10 May 2006

Illusion, Tricks and Poetry at the University of Dundee

PHOTO OPPORTUNITY: Friday May 12 at 5pm in the Lamb Gallery, 1st floor Tower Building, University of Dundee.

Illusion is the theme of the thirteenth International Scottish Word and Image Group (SWIG) Conference, hosted by the University of Dundee’s Department of English, on May 12 and 13.

Included in the conference, which is titled Eye-Cons: Illusions in Word and Image, will be presentations on "literal pictures," the films of Orson Welles and the introduction of colour to film-making.

An exhibition exploring the use of poetry to inspire interior design also accompanies the conference which brings together academics from a wide range of disciplines including history, geography, philosophy, computing, psychology, English and art.

"The idea of illusion is pretty close to the heart of what drives word and image studies," explained conference organiser and lecturer in English Dr Christopher Murray.

"This field is really all about that mysterious, rather magical moment in which words and images meet. Words are images, just as images provoke us to describe and understand them using language. It’s a kind of parlour trick whereby one thing seems to be another."

One of the highlights of this year’s conference will be a public lecture on Friday May 12 by Professor Nick Wade, professor of visual psychology at the University of Dundee.

Professor Wade will be exploring literal pictures and portraits and looking at the ways in which words and images can be combined.

"I’ll be playing visual games and looking at the relationships between the shapes of objects and the words that describe them, and also blending portraits of people with words they have written" he said. "The title of the lecture is Eye Contricks, which is, of course, itself a play on words, although the tricks are usually played by the brain rather than the eye."

Also included in this year’s conference, which will take place in the Tower Building on the main University of Dundee campus, will be a talk by Brian Hoyle on legendary film-maker Orson Welles. Mr Hoyle, a lecturer in English at the university, will look at the idea of filmmaker as magician and illusionist.

Film also provides the focus for a talk by Matthew Jarron, curator of the university’s archives, records management and museum services. Mr Jarron will be exploring the development of colour cinematography.

The conference is accompanied by an exhibition - A Poetic Revolt: the Poetics of Installation - which showcases work by students at the university’s Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD).

The students, who took part in a series of workshops led by DJCAD lecturer Brigid Collins and Dr Valerie Robillard of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, were asked to design accommodation for a poet in an existing Victorian terraced house in Dundee.

The exhibition runs from May 13 to June 3 in the Lamb Gallery in the Tower Building.

NOTES TO EDITORS

The Scottish Word and Image Group (SWIG) was formed in 1994 and holds annual conferences which examine the coexistence, collaboration and conflict between verbal/written language and visual or symbolic systems of communication.

Professor Wade’s public lecture will take place in the Baxter Suite of the Tower Building at 5pm on Friday May 12.

For further information contact:

Hilary McNally
Press Office
University of Dundee
Nethergate Dundee, DD1 4HN
Tel: 01382 384768
email: h.mcnally@dundee.ac.uk