Repetition in Transmediation From Painting to Poem and GIF Emma Tornborg 1 This article studies the transmedial process from the painting Nighthawks (1942) by Edward Hopper (the source medium) to the poem “Nighthawks” (2000) by Anne Carson and to two art GIFs created using the painting as a source (the target media). GIF is a file format that allows movement and an art GIF is a GIF which, in different ways, relates to an existing painting. The investigation is focused on repetition, which manifests in all three media products, and its effect on subjective time. Repetition can have different temporal effects in different media and can therefore be affected by transmediation. In literature, for example, repetition is often a way of slowing or stopping the temporal flow whereas, in painting, it can function both as a time stopper and as an index of movement and thereby temporal flow. Repetition in art GIFs is complex. Even though it represents the desire to add movement (and thus temporality) to a static image, it also halts time by not moving beyond the reiterated sequence it represents. 1. Introduction In the present article, my aim is to investigate the transmediation of repetition (in a broad sense: including various kinds of similarities and variations) from one medium to two others - from painting to poem and GIF (Graphic Interchange Format). Repetition, as Werner Wolf (2002) notes, is a phenomenon that appears in all kinds of media, such as commercials, visual art, poetry, prose, theatre, opera, film, music videos, and it can also 1 I would like to thank Mieke Bal, Werner Wolf, and Katarina Tornborg for their generous guidance. AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 45 (2020) · Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.2357/ AAA-2020-0012 Emma Tornborg 30 be transmediated between media (18, see also Wolf 2018 for an illuminating discussion on the aesthetic functions of repetition in various media types). Repetition is closely related to the concept of time and I will focus here on its temporal aspect. There are several perspectives from which to consider the connection between temporality and repetition, the most famous probably being Gilles Deleuze’s in his work Difference and Repetition from 1968. My take on repetition will be less philosophic and more practical: I will investigate the temporal effect that repetition can have on readers and viewers in the three analysed media products. For this purpose, I selected the painting Nighthawks (1942) by Edward Hopper, the poem “Nighthawks” (2001) by Anne Carson and two GIFs. The order in which I discuss the target media is chronological but, in essence, is arbitrary; the GIFs are not transmediations of the poem. The concept of transmediation, understood as the transferral of meaning from one medium to another, is crucial to intermedial studies, which investigate relationships within and between media. However, what transmediation is or how it can be defined, is a matter of debate among scholars. What properties of media can be transmediated? How does the process affect the transmediated phenomenon as well as the media involved in the process? Are there mediaunspecific phenomena? Before I begin my analysis, I will briefly describe the field and one of its main concerns: the notion of media specificity. 2. The Concept of Transmediation Transmediation, both as a term and as a concept, is used in many divergent ways in the theoretical literature and different meanings and functions are attributed to it. However, there appears to be a basic consensus that transmediation involves a transfer of meaning/ form/ content from one medium (the source medium) to another (the target medium). A well-known type of transmediation is adaptation from novel to film, even though traditionally the term transmediation has not been used to denote this process. Nevertheless, Adaptation Studies; New Challenges, New Directions in which scholars from film, literature and intermedial studies contribute, is an attempt to cross the disciplinary boundaries and encourages a broader understanding of both adaptation and transmediation (Bruhn, Gjelsvik and Hanssen, eds, 2013). There is a tendency in the theoretical literature on transmediation, both within and without the intermedial field, to focus on the narratological aspects. Here, Mieke Bal’s seminal work on narrative strategies in different media must be mentioned (Bal 2009), as well as the widely used and popular term transmedia(l) storytelling, often attributed to Henry Jenkins (2006; 2013), but also used by narratological scholars such as Marie-Laure Ryan (2013) and Jan-Noël Thon (2016). Repetition in Transmediation 31 One early study of transfer between media, seminal to the conceptualisation of transmediation within the intermedial research field, is Jay David Bolter’s and Richard Grusin’s Remediation; Understanding New Media (1999). They focus mainly on digital media and investigate how new media refashion older media by means