Arts & International Affairs: Vol. 3, No.3/Vol. 4, No. 1, Winter 2018/2019 | Page 4

INTRODUCTION:
UNDERSTANDING MULTIMODALITIES
IN ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
J.P. SINGH, Editor &
ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS • 3.3 / 4.1 • WINTER 2018–2019
EVANGELOS CHRYSAGIS, Managing Editor
Multimodal Scholarship in the Arts:
Challenge to Creativity and Authority
This issue on multimodalities opens conversations on what it means to represent or
construct reality through artistic practices. Broadly, we also address social meanings
and representation that go beyond art. The concept of modality arises out of
semiotics that studies meaning-making through signs. In Hodge and Kress’ definition
(1988:124), modality refers to the “status, authority, and reliability of a message.” Modality
determines the value of facts presented, for example, through the modal distributions
of statistics. Modalities are “semiotic resources for making meaning that are
employed in a culture�such as image, writing, gesture, gaze, speech, posture” ( Jewitt
2009:1).
Multimodality encompasses multiple ways of establishing facts, depending on the
question or the problem. Each modal representation contains its analytical and methodological
practices: “What are recognized as ‘realistic’ styles of representation reflect
an aesthetic code .... Over time, certain methods of production within a medium and
a genre become naturalized. The content comes to be accepted as a ‘reflection of reality’”
(Chandler 2002:64). Multimodal practices challenge the singular modal status of
representations rooted in texts. Multimodality steps beyond textual analysis to bring in
visual representations and images, sounds and acoustics, bodies and gestures, and other
cultural signifiers. We trace this trajectory through the juxtaposition of relevant empirical
examples and artistic practices that are intrinsically multimodal and which push the
limits of creative expression and collaboration. In doing so, they explore research ethics
and scholarly production and open up possibilities for dialogic engagement between
researchers, participants and academic audiences.
Arts & International Affairs has been publishing multimodal works since its inception.
Multimodality is inherently creative in moving beyond words through methods and
meanings that are yet to affix their epistemic and epistemological values. This issue traverses
many modalities in varied forms to provide a sense of this varied landscape: the
issue contains multimodal essays from artists, arts practitioners, a geodetic engineer
who is a photographer, policymakers, and scholars. Their views are represented through
images, films, sounds, sculpture, speeches, interviews, and traditional scholarly essays.
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doi: 10.18278/aia.3.3.4.1.1