Visualisation of Written Culture with Digital Collage and Woman Representation: Visualisation of Woman Figure in the Mountain and Sea Themed Turkish Cypriot Legends

Abstract

This study aimed to visualise the written versions of legends, which can transform the intangible culture as one of the significant parts of culture covering human facts and some habits like art, customs, traditions, into the tangible culture which is the other part of culture, through certain theme/s. Within this perspective, the study aimed to transform the women and discursive representation styles given in the Turkish Cypriot legends into visual representation in addition to creating an absolute language through the use of homogenous indicators. The study discussed the woman described with the ‘passive’, ‘oppressed’, ‘victim’ and ‘sinful’ features, in brief her marginalisation with the patriarchal legend structure through the use of semiotics. For the visualisation of legends, regardless the positive or negative consequence of woman, the ‘torn paper – collage with its popular name – texture was used to create a common language and the emotions to be reflected were symbolised with various colours. The content references of colours were taken into account; for instance, purple was used in the images that woman was downtrodden and blue in the images with the dominant male hegemony. Since the themes covered generally referred to the ‘mother nature’, the woman figures were illustrated as naked delivering the woman in her purest, simplest and most natural self without the social status indicators symbolised by the clothes. The main scene and woman figures, mountain and sea motifs in the selected legends were re-fictionalised in the digital environment and finalised with the illustration. As the effectiveness of pictorial elements in teaching and facilitating to remember the legends, as a cultural element within the main scope of this study is known, the legends were illustrated through the digital collage method. Therefore, the contribution was aimed to be reflected on the permanence and popularity of legends as a cultural product and verbal asset with the benefits of visual and artistic language.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2017.v8n3p45