of remediation: “Our culture conceives of each medium or constellation of media as it responds to, redeploys, competes with, and reforms other media.” This remediation process is reciprocal: older media can also remediate newer media: “Television can and does refashion itself to resemble the World Wide Web ( . . . ), and film can and does incorporate and attempt to contain computer graphics within its own linear form” (Bolter and Grusin 1999: 55). Bolter and Grusin draw the conclusion: “No medium, it seems, can now function independently and establish its own separate and purified space of cultural meaning” (Bolter and Grusin 1999: 55). In Lars Elleström’s Media Transformation (2014), transmediation is understood as a process in which form and/ or content is transferred from one medium or media product (the source medium or media product) to another (the target medium or media product). The other part of media transformation is media representation, in which one medium or media product is represented in another medium or media product. Both transmediation and media representation entail transformation of some kind. According to Elleström, “[t]ransmediation is not only re-mediation - repeated mediation - but also trans-mediation: repeated mediation of equivalent sensory configurations by another technical medium” (Elleström 2104: 14). Some media phenomena are easier to transmediate than others, and this depends on the specificities of the technical media involved (Elleström 2104: 49). Phenomena transmediated from a painting to a photograph will not be as thoroughly transformed as phenomena transmediated from a painting to a recited poem. The former example includes two-dimensional media with static and iconic modes, whereas the latter example describes a cross modal transfer: from a source medium with static and iconic modes to a target medium with temporal and symbolic modes. Naturally, the transmediated phenomena must become significantly transformed. Nevertheless, they must be recognizable after having been transferred. 3. Media Specific and Non-Media Specific Properties of Media An early effort to define transmediality within the boundaries of the intermedial field was carried out by Irina Rajewsky, who ascribes transmediality to phenomena that can appear in different media and that are nonmedia specific by nature: An example for this is the aesthetic of futurism, which was realized in different media (text, painting, sculpture, etc.) with the formal means specific to each Emma Tornborg 32 medium. The concrete realization of this aesthetic is in each case necessarily media-specific, but per se it is nevertheless not bound to a specific medium. Rather, it is transmedially available and realizable, i.e., available and realizable across media borders. In a similar way, one can speak of a transmedial narratology, referring to those narratological approaches that may be applied to different media, rather than to a single medium only (Rajewsky 2005: 46). This theory, first presented in 2000, is further developed by Wolf who describes transmedial phenomena as “phenomena that are not specific to individual media. As non-media specific these phenomena appear in more than one medium and can therefore form points of contact or bridges between different media” (Wolf 2002: 18). Thus, there are two different approaches to transmediality and transmediation: it can either be regarded as a process of transfer from one medium to another, or it can be regarded as a phenomenon that can manifest itself in many different types of media. Wolf uses the term intermedial transposition to denote the transfer between media. However, he emphasizes that this term only applies if the transferred characteristic has a clear origin in one distinct medium, for example, when a narrator is transmediated from novel to film and is transformed into a voice-over: “In these cases a transfer between two media can be shown to have taken place” (Wolf 2002: 19). Whereas Jens Schröter (2012) agrees that transmedial phenomena (or “procedures” as he calls it) cannot be media-specific, and that the term “transmedial” should be reserved for phenomena without a specific medial origin, Regina Schober (2013) is critical towards the notion of non-media-specific phenomena. In her understanding, no phenomena exist independently from the media in which they appear. Her idea is that we cannot disregard cultural, historical and other contextual aspects of a medium and treat media phenomena as isolated entities, transferred between media in a closed system: “adaptation must be regarded as a much more complex assemblage of cross-influences rather than a seemingly unidirectional procedure between two media” (Schober 2013: 92). In my understanding, there are phenomena that are transmedial in Rajewsky’s and Wolf’s use of the term, which can be observed in many different media with no clear origin in one specific medium. I also believe that one can observe such a phenomenon being transferred