Virtual grafix: a new kind of fiction

The title ‘ Virtual Gra fi x ’ was fi rst attached to an audio adaptation of the fi rst section of an as-yet-unpublished graphic novel called Razor ’ s Edge . The adaptation, albeit produced by an independent radio company and o ff ered to the B.B.C. by that company, has itself never been broadcast. Is the parallel itself ambiguous? The idea of caption, dialogue and art equalling narration, dialogue and plot may be too formulaic to be the whole story(!) The visuals of a comic or graphic novel would achieve a satisfaction of e ff ect a fi ctograph lacks without lessening abstruseness. ‘ Presence ’ is a more appropriately open-ended term for that satisfaction. Audio plays have both speci fi cs in the form of words, and suggestives in the form of sounds: the overall context of the medium makes the words speci fi c. So might it be that the overall context of fi ctographics, words sans actual images, gives the words an enhanced speci fi city? Almost a visual speci fi city or ‘ presence ’ ? Giving them the integrality mentioned earlier?