Raymond Drainville

University of Waterloo | UWaterloo · Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business

(Peer reviewed & forthcoming in 'Challenging the Visual: Distrust, Emergency, Uncertainty') Pictorial and textual data collected from Twitter during the height of the Syrian Refugee Crisis in 2015 provides an opportunity to map out empirically the representations of refugees. This paper uses Aby Warburg's "iconology of the interval" as its point o...

https://iai.tv/articles/politics-and-the-evolution-of-the-dogwhistle-auid-2869?_auid=2020. The debate around free speech is back in full swing, but can you debate someone who isn't actually meaning what they say? Jennifer Saul and Ray Drainville argue that as technology and platforms evolve, so do dogwhistles, the method political actors seek to...

The concept of dogwhistles has been examined by philosophers of language, without reference to the fact that dogwhistles are frequently presented with a visual component. This article explores the interconnectedness between speech (whether written or spoken) and the visual in different registers, from "high" art to memes. It posits four main ways i...

Please go to https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780192844118.013.4 for published version (with Jennifer Saul) The concept of dogwhistles has been examined by philosophers of language, without reference to the fact that dogwhistles are frequently presented with a visual component. This article explores the interconnectedness between speech (whether...

21: Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und visuellen Kultur. Please cite the published version. This paper argues that our understanding of Internet memes can be enhanced by a comparison with Renaissance emblems as an historical precursor. By incorporating an analysis of visual themes and production contexts, it notes striking parallels around form, co...

Exploring medium-to-large datasets of social media imagery can be challenging. This paper describes a digitally-assisted iconology, a hybrid methodology that includes machine learning and data analytics for sorting through medium-sized datasets of images that lack metadata to describe their pictorial content. The method plays to the strengths of cu...

This article presents Epistemic Spatialization as a new framework for investigating the interconnected patterns of biases when identifying objects with convolutional neural networks (convnets). It draws upon Foucault’s notion of spatialized knowledge to guide its method of enquiry. We argue that decisions involved in the creation of algorithms, alo...

This article highlights a number of significant formal and conceptual parallels between Renaissance emblems and modern Internet memes. Both emblems and memes physically frame their pictorial subjects with texts. Both are profoundly multimodal and intertextual. While the juxtaposed connection between text and image is often subject to the arbitrary...

Speech can be used to change societies in bad ways. It supports institutional oppression, establishes new oppressive norms, silences opponents, spreads disinformation and propagates feelings of hate. Online communities magnify the effects of individual speech acts. We'll look at social norms and institutions, silencing and free speech, social meani...

An investigation of politicians' use of Instagram. With her disappearing stories, anecdotes, and fan art, the political newcomer from the Bronx is trailblazing a new path in political communication. https://www.fastcompany.com/90259343/trump-has-twitter-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-is-winning-instagram

Women on the internet have presented their own canon: not of women who were destroyed, but of those who fought back and sought their revenge. Published at HyperAllergic: https://hyperallergic.com/465337/outraged-by-kavanaugh-confirmation-social-media-users-cite-the-vengeful-women-of-art-history/

This joint interview between An Xiao Mina and Ray Drainville discuss the viral photographs that emerged from Dr Christine Blasey Ford testimony in the Kavanaugh hearing. What do these photographs say, and how do they tap into resonant imagery from the past? Published by Hyperallergic. The original can be found here: https://hyperallergic.com/463027...

A talk given at the University of Waterloo's Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business in August 2018. It argues for a data-led iconographic approach to the study of viral imagery shared on social media. The talk focuses upon Alan Kurdi and Ieshia Evans.

Note: this is the thesis abstract and table of contents. The thesis was defended in November 2018 and is available on MMU's server at http://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/622714/. The objective of this thesis is to develop a methodology for examining a large dataset of visual materials coming from social media in a nuanced, historical fashion. Iconography is...

This is a joint interview about the “Petulant Trump” photo from the 2018 G7 summit in Canada and the propaganda video from the Trump administration for the 2018 North Korean-US summit in Singapore. Published on Hyperallergic; https://hyperallergic.com/447804/the-new-propaganda/

The art historian Aby Warburg (1866–1929) famously proposed a theory of affective gestures, called Pathosformeln. They were reproduced throughout time, via works of art, photography, and ritual. In the resurgence of interest in Warburg’s work, it is insufficiently acknowledged that his theory was evolutionary in nature, and as such was predicated u...

An iconic photograph of Ieshia Evans’ arrest at a Black Lives Matter protest went viral on Twitter. Twitter users’ textual and visual responses to it appear to show recurring patterns in the ways users interpret photographs. Aby Warburg recognized a similar process in the history of art, referring to the afterlife of images. Evaluating these respon...

An interview conducted by Jennifer Lawson of the New Floridian, published 18 December 2017. The interview covers the ethics of showing distressing photographs, the ways photographs can deceive, the role of truth-telling in photography, and the response to photography as seen through the eyes of social media users. The original interview can be foun...

The field of social media image analysis is still in its infancy. Two approaches currently widely in use are firmly based upon computational methods: image-based, focusing upon image properties such as hue and brightness as the foundation of study; and text-based, focusing in part upon hashtags and keywords, with the accompanying images collated ma...

This presentation explores how iconographic elements from the "Leave" campaign's imagery worked along lines similar to speech acts that simultaneously call people to objectionable action and provide deniability for having done so.

Jonathan Bachman's photo of Ieshia Evans standing up to armoured riot police was hailed as instantly iconic. How so? Images go viral for a reason, and the authors look at the chain of confrontational imagery stretching from cinema back to the iconography of the arrest of Christ. On HyperAllergic: https://hyperallergic.com/311570/an-art-historical-p...

How could a vote on the UK's membership in the European Union spark racist abuse throughout the country? A brief analysis of the iconology of the Leave campaign's graphics. On HyperAllergic's website: http://hyperallergic.com/310631/the-visual-propaganda-of-the-brexit-leave-campaign

The University of Sheffield interviewed me about Alan Kurdi (or 'Aylan', as he was then known). It covers the the power of images upon people, the high/low art bifurcation, and the effects of response. Published on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTXt20OmQt4

Iconography and iconology have traditionally been restricted to interpreting works of "high" art. Here I use them to explore the impact of the Aylan Kurdi images. By examining iconographically their conceptual and formal antecedents, as well as the pictures that social media users have made in response to those images, we might come to understand t...