from one medium or media product to another. This does not, however, exclude either reciprocity or the complex involvement of cultural and social contexts. Nor does it mean that these phenomena are not bound to the media in which they appear (I cannot imagine how this would be possible). For example, repetition, which is the device I will investigate in more detail later in this article, occurs, as Wolf points out, in many different types of media. However, depending on how the modalities of media (Elleström 2010) are combined, its features, forms and effects will vary: repetition in static, twodimensional, graphic media products such as paintings can appear in the Repetition in Transmediation 33 form of fields of colour, recurring patterns or graphic shapes, while examples of repetition in verbal, printed text are anaphors, recurring words or sentences, and rhymes. They use different semiotic modes and have different material and spatio-temporal properties. Because of this, and because of the specific conventions and contexts associated with each medium - their qualified properties (Elleström 2010) - they are in fact shaped by the medium in which they appear. 4. Nighthawks Edward Hopper’s iconic painting Nighthawks (1942) is often interpreted as representing urban loneliness and the isolation that can be experienced in a large city. Slater (2002) notes: “The only light for the empty streets comes from inside the restaurant, amplifying the motif of darkness outside and intensifying the painting’s communication of loneliness” (Tom Slater, 2002: 145). This interpretation has much to do with its subject matter: a group of people in a diner late at night; even though they are in the same place - two of them even sit together - they do not seem to interact in any way, each of them trapped in their own world, immobile: The nonexpressive faces of the four people bespeak their isolation: the bar man gazes past the two men at a dark wall outside; the man smoking a cigarette seems absorbed in his thoughts, while the woman next to him eats a sandwich in silence. Significantly, their hands, though close together, do not touch. (Gerd Gemünden 1998: 154) Gemünden discusses the sense of immobility that pervades the painting and I think that this perceived stasis is one of the things that highlights the characters’ isolation and loneliness: “The precise geometric formations of the illuminated spaces contribute to a sense of abstraction that also pervades the relations of the four characters. They seem to be arranged, immobile, static” (Gemünden 1998: 2). But what is it about the painting that evokes this sense of immobility? One thing, I would say, is repetition. In paintings and other two-dimensional, static and graphic media, repetition often suggests movement. Simultaneous succession, for example, is “a sequence of images, most often of a figure, depicting moments that are disjunctive in time but perceived as belonging together, in an unequivocal order. The change occurring in each subsequent image is supposed to indicate the flow of time between it and the preceding one” (Nikolajeva and Scott, 2006: 140). However, repetition can also create a sense of stillness in an image. One painting that has a lot in common with Nighthawks is Hopper’s Early Sunday Morning (1930), of which Tom Lubbock writes: “Nothing happening. That’s the visual message of the image, with its parallel horizontals, its repetitive sequence of units, its long stretch. It’s also Emma Tornborg 34 the narrative message” (Lubbock, 2006: n.p.) Mark Strand points to the same thing: “We can be pretty sure that if the painting were spread out it would offer only a repetition of the features we are already familiar with. There is no actual or implied progression in the shaded or open windows, none in the doorways and storefronts” (Strand 2011: 349). Thus, repetition in painting can work as a means of inhibiting narrative progression, among other things, because it unifies the painting: “Unity is created by repetition of shapes, textures, patterns, or colors” (Lewis and Lewis 2009: 62). There are several elements that are repeated in Nighthawks: content elements such as the bar stools, the windows in the opposite building with identical green roller blinds (even though they are not rolled up evenly), the male guests’ hats and the metal tanks; colours: several nuances of green, grey and red, and shapes: rectangular and triangular. These repetitions structure the composition and hold it together. In his analysis of Nighthawks, Gordon Thiesen notes “the precise geometry of the painting’s composition” and continues: “With precision we have uniformity, repetition. Every toaster from the same given design is identical. The row of identical circular stool seats in the diner complements the row of same size, same shape windows in the building across the street” (Thiesen 2006: 62f.). The painting’s stillness affects its narrative potential. Scholars talk about “the withheld narration of the image” (Filip Lipiński 2014: 169, my emphasis) or “the staging of unresolved dramatic actions” (Joseph Stanton 1994: 25, my emphasis). I would say that it is almost impossible to look at an artefact that depicts people without thinking about their background and wondering what led up to the specific moment depicted, but in Nighthawks there is no suggested movement, no hints of past or future events: whatever drama that put them there will never be resolved. 