Doing Digital Visual Studies

Co-edited and designed by Laurie Gries, Blake Hallinan, and Aaron Beveridge, Doing Digital Visual Studies: One Image, Multiple Methodologies is a digital book collection that explores new visual research approaches afforded by engagement with emergent digital technologies and novel media practices.

Typically, visual methodology books survey different approaches through discussions of various visual artifacts. In this collection, each chapter takes up a different methodology in relation to a single image, Shepard Fairey’s iconic Obama Hope Image. We believe that using one visual artifact better highlights the distinctions between different research approaches and elucidates what each approach can uniquely bring to an object of study and Digital Visual Studies at large.

The collection is organized into two parts, surrounded by an introduction, interlude, and conclusion. Part one includes 8 experimentations with different approaches such as 3D Printing, Augmented Reality, Glitch Studies, Virtual Geosemiotics, and Queer Archival Research. Each chapter is interactive, and many include tutorials to help readers adopt or adapt the approaches for their own research and/or teaching. Also included are links to two digital archives with open access to data about the Obama Hope image so that others can experiment with their own enactments of digital visual studies.

Articulated in video and written interviews, the second part of the collection speaks back to the experimentations in the first part. Here authors from Communication, Writing Studies, English, and the Digital Humanities discusses not only the rewards but also the ethical implications and forward directions of doing digital visual studies. Together, through a sincere collaborative effort, we hope this collection inspires more inventive and ethical play and encourages scholars to diversify digital visual studies through expanded participation and more intensification of experimental risk taking.