Language Amplifications and Visualisations in Michael Joyce’s was and Alexandra Grant’s babel

This article focuses on Michael Joyce‘s novel was and Alexandra Grant‘s painting babel in an attempt to explore what changes occur when moving between media, language codes and materials. Grant‘s painting is a response to Joyce‘s print-bound novel. Her work serves as a remediation as well as a reconceptualisation of Joyce‘s textual endeavor. In examining these works, we can locate a dynamic relation across the patterns of visual and verbal communication that they create. Joyce‘s and Grant‘s collaboration breaks new ground not only in terms of understanding how different media function but also by introducing an experiential and participatory form of narrative development. Through their engagement with different media, these works create narratives that are visually, verbally, spatially and conceptually challenging.