5. “Nighthawks” Anne Carson’s book Men in the Off Hours contains a section called “Hopper: Confessions”, in which a selection of Hopper’s paintings is represented in and transmediated into ekphrastic poems. Each of them is followed by a quote from Augustine’s Confessions (which I will return to later). Let us have a look at the poem “Nighthawks”: I wanted to run away with you tonight but you are a difficult woman The rules of you— Past and future circle around us now we know more now less in the institute of shadows. On a street black as widows with nothing to confess Repetition in Transmediation 35 our distances found us the rules of you— so difficult a woman I wanted to run away with you tonight (Carson 2001: 50). In Elleström’s terms, the poem “Nighthawks” makes a simple representation of the painting Nighthawks: They share the title, which is the only obvious connection between the two media products. Without the title, most people would not associate with the painting. Furthermore, the poem is not very descriptive; the only part that visually anchors the poem in the painting is the line “On a street black as widows”, which appears almost precisely in the middle of the poem. However, the transmediation is much more extensive; it falls under what Elleström calls a complex transmediation of a media product: Complex transmediation of media products is a process of change that leaves a distinct core intact: vital characteristics of a specific media product are transmediated into (as a rule) another media product. This new media product is markedly different, but is also based on, previously existing traits of another media product (Elleström 2014: 24). Carson’s poem is the transmediation of a specific media product, but to a certain extent it also transmediates the qualified medium painting in general. I will return to this discussion later. As we have seen, in Nighthawks, the much-discussed alienation is represented in the distance between the characters and the darkness and desolation that surround them. This alienation is transmediated into the poem in various ways. Thus, it is a transmediation of the context and connotations of the source medium, as well as of the media product in itself, and I argue that these connotations should be seen as parts of the characteristics of the source media product. One could assert that the themes of loneliness and isolation are so apparent in the painting that they could not have been excluded from any transmediation or representation. However, since the beginning, Nighthawks has been described in such terms, including by the artist himself, and the painting has become a symbol of (American) urban isolation. This is to some extent a self-generating process, in which new transmediations and interpretations are influenced by older ones. Since each transmediation is an interpretation of the source medium, the transmedial process is complex and multifaceted, and it affects all media involved in the process (see e.g. Bruhn 2013). Carson’s poem represents someone’s thoughts or words, possibly the smoking man’s: “I wanted to run away with you tonight/ but you are a difficult woman/ The rules of you—”. This suggests that he never did. The line “Our distances found us” also refers to the sense of loneliness that might be the reason for their being in that diner on that night: a search for Emma Tornborg 36 human connection. And even if they didn’t find it, they are at least lonely together. The darkness outside the diner - in the poem represented by the lines “in the institute of shadows” and “On a street black as widows” - binds them together. The distance between them which in the painting is expressed by the characters’ gaze - she looks down at something in her hand and he seems to be staring at nothing, lost in his thoughts - is thus transformed into a written, verbal representation of one character’s thoughts or speech, expressing that distance. The stasis of the motive is transmediated into verbal form in the past tense in the line “I wanted to run away with you tonight”, since it is a wish that can never be fulfilled: they will never leave the diner. The stillness of the painting - and here I refer both to the static nature of the technical medium of painting in general and to the stillness that Nighthawks represents - is also transmediated into the poem by means of structure, composition and layout. One keyword here is repetition. In Western literature, repetition is often described as a device that can stop or slow down the temporal flux