This symposium will explore the interaction between word and image in media-based practice research.

As creative practice has increasingly found a home within academia, and as digital technologies have made possible new methodologies and forms of output, the hegemony of the written word within arts and humanities scholarship has been challenged from different directions. From curated exhibitions, through audiovisual essays and interactive websites, to sound art, practice researchnow challenges the logocentric focus of humanities research across all media.

Yet media-based practice research cannot entirely escape the written and spoken word. Words permeate it – for example, in the narratives of podcasts, the voice overs of films, and the wall texts of artworks. They also surround it – for example in the framing statements provided in programme notes, catalogues, and websites, in the written components of PhD dissertations, and in REF portfolio submissions.

The symposium will explore ways in which practitioners in various fields engage with the interdependence of word and image. By bringing together disciplines including film, photography, sound art, and interactive media, it will bring the audiovisual strategies for ‘shaping knowledge’ adopted within different media forms into conversation with each other, and allow them to illuminate each other.