Editorial: Screens and the Social Landscape

Triggs and Jewitt edited a unique collection of visual and text-based essays - Special Issue: Screens and the Social Landscape. This issue of the leading academic journal Visual Communication was also published as a book to reach a broader academic audience. The publication explores the different ways in which a range of disciplines understand and use the screen as a way of communicating and engaging visually in the generation of their own messages or those of their clients. Its’ significance is twofold: firstly by bringing together leading design practitioners and new media theorists including Manovich and MIT Open Source software designers Fry and Reas; and secondly, in the treatments of the subject exploring the changing notions of the screen through a combination of visual and text-based explorations. Triggs co-authored the editorial with Jewitt as well as co-authoring a visual essay with practitioners Hooker and Sweeney titled ‘A Sunday Afternoon’ exploring the relationship between Seurat’s exploration of optical theory through the use of dots and the digital screen (pp. 154-163).