of literature which, in turn, has to do with its sequential character: Reading a printed poem is to perceive a medium with a clearly spatial material interface, but as soon as the conventional semiotic aspect of language is considered, the perception also incorporates temporality and fixed sequentiality (for most standard poems) or at least partly fixed sequentiality (for poems lacking distinguishable lines) (Elleström 1010: 19). The vast majority of verbal texts, including poems that are solely descriptive, have a fixed sequentiality, and thereby the temporality that comes with it: beginning - middle - end. However, repetition can suspend this inherent sequentiality, and thereby the perceived temporality, of written text (see, for example, Wendy Steiner 1982, Jennifer Clarvoe 2009 and Steven Paton 2009). As Roman Jakobson concludes about poetry: “This capacity for reiteration whether immediate or delayed, this reification of a poetic message and its constituents, this conversion of a message into an enduring thing, indeed all this represents an inherent and effective property of poetry” (Jakobson 1960: 371). Nighthawk’s geometric, reiterative and clean composition in which shapes, objects and colours are repeated within the painting can also be found in Carson’s poem. It has a circular structure in which the last three lines mirror the first three in reverse order: ABC-CBA, which gives it an axial symmetry. The geometry and repetitiveness of the source medium is thus transmediated into the target medium. Connected to the composition is the formal layout of the poem, which has the form of a geometric figure - the spiral. Its form imitates its content by means of iconicity illustrating the lines: “Past and future circle around us/ now we know more now less”, but also the overall composition of the poem with mirroring and recurring Repetition in Transmediation 37 words, lines and phrasing. Furthermore, the layout bears some resemblance to the geometric forms in the painting. Compare it, for example, with the curved street outside the diner or the protruding edge of the diner itself. As previously mentioned, Carson’s poem transmediates the medium painting in itself. This happens in several ways. First of all, the poem is framed by means of repetition; the first and the last lines are identical. Furthermore, the two lines after the first line are almost identical to the two lines before the last line, only reversed, and that underscores the framing effect. When a poem is framed it emphasizes its spatial nature and pictorial potential (see Steiner 1982: 85f. for a discussion on framing). The line “Past and future circle around us” addresses the frozen moment of the painting: the past and the future cannot interfere with the everlasting moment that is depicted. The scene is a static moment in time, incapable of change or development. The simultaneity, or rather non-sequentiality, of painting as a medium is also transmediated to some extent because of the repetition and the reversal of the first and last lines. Instead of creating a sequence with a beginning, middle and end, it closes the poem and makes it circular. It could be read the other way around, beginning with the third stanza and, in this regard, it imitates the way we look at paintings. Finally, the spiral-shaped layout emphasizes the spatiality and visuality of the poem as printed text, giving it iconic properties. In Chapter 11 of Augustine’s Confessions he discusses time, memory and expectation. Before moving on to the next target medium, a few words need to be said about how the quote from Augustine connects to the painting: Yet I say boldly that I know that if nothing passed away, time past were not. And if nothing were coming, time future were not. And if nothing were, time present were not. (Augustine, Confessions XI) (Carson 2001: 50) Here we find the famous section in which he explains how when he prays, he remembers the part he has already recited, at the same time that he is aware of the part he has yet to recite, while all the time being focused on the part that he is currently reciting. Steiner (1982) uses his reasoning to explain the spatiality and simultaneity of language: it is never completely sequential; we never focus solely on the exact words we are reading, but our attention is always directed backwards and forwards as well. The quote underscores the spatiality and simultaneity of both painting and poem. Likewise, the line “Past and future circle around us” is closely connected to Augustine’s words about time and our perception of time. Emma Tornborg 38 6. The GIFs Before analysing the final two transmediations (from painting to GIFs), let me begin by giving a brief overview of the GIF as a medium, of its repetitive nature, and of its relationship to the source medium. GIF (Graphical Interchange Format) is a relatively new way of communicating and creating. The animated GIF is a file format that loops a sequence almost seamlessly, giving the viewer the