem is certainly visual, even though it is not visuality but strong iconicity that sets it apart from poetry such as Plath’s. In fact, what is generally but misleadingly referred to as “visual poetry” is actually characterized by extensive iconicity.
Visual, auditory, and cognitive iconicity in written literature: The example of Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death”
Iconicity in Language and Literature
, 2015
This article demonstrates an analytical approach that might be used as a method for disentangling...
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This article demonstrates an analytical approach that might be used as a method for disentangling the manifold iconic layers and aspects of written literature. The goal is to make a clear and practice-oriented presentation of some of the most overarching types of iconicity, based on the assumption that iconicity – as representation in general – must be understood in terms of both sensory activity and cognition. One specific literary text, Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death” (1862), is analyzed as an example via a broad field of iconic traits, structured as visual, auditory, and cognitive iconicity. Although applied to a visual, literary text, the delineated method may be extended to any other kind of medium, taking into account relevant sensory properties and
cognitive aspects.
Material and Mental Representation: Peirce Adapted to the Study of Media and Arts
The American Journal of Semiotics
, 2014
The aim of this article is to adapt Peirce’s semiotics to the study of media and arts. While some...
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The aim of this article is to adapt Peirce’s semiotics to the study of media and arts. While some Peircean notions are criticized and rejected, constructive ways of understanding Peirce’s ideas are suggested, and a number of new notions, which are intended to highlight crucial aspects of semiosis, are then introduced. All these ideas and notions are systematically related to one another within the frames of a consistent terminology. The article starts with an investigation of Peirce’s three sign constituents and their interrelations: the representamen, the object, and the interpretant. A new approach to the interrelations of these three sign constituents is then suggested and manifested in a distinction between representation and neopresentation. This is followed by a critical discussion of Peirce’s three types of representation – iconicity, indexicality, and symbolicity – and their interrelations, which sets the stage for a presentation of what is referred to as the material and mental representation (MMR) model. This model aims to illuminate the problematic relation between material and mental facets of signification triggered by media and art products and other material things and phenomena.
A Theoretical Approach to Media Transformations
Translatio: Transmédialité et transculturalité en littérature, peinture, photographie et au cinéma
, 2013
In this article, I will firstly sketch a fundamental distinction between representation and media...
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In this article, I will firstly sketch a fundamental distinction between representation and mediation, or, more specifically, between representation of media and transmediation. After that, I will discuss media characteristics that can be called “transmedial”, meaning that they can be successfully transferred from one medium to another. The aim is to establish a framework from which to develop a comprehensive theory of transmediality that has the capacity to include a wide range of phenomena that are characterized by transfers of media characteristics. To date, there has been no systematic account of all these phenomena. Existing research is characterized by compartmentalization, which does not favor a general understanding of transmedial relations. Most existing studies focus either on only a few media and their specific interrelations, or on limited study areas such as adaptation and ekphrasis. At the present time, adaptation is probably the most vigorous research area dedicated to the study of transmediality.
Adaptation within the Field of Media Transformations
Adaptation Studies: New Challenges, New Directions
, 2013
The overall ambition of this article is to investigate transformations of media from a basic, the...
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The overall ambition of this article is to investigate transformations of media from a basic, theoretical point of view, and to place adaptation within that context. Instead of defining adaptation from an internal perspective, I will work through a set of crucial media notions, eventually reaching an idea of how adaptation can be understood in relation to and as part of transmedial issues at large. My aim is not to criticize the multifaceted field of adaptation studies as such, or to evaluate or interpret its objects of study, but to point at possible and hopefully prolific ways of widening the field’s frames of reference.
Spatiotemporal Aspects of Iconicity
Iconicity in Language and Literature
, 2013
This article is part of a larger research project that aims to identify a methodical way of inves...
