Visual Language: What "Comics" Can Tell Us About the Mind

Facilitator: Neil Cohn
Organization: Tufts University
Session #: 202
Session Title: Visual Language: What "Comics" Can Tell Us About the Mind

Date: Monday, January 28, 2008
Time: 1:30pm - 3:00pm
Room: Franciscan II 

Description

In the past decades, comics, graphic novels, and Japanese manga have been growing in the public eye as legitimate forms of "art" and "literature." This talk will reach beyond these social considerations to propose a far more basic and powerful idea: that sequential images literally become a visual language (VL). In addition to analyzing the structure of VL, illustrating the inherent qualities it shares with verbal, written, and sign languages, this talk will put cultural issues into perspective, explain the cognitive function of VL, and demonstrate how the process of drawing and interpreting images is an innate part of human nature. This presentation will not only intrigue anyone who has ever picked up a comic, but will dispel commonly-held illusions and blaze new trails by offering a novel perspective on language, graphic communication, and human expression.

VizThink Interview