impression of an endless repetition. Created in 1987, it is only in recent years that the animated GIF has gained increased popularity and attention. As Richard Yao phrases it: “GIFs are now an essential part of the digital lexicon that younger consumers use frequently to communicate and express themselves” (Yao 2018: n.p.). When used as a way of communicating reactions to events or propositions in chats or in social media, GIFs typically consist of a short sequence from a film, a TV show, an interview, a political speech, etc., depicting someone making a funny face or a particular kind of gesture, for example, face palm or pointing. GIFs are also used as a way of modifying existing paintings or creating new artworks. There are internet sites and apps that are entirely dedicated to GIFs, such as Giphy, Tenor and Imgur. GIFs are not only used by internet consumers; they are also created by them. It is a grass roots culture in which everyone can participate. GIFs are often funny, and even when classical art is transmediated into GIFs, it is often done with a humorous twist, for example, the Mona Lisa rolling her eyes. But it can also be done in other ways, for instance, by adding subtle movements that expand the universe of the painting. Regarding movement, Camelia Gradinaru (2016: 81) points to the fact that GIFs represent the dream of adding actual movement to an image, after having used various conventions in order to create virtual motion in paintings. As Bolton and Grusin note: “Each new medium is justified because it fills a lack or repairs a fault in its predecessor, because it fulfils the unkept promise of an older medium” (Bolton and Grusin 1999: 60). It could be said that the art GIF does exactly this by replacing the implied movement of a painting with actual movement. The movement in GIFs consists of repetition. Gradinaru writes: The meaning of the repeated image is evacuated from the large meaning of the whole, and the temporal narrative can’t be accomplished. The viewer is magnetized by the repetition in itself and not by the goal of making sense. The animated GIFs transform movement into a strange repetitive moment, into a metamorphosis of a singularity. They don’t have a closure and, as suspended elements, they describe a perfect loop (Gradinaru 2016: 84). Hampus Hagman notes that the purpose of the GIF is not to tell a story; in fact, it is the opposite, to remain in the moment (Hagman 2012: n.p.). Thus, even when what is transmediated into a GIF is part of a larger narrative, Repetition in Transmediation 39 the result of the transmediation is anti-narrative; the transfer has totally changed the spatiotemporal characteristics of the source medium. Hagman refers mainly to GIFs that consist of a short excerpt from a film. When it comes to art GIFs, the situation is somewhat reversed: Whereas a cinematic GIF suspends the motion and narrative progress of the source medium by repeating the same moment over and over, the source medium of the art GIF is materially static and if motion occurs at all, it is only by means of suggestion. However, this does not necessarily mean that the GIF adds narrative or temporal progress to the painting. Instead, because the movement in a GIF is repeatedly looped, it has rather the opposite effect: it underscores the stasis of the source medium by remaining in the same moment and not allowing progress, as Katherine Brown (2012) has observed: “By removing their original context and adding perpetual repetition of a single action, they also become atemporal” (8). This is in line with how repetition in literature can function: it prevents narration and halts temporal progress. Alessandra Chiarini describes the GIF’s ambivalent relationship to temporality as follows: Made up of individual stills repeated to generate a short cyclical animation, often intermittent and potentially inexhaustible, GIF images tend to reveal, via a series of small shocks, the paradoxical nature of the moving image which turns out to be connected on many levels to stillness. (Chiarini 2016: 88) Another important aspect is that there is seldom movement in the entire GIF. Often, the movement takes place against a still background, which emphasizes both motion and stillness. This is perhaps the most prominent feature of the art GIF: the synthesis of motion and stillness, which focuses and comments on the spatiotemporal character of the source medium. The art GIF both represents and transmediates its source medium. Elleström stresses that a medium can both represent and transmediate another medium: “whereas a photograph representing a drawing of two garden gnomes is obviously a medium representing another medium, it also clearly includes repeated mediation of equivalent and actually very similar (visual) sensory configurations by another technical medium” (Elleström 2014: 17). In general, the representation is complex, since the GIF represents the complete painting, or at least a prominent part of it. It is also a complex