Reflection:
Wow, this (again) turned out to be more challenging than I anticipated that it would. After completing the readings this week, I really felt like it would be easier than it was to complete this assignment using just images. But I ran into a few complications.
The first issue came with the platform. At first, I just started using the UBC blog editor as my platform and I was pulling all the emojis from emojipedia.org But I found that many of the emojis were not supported by the blog platform and they were all just ending up as “????”. So I ended up switching to my phone and typed using my GBoard keyboard into Google Docs where I then took a screenshot to post above.
The second challenge I encountered was the massive scope of the work I recently finished. Coming in at over 1200 pages (there’s a hint for you!), it was extremely difficult to decide what parts of the plot were most important to include and which to pare away. Plus, the work includes so much other philosophical text that isn’t directly related to the plot that I ended up just having to cut that all out. Most of the plot is simply describing the movements and lives of various people, but I found that the emojis available didn’t have specific enough ‘different’ people to really capture all the wide range of characters (especially those who would most likely be depicted very similarly) in the book. So, in the end, I had to just choose one specific family and try to convey their experiences throughout the plot of the book.
My thought process was a very literal one….at least I wanted it to be. I would just look for emojis that represented bascially each word that I wanted. Syllables didn’t seem like an option that would work and I found that trying to capture very big ideas with an emoji was really tricky. So I mostly stuck with trying to find an emoji for each word. But then that became a challenge when the word I needed didn’t have a specific emoji. I found that I ended up using an arrow emoji to try and represent all sorts of different movements and actions!
I think this activity has helped me to see that while *much* can be told with a single image, that it also can leave much out and leaves much to the interpretation of the reader/viewer. So much of the interpretation of ‘image-based’ media will be dependent on what prior knowledge and background is and has been.
War and Peace?
I haven’t read the book, but if I’m correct I love your second line (the byline) using the lion for Leo Tolstoy. At first I took the emojis literally so I thought this was related to a lion from Russia.
I have no idea what your story is but I know death is involved and “peace” in the title. I am not familiar with flags of countries so I lack a literacy required to solve this story. I have not read War and Peace but it seems like a plausible guess (I read Linda’s comment). I do, however, connect to and feel your pain with the emoji keyboards. I ended up adding mine as a screen shot. I tried to add an lol emoji to a comment and it ended up as ????? (Can you tell if I am asking a question or a few or rolling on the floor laughing?). I also found that there were not a wide enough range of different people (or different animals as well and gave up doing on The Lion King). I see the emojis as more of a limited language than images though. It is as if you need to understand the language or have a literacy in emojis.