Abstract
Graphic screens in film are various types of surfaces (walls, blackboards, noticeboards, windows etc.) covered by the combination of texts, images and other graphical features (e. g. diagrams) whose primary purpose is a transmission of information to characters and/or viewers. The most notable cases are the walls covered with photos of suspects, crime scenes and other evidence material which are ubiquitous in today's detective TV series.
They perform various tasks: introducing viewers to the case, helping them follow complex story lines or serving as a "mere" attribute of the process of investigation. Probably the most interesting (at least from the perspective of visual studies) is their function as an analytical tool - a medium that enables detective to find new clues through visual analysis.
Thus, we often see scenes where film detectives gaze at their evidence walls in the expectation of the "eureka moment". The presentation will examine this particular function of cinematic evidence walls with the aid of the concept of hyperimage by Felix Thürlemann, who studied analytical advantages of spatial montages of images in the case of art-historical investigation (e. g. the Atlas Mnemosyne of Aby Warburg).
Are cinematic evidence walls just a fictional trope or a useful analytical tool? Can they produce new knowledge and if so, which (design) conditions must be fulfilled? These are the main questions that will be discussed in the presentation.