iSchool Research Symposium: Johanna Drucker
Visual Epistemology and Information Studies
Information and visual knowledge have an uneasy relation. When René Thom declared that only number snd language provided stable notation systems for knowledge, he deliberately eliminated visual forms. But not only do we receive a considerable amount of information through visual media, we also use visual conventions for the presentation, display, and analysis of both information and knowledge. Where and how should methods of visual epistemology be included in an information studies discipline? What particular issues of social justice are served by including these methods and approaches? This talk touches on several fundamental issues in inscription, notation, visualization, and graphical modes of knowledge production to demonstrate the importance of visuality to information studies.
Johanna Drucker is the Breslauer Professor of Bibliographical Studies and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA. She is internationally known for her work in the history of graphic design, typography, experimental poetry, aesthetics, and digital humanities. Recent publications include: Visualizing Interpretation (MIT, 2020), Iliazd: Metabiography of a Modernist (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021), The Digital Humanities Coursebook (Routledge, 2021), and the forthcoming, Inventing the Alphabet (Chicago, 2022). Her work has been translated into Korean, Italian, Catalan, Chinese, Spanish, French, Hungarian, Danish and Portuguese. She was the recipient of the AIGA’s 2021 Steven Heller Award for Cultural Criticism.