Berlin Project Archive

Team Members: Katie Kelp-Stebbins, Dan Reynolds, Chris Hagenah

Process--Meetings, Development, Notes:

First Meeting 1/26, 2pm:

• Discussion--What do we hope to discover within the framework of comic books?
  • How can we go about exploring the medium to enhance our understanding of how meaning and message are conveyed in sequential art?
  • What are the primary discrepancies between comics and film? What are the limitations or benefits in each medium? Within film we know 'the cut' as the imaginative leap a viewer must make within the narrative framework. Within comic books we have 'the gutter' as the space in between panels where the reader's imagination comes into play. How is the materiality of a book--where alternative readings could take place--allow for new forms of engagement with these liminal distinctions?
  • Would it be useful to quantify the images and the text-based narratives to see if any interesting parallels emerge? (e.g. if we counted the number of times a stone is depicted v. the number of instances of the word "stone," would we gain some knowledge about how our readings of comics valuate text-enhanced images?)
• Sources--Jason Lutes: Berlin: City of Stones; Scott McCloud: Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics, et.al.; Douglas Wolk: Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean; Will Eisner: Comics and Sequential Art
• Tasks/ Research--Dan: read primary text and begin scanning process; Katie: find and obtain more sources for comic theory; Chris: research primary text, author publication, reception, etc.

Second Meeting 2/6, 7pm:

• Discussion--Dan's success with animating Berlin took us in new directions with our mode of inquiry. Discussion revolved around the traditional ways of approaching comics and how we might advance beyond these studies.
  • Moving away from the defensive position comics is generally studied from due to low art/high art classifications, we also want to move away from ways of describing comics that inherently re-inscribe comics as a sub-genre of other forms (graphic novel-literary; comic book-literary, sequential art-pictoral). Although these terms are useful and allow us to talk about the form, they rely on on medium-specific modifiers with genre-bound subjects.
  • We had much discussion about "gaps": those within the work itself (the imaginative space of the gutter); and those between comics and other forms. Chris posited that through methods like Dan's animation, we might "open up the gaps" and use adaptation as a space to experiment, both intra-medium and inter-media.
  • We might--following Scott McCloud--set up a triangle, replacing McCloud's terms (Reality--Meaning--Picture Plane), with Film--Literature--Art, to try to assign comics a place between/across/outside of the other three.
  • We favor the development of a new way of talking about comics and a new form of theory that does not reside as a sub-genre of another, more academically accepted form. We need to move away from current definitions, which we discussed at length, and go beyond. Digital tools will allow us to perform comics in new ways that will enhance our exploration of useful heuristics.
  • We brainstormed the basic outline of four lines of inquiry that would apply adaptation as a means of deformation, "gap" formation and the creation of imaginative spheres of inquiry:
    • Adapt comics into movies: Dan has already been working with this on Berlin and it will allow us to determine what changes when the panels no longer exist in juxtaposition.
    • Adapt comics into books (literary texts): Katie wants to see what happens when we transcribe all of the written text in the book, with some experimentation involving text bubbles (do we designate speakers?), sound effects (how do we rewrite some of the text/art expressions?), and description (could we adapt the pictoral panels into verbal representations and retain the meaning?).
    • Adapt comics into iconic expressions: Chris posited that if we strip all words and separate all panels so that they stand simply as pictures in a row we can understand why comics are more than just graphics.
    • Deform comics: we can scan all the panels and then "shuffle" them to see what new meanings we create within the medium.
• Tasks/ Research etc.--We began Googledoc to collaborate on notes and share research, and put together outline of presentation/proposal for class:

Proposal Presentation 2/7/08: Berlin feb7th

Workshop Meeting 2/14, 11am:

• In anticipation of workshop, trascribed the entire prologue to text only form: Berlin text
  • I had some initial misgivings about how to approach textual re-inscription, from the paucity of Lutes' language, one can begin to understand how much is not said with words.
  • An attempt to transcribe the images into text form may be difficult to undertake, and--in the case of the prologue--would perhaps be better suited to a style of text-based form like a script with occasional scene-setting references.
• Discussion focused around new innovations and discoveries: Chris found a "comic book markup tool" that he will explore for its feasability within the project and its general implications for the study
• Dan will continue to focus on creating a film version of the work, although he is encountering difficulties related to word balloons within the book, the excision of which would leave large wholes in the image of the panel
• Katie will continue working with the textual aspects of the work, transforming the text into a "script" as well as analyzing the text alone from various theoretical standpoints

Meeting 2/22, 2:00pm:

• Finalized project details and created outline for presentation=Berlin Final Presentation Outline
• Delegated tasks for coming weeks: Katie will continue to work on textual models, Dan will continue to work on film models, Chris will work on visual/panel by panel models; all three will collaborate on interpretations of models during workshops and future meetings; presentation sections will be broken up
• Discussed new findings and viewpoints: possibility for comparative interpretations, what we get out of each model will reveal what is unique to the work itself after our final interpretation of Berlin: Prologue
• We have decided to--in a reverse of McCann method--create critical interpretations of our models first, without expectations that would influence our understanding, then work on a critical interpretation of the work so that we can properly identify all of the formal elements that work together in comics

Bibliography:

• Andrew, Dudley. “Adaptation.” Film Adaptation. James Naremore, ed. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2000.
• Bazin, André. “Adaptation, or the Cinema as Digest.” Film Adaptation. James Naremore, ed. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2000.
• Booker, M. Keith. “May Contain Graphic Material”. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2007.
• Carrier, David. The Aesthetics of Comics. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000.
• Eisner, Will. Comics and Sequential Art. Tamarac, FL: Poorhouse Press, 1985.
• Gordon, Ian ed. Film and Comic Books. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.
• Groensteen, Thierry. The System of Comics. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.
• Hatfield, Charles. Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005.
•  Heer, Jeet and Worcester, Kent eds. "Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium." Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2004.
• Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.  New York: New York UP, 2006.
• Lutes, Jason. Berlin: City of Stones. Canada: Drawn & Quarterly, 2001.
• McCloud, Scott. Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels. New York: Harper, 2006.
  • Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology are Revolutionizing an Art From. New York: Paradox Press, 2000.
  • Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994.
• McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.
• Meskin, Aaron. "Defining Comics?" The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65.4 (2007): 369-379.
• Walsh, John.  “CBML: Comic Book Markup Language”.  XML Conference & Exposition.  Baltimore Convention Center, Baltimore, MD.  Dec., 2002.

         http://www.idealliance.org/papers/xml02/dx_xml02/papers/05-05-04/05-05-04.html

• Wolk, Douglas. Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean. Cambridge: DaCapo Press, 2007.