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How metaphor functions as a vehicle of thought: Creativity as a necessity for knowledge building and communication

ABSTRACT Within this article we will question several common assumptions regarding knowledge building and dissemination, including scientific knowledge, and will argue that creativity is an essential component, as exemplified through a discussion of one of the works of Jack Ox and the centrality of metaphor in her body of work. The framework for this discussion is based on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, which assumes that metaphor is a mode of thought underlying our understanding of the world around us. Accepting that metaphor is not a figure of speech, but a mode of thought, allows the investigation of metaphor underlying multimodal literacy, questioning the variability in expression of thought within and among modes, i.e. the role of transmodal metaphor, or intermedia, in knowledge building and communication. The context for evaluation is based on a collaboration and ongoing dialogue between the authors of this article in their work. Van der Elst and Ox have approached the subject of creativity and knowledge from different angles that allow Ox to revisit her work from over a decade ago from a theoretical perspective. The first part of the article describes the theoretical position emerging from these discussions. In the second part, Ox uses this thought structure to evaluate the creative process and knowledge transfer from one medium to another, which she accomplished as a practicing artist. The focus of the article is on a six-year-long production (1990–1996), Jack Ox's visualization of Kurt Schwitters' ‘Ursonate’ (Ox 1993; Hossmann and Ox 1998). By looking at one completed, extensive, creative conception, it is possible to delineate and separate two distinctly different kinds of mapping, intermedia and implicit inferences. Ox's current work in the Virtual Color Organ™ is also briefly introduced as it relates to the move into a scale-less world of virtual reality and 3D sense experience.