transmediation, since most of the vital characteristics of the source medium are immediately recognizable after the transmediation process. The transformation mainly consists of what it adds to the source medium. Sometimes the only thing added is motion, but there can be other additions as well. Since every transmediation is an interpretation, the additions that are made depend on how the creator of the GIF image has interpreted the source medium. There are several GIFs that transmediate Hopper’s Nighthawks. They tend to focus on different things in their animations. The painting’s themes Emma Tornborg 40 of loneliness and isolation are transmediated with a humorous touch in the following GIF image: http: / / blog.useum.org/ post/ 142231645538/ nighthawks-by-edward-hopper-detail-gif-to. The GIF zooms in on the woman and the man sitting together, arguably the painting’s focal point. Slightly above the head of the man, a chat symbol appears (two square speech bubbles and a red square containing the digit 1 to signal a new message). Closer to the woman, two buttons appear: confirm and ignore. A mouse pointer then clicks on the ignore button and the procedure starts over. GIF images can represent both iconic and symbolic signs, although they tend to focus on iconic representations. In this case, the iconic signs dominate the GIF, but the addition includes two symbolic signs, the digit 1 and the words “confirm” and “ignore” (one could argue, however, that the dialogue boxes are conventionalized iconic signs, since they have gained a specific meaning in the age of social media). Just like the poem, this GIF image focuses on the unfulfilled relationship between the smoking man and the woman. Here (as in Carson’s poem, I would say), the man tries to reach out but is rejected. This GIF image places the scene in a modern context: the man tries to start chatting with the woman, who repeatedly declines to participate. The humorous aspect aside, it is actually a very subtle way of staging the perceived core meaning of the source media product in a context that allows a new audience to connect with it. It also reveals that the GIF maker is familiar with the painting, as well as with how it is generally interpreted and understood. As with Carson’s poem, the GIF is the result of a transmedial process in which not only content and form, but also earlier interpretations of the painting become integrated into the target media product. The second GIF image focuses on the formal aspects of the source medium: https: / / media.giphy.com/ media/ ZxLEIDDeGVNRI9xQje/ giphy.gif. In this GIF, the transformation is more profound. Although they are both digital, the previous GIF is static except for the addition, and still has its original “painterly” qualities with visible brushstrokes and colour nuances, whereas the latter has a lot of movement and is manipulated using image editing software to look more artificial and schematized. The diner scene is repeatedly constructed and deconstructed. Virtual panning shots give us an opportunity to view the diner from all sides in 3D, giving depth to the flat surface of the painting. The general features of the painting, including its repetitive patterns, remain intact in the transmediation process from source medium to target medium. Because of the iconic nature of their shared sign system, we recognize Hopper’s work immediately even though it appears in another medium with a different material interface. The painting’s repetition of shapes and forms, for example, the row of identical barstools, the windows in the opposite building and the triangular shape of the desk inside the diner that follows the shape of the building itself, is reinforced by the GIF: As the GIF recreates the painting, starting with its Repetition in Transmediation 41 shapes, forms and lines, emphasis is placed on the geometrical and repetitive composition of the source medium. Its structure therefore becomes more visible to us, almost like an x-ray. The constructing and deconstructing of the diner scene, even though this gives us an opportunity to look a little further down the street outside the diner, highlights the spatial nature of graphic images, their artificiality and status as objects: any drama that we want to read into it that is not there in front of our eyes is necessarily virtual. After all, the street ends in nothing and everything turns black. Both GIFs reform the source medium in Bolter’s and Grusin’s understanding in different ways: “We have adopted the word to express the way in which one medium is seen by our culture as reforming or improving upon another. This belief in reform is particularly strong for those who are today repurposing earlier media into digital forms” (Bolter and Grusin 1999: 59). In the present case, the transmediations have accomplished something that is technically impossible for the older medium, painting, since it involves actual movement. Whether or not the lack of motion in painting is a deficiency