Signe Kjaer Jensen & Beate Schirrmacher: Multimodality and Intermediality

This week Signe Kjaer Jensen and Beate Schirrmacher will initiate a discussion based on their forthcoming article ”Stronger Together: Moving Towards a Combined Multimodal and Intermedial Model”. The seminar will be held in cooperation with Örebro Multimodal Research Group.

About the seminar

Abstract

This article explores how intermedial and multimodal analysis can work together. Both, multimodal and intermedial research explore the mixedness of communication. Yet as they approach this mixedness with different focus and analytical methods, the research fields are less connected than they could be. We approach intermediality and multimodality as complementary frameworks and argue that there is much to gain in drawing on each other’s analytical strengths. To this end, underlying differences in method and theoretical assumptions need to be made explicit. Drawing on John A. Bateman and Lars Elleström’s previous explorations of the common ground between the frameworks, we map an arena, where multimodal and intermedial analysis can work together. We then demonstrate how a combined multimodal and intermedial perspective can function by zooming in and out between the perspectives when we explore the role of the “The Ride of the Valkyries” in Wagner’s opera Die Walküre (1870) in a Nazi newsreel, and in Francis Ford Coppola’s movie Apocalypse Now (1979). The multimodal perspective provides us with a nuanced language for transcribing and discussing how different semiotic resources work together. The intermedial perspective allows us to discuss the chain of media transformation where each instance increases and transforms the meaning potential of the “Ride of the Valkyries”.

Bios

Beate Schirrmacher is Associate Professor of comparative literature at Linnaeus University, member of the Linnaeus University Center of Intermedial and Multimodal Studies. With Jørgen Bruhn, she is co-editor of Intermedial Studies – An Introduction to Meaning Across Media (2021). She has previously published on intermedial relationships of literature and music and performative aspects of intermediality. Her current research interests include the truth claims of media, intermedial approaches to news and journalism. 

Signe Kjaer Jensen has a background in Musicology and holds a PhD in comparative literature. Her research interests centre on music and sound as parts of intermedial and multimodal media constellations, on which she has presented at international conferences such as the Society for Animation Studies (SAS), Music and the Moving Image (MaMI), International Society of Intermedial Studies, NordMedia, and at The International Conference on Multimodality (ICOM). Recent publications include the thesis Musicalized Characters: A Study of Music, Multimodality and the Empiric Child Perspective on Mainstream Animation (2021), chapters in Intermedial Studies (2022), edited by J. Bruhn and B. Schirrmacher, and the article “Flee: Sounds of Fright and Flight” in European Review.

How to attend

It is possible to attend the seminar both from Dacke in Växjö and via zoom (note that Schirrmacher and Jensen will be on zoom). Contact us at ims@lnu.se if you want to participate via zoom, or sign up for our external email list to receive automatic updates on our events (zoom link and additional information are sent out one week in advance).

Photo: 'Aurora - Connecting Senses’, Cristina Pop-Tiron & Signe Kjær Jensen