Art and Science in Word and Image investigates the theme of 'riddles of form', exploring how discovery and innovation have functioned inter-dependently between art, literature and the sciences. Using the impact of evolutionary biologist D'Arcy Thompson's On Growth and Form on Modernist practices as springboard into the theme, contributors consider engagements with mysteries of natural form in painting, photography, fiction, etc., as well as theories about cosmic forces, and other fields of knowledge and enquiry. Hence the collection also deals with topics including cultural inscriptions of gardens and landscapes, deconstructions of received history through word and image artworks and texts, experiments in poetic materiality, graphic re-mediations of classic fiction, and textual transactions with animation and photography. Contributors are: Dina Aleshina, Marcia Arbex, Donna T. Canada Smith, Calum Colvin, Francis Edeline, Philippe Enrico, Etienne Fevrier, Madeline B. Gangnes, Eric T. Haskell, Christina Ionescu, Tim Isherwood, Matthew Jarron, Philippe Kaenel, Judy Kendall, Catherine Lanone, Kristen Nassif, Solange Ribeiro de Oliveira, Eric Robertson, Frances Robertson, Cathy Roche-Liger, David Skilton, Melanie Stengele, Barry Sullivan, Alice Tarbuck, Frederik Van Dam.

This collection examines the relationship between illustration and adaptation from an intermedial and transcultural perspective. It aims to foster a dialogue between two fields that co-exist without necessarily acknowledging advances in each other’s domains, providing an argument for defining illustration as a form of adaptation, as well as an intermedial practice that redefines what we mean by adaptation. The volume embraces both a specific and an extended definition of illustration that accounts for its inclusion among the web of adaptive practices that developed with the rise of new media and intermediality. The contributors explore how crossovers may contribute to reappraise their objects, and rely on a transmedial and interdisciplinary corpus exploring the boundaries between illustration and other media such as texts, graphic novels, comics, theatre, film and mobile applications. Arguably adaptation, like intermediality, is an umbrella term that covers a variety of practices and products, and both of them have been shaped by intense debates over their boundaries and internal definitions. Illustration belongs to each of these areas, and this volume proposes insight into how illustration not only relates to adaptation and intermediality but how each field is redefined, enriched and also challenged by such interactions.