is, of course, debatable. As Gradinaru claims, the GIF can represent a desire to add actual movement to a painting, and it can be argued that implied movement in painting suggests such a desire. However, in Nighthawks, there is no implied movement, and stillness is one of its main features. Since repetition is inherent in all GIF images, repetition in itself can hardly be said to be the result of a transmedial process from source medium to target medium in the same way as the repetitive elements of Carson’s poem. However, when a media product such as Nighthawks is transmediated into a GIF, the repetition emphasizes many of its characteristics regarding both form and content. One example of this is found in the first GIF when the chat symbol appears repeatedly, only to be ignored. This underscores the lack of communication and reciprocality between the characters, a lack of communication that is widely attributed to the source medium, as we have seen. Another example has to do with temporality: Just like poetry, repetition can function as a time stopper in GIFs, as Hagman (2012), Brown (2012), Gradinaru (2016) and Chiarini (2016) have pointed out. By endlessly repeating the same moment, the materially static nature of painting and the represented stillness of Nighthawks are emphasized. Thus, vital characteristics of the source image are accentuated, underscored by means of the affordances of the new medium. 7. Conclusion Studies of transmediation in an intermedial context tend to focus on the theoretical aspects of this process: which mediated phenomena can be transferred and which modes are involved in the process? How do the af- Emma Tornborg 42 fordances and specificities of various media affect the transmediation process? In the present investigation of the transmedial process from one medium to two others, we have seen how formal aspects, as well as content and earlier interpretations of the painting, are transferred to poetry and to GIFs. Even though the transmediation process always entails change, I think it is safe to say that many traits of the source media product remain recognizable. One of them is repetition, a device that Wolf (2002) rightly describes as a transmedial phenomenon, in the sense that it can manifest in many different kinds of media. All phenomena that appear in media become tinged by the medium in question. The history and conventions of filmic repetition are not the same as the history and conventions of poetic repetition, for example. Repetition in a painting or in a photograph is different - materially, spatiotemporally, contextually and semiotically - from repetition in a poem or in a film. However, the spatiotemporal effect of repetition is to some extent a different issue. I argue that repetition can have equal spatiotemporal effects regardless of medium. Even though repetition in painting is often used as an indication of movement, it can also function the opposite way. In Nighthawks, I argue that the often-mentioned sense of stillness is created, among other things, by means of repetition. As we have seen, repetition often functions as a time-halting device in literature. The GIF has an ambivalent relationship to temporality: even though it consists of moving images, it often creates a sense of stillness and halted narration. Thus, within its own framework and affordances, the GIF can create a sense of stillness by means of repetition, just like the painting and the poem. As Elleström (2010) explains, the sense-data of a medium can be temporal, but the sensations it evokes might be static, vice versa: “virtual space and virtual time can be said to be manifest in the perception and interpretation of a medium when what is taken to be the represented spatiotemporal state is not the same as the spatiotemporal state of the representing material modality considered through the spatiotemporal modality” (Elleström 2010: 21). Thus, a materially temporal medium can express stillness by means of repetition in the same way as a materially static medium. In order to understand the function and effect of a device such as repetition, it must be regarded as one feature among several of a media product. The characteristics of Nighthawks that I have discerned in the target media are the themes of loneliness and isolation, repetition, as well as the geometric composition. All these characteristics together evoke a sense of timelessness, as they interact and accentuate each other. Repetition in Transmediation 43 References Bal, Mieke (2009). Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin (1999). Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. Brown, Katherine (2012). Everyday I’m Tumblin’: Performing Online Identity through Reaction GIFs. Chicago: School of the Art Institute of Chicago (diss.). Bruhn, Jørgen, Anne Gjelsvik and Eirik Frisvold Hanssen (Eds.) (2013). Adaptation Studies; New Challenges, New Directions. London & New York: Bloomsbury. 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