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This article is part of a larger research project that aims to identify a methodical way of investigating iconicity in the immensely rich field of media, which includes art and other kinds of communication. The first part of the paper focuses on the intimate connection between sensory perception and cognition and sketches a basis for analyzing multimodal iconicity (which involves, for instance, several sensory modes or several spatiotemporal modes). The second part scrutinizes Peirce’s notions of image, diagram, and metaphor and argues that these three types of iconicity should be seen as a continuum that ranges from sensorially ‘strong’ to ‘weak’ iconicity and from cognitively ‘simple’ to ‘complex’ iconicity. The third part of the paper analyzes some examples of multimodal iconicity, with specific emphasis on spatiotemporal multimodality (for instance, spatial signs representing temporal objects, such as graphs representing population growth); earlier semiotic research has not dealt with this subject in a systematic way.
The Paradoxes of Mail Art: How to Build an Artistic Media Type
Cultura: International Journal of Philosophy of …
, 2012
This article aims to show that so-called Mail Art (art distributed via the international postal s...
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This article aims to show that so-called Mail Art (art distributed via the international postal system) is based on five paradoxes. These paradoxes, which correlate to how Mail Art is distributed and exhibited by means of changing technologies, its aesthetics, its democratic ideals, and its transnational character, explain how Mail Art has emerged and been constructed as an artistic medium on the stage of world cultures. While the paradoxes of Mail Art are specific for this particular medium, I argue that all media types are more or less marked by inherent paradoxes. The fact that Mail Art includes all kinds of material, sensorial, spatiotemporal, and semiotic modes makes it an unusual art form, but here it is primarily meant to be an example of the ambiguous ways in which media types in general are delimited and defined.This article aims to show that so-called Mail Art (art distributed via the international postal system) is based on five paradoxes. These paradoxes, which correlate to how Mail Art is distributed and exhibited by means of changing technologies, its aesthetics, its democratic ideals, and its transnational character, explain how Mail Art has emerged and been constructed as an artistic medium on the stage of world cultures. While the paradoxes of Mail Art are specific for this particular medium, I argue that all media types are more or less marked by inherent paradoxes. The fact that Mail Art includes all kinds of material, sensorial, spatiotemporal, and semiotic modes makes it an unusual art form, but here it is primarily meant to be an example of the ambiguous ways in which media types in general are delimited and defined.
Iconicity as meaning miming meaning and meaning miming form
Iconicity in Language and Literature
, 2010
Iconicity consists of mimetic relations between form and meaning. This article is based on the ...
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Iconicity consists of mimetic relations between form and meaning. This article is based on the notion of ‘spatial thinking’ and it is argued that there is no form without meaning, and that all meaning has some sort of form. Two fundamental distinctions are used. The first is Charles Sanders Peirce’s well-known division into three types of iconicity: image, diagram, and metaphor, which is extended to include ‘weak’ and ‘strong diagrams’. The second is a distinction between ontologically different appearances of signs: visual material signs, auditory material signs, and complex cognitive signs. A two-dimensional model illustrating the relations between these two distinctions is presented. The model is based on the assumption that iconicity, to a certain extent, is gradable, and it shows that the field of iconicity includes many phenomena that are not generally seen as related, but that nevertheless can be systematically compared. It also shows, among other things, that the ‘metaphor’ and the ‘weak diagram’ are singled out by the capacity of miming across the borders both between the visual and the auditory, and between the material and the mental. The main argument of the article is that iconicity should be understood not only as “form miming meaning and form miming form”, but also as “meaning miming meaning and meaning miming form”.
The modalities of media: A model for understanding intermedial relations
Media Borders, Multimodality and Intermediality
, 2010
The most important aim of this essay is to present a theoretical framework
that explains and des...
more
The most important aim of this essay is to present a theoretical framework
that explains and describes how media are related to each other: what
they have in common, in what ways they differ and how these differences
are bridged over by intermediality. In order to accomplish this, it must be
understood that the concept of medium generally includes several types or
levels of mediality that have to be correlated with each other.
Sociosomatic Illness and Grotesque Bodies in Late 19th-Century Narrative Fiction
Interfaces
, 2007
The article investigates how sociosomatic Illness of female protagonists is described in late 19t...
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The article investigates how sociosomatic Illness of female protagonists is described in late 19th-century narrative fiction.
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