Conduct peer review on drafts of your synthesis projects.
Open your visual.
Open up a blank Word document and put these questions into it:
What’s the purpose of this visual? How does the visual use different elements, color, and font choices to achieve its purpose? Is there anything that needs to be changed to help the visual better achieve its purpose?
Does the visual appeal to its intended audience? Does anything need to be changed to make it appeal more?
What do you like about the visual? What do you dislike?
What suggestions do you have to improve the visual?
Move to the computer of the person next to you and answer the questions in their Word document.
Move on to another person’s computer after you’ve finished. Try to answer questions for at least three people.
When you’re finished, look over the visuals and the feedback you’ve received and use that to help you consider your decisions.
After spending most of a semester discussing, analyzing, and redesigning pieces of visual communication, your final task in the class will be to create your own piece of visual communication. This could be any piece of communication where visual rhetoric plays an important part, such as a series of advertisements, materials for public relations, layout for a book or textbook, a Web site, animation or video clip, or other work. Choose something which reflects your interests, talents, and/or future plans. Choose a project that has sufficient length and scope to take up the last two weeks of class.
To complete the project, you must:
Write a one to two page proposal where you explain the rhetorical situation for your project, your proposed design, and the technologies, images, and resources you will use to create the project. The proposal is due to the instructor by email on April 23rd.
Create the piece and submit a digital and/or print version for peer review on April 30 and a final version by May 9.
Write a one to two page reflective essay which explains the rhetorical situation for your project and why you made the choices you did. This is due with the final version of your project.
This project will be assessed on how well you design the project so that it is rhetorically appropriate and effective for its context. It will also be assessed on how well you explain and justify your choices and show how they relate to principles for visual rhetoric. You can earn a total of 250 points for this project (25% of your course grade).
Answer the following questions about each person’s draft:
What are the visuals being analyzed? Are they clearly described or provided? Do you need more description or explanation to understand what they are?
What is the context for these visuals? What outside sources does the writer cite to help you understand the context? Are there places where you do not understand or where further explanation of the context is needed?
What are the writer’s critieria for analysis and how do they justify them?
Is the analysis clear? Are there places where you don’t understand or need further explanation?
What suggestions would you make for revision?
Sign up for conference times.
Assignments for Next Class
Sign up for conference time; complete peer review (if not finished in class).
ATTEND CONFERENCE INSTEAD OF CLASS ON MONDAY OR TUESDAY.
Who (or what phenomenon) is being studied? Who is the audience?
What material are you examining?
Where does this material appear?
When was this material published? What else was happening when it was published? Is the material a response to or a participant in obvious historical or social concerns, issues, or movements?
How does the material relate to the larger social, ethical, or historical issues at play?
Why was the material created?
Work on your analysis papers.
Remember that you should bring in outside research to help people understand the context, to understand similar past research, and to establish your criteria for analysis. Let me know if you’re having trouble finding outside research.
Each group will be assigned one analysis to examine and present to the class. Here are the questions for your group to answer and present (you may use visual aids if you like):
What is the material being analyzed?
What context does the analysis provide about the visuals, the genre(s) they belong to, and the social, ethical, or political issues surrounding them?
How is the analysis conducted? (What does the writer or writers do to collect and examine data and draw conclusions?)
What conclusions does the writer draw?
What are the implications of these conclusions?
Do you agree with these conclusions? Why or why not?
Can you think of and locate similar material to the material being analyzed? Do you think these conclusions apply to it as well?
Work on brainstorming topics and collecting materials for your analyses.
Assignments for Next Class
All students: make final choice of visuals to analyze for paper; email instructor.
Be prepared to present your visuals to the class and discuss your possible methods for analysis.
Today we’ll go over the guidelines for writing a visual analysis paper and discuss the sample visual analysis that you read for today. We’ll also analyze the rhetorical situation and brainstorm possible topics for your visual analyses.
Today we’ll discuss more sample rhetorical analyses and then you’ll work on your visual analyses.
Assignments for Next Class
All students: make final choice of visuals to analyze for paper; email instructor.
Be prepared to present your visuals to the class and discuss your possible methods for analysis.
Friday, April 4
Today we’ll continue to discuss and work on your visual analysis papers.
To help you continue to think critically about visual rhetoric, you will now write an analysis which explains how the principles and issues we have discussed all semester are operating in a piece of visual communication (or a piece of communication with strong visual components).
You have two choices for this assignment:
Choose a specific piece of communication (such as an advertisement) and conduct an analysis of how it communicates meaning to the reader through its use of different visual elements (and their significance) as well as the social and ethical implications of how it does so. You could also compare two pieces of communication with similar purposes and discuss how they use different or similar methods to accomplish this purpose and why they do so. OR
Choose a set of visuals which have a common element and conduct a content analysis which posits and tests a hypothesis about the way they represent the world and make meaning (for example: how representations on a specific magazine cover have changed over time).
The piece of communication you choose could be any piece of communication where visual rhetoric plays an important part. Although most of our examples in class will focus on advertising, you do not need to focus on advertising for this assignment: you could also look at any type of work that uses visuals or has a predominantly visual focus, including paintings, sculpture, film, television, Web pages, museum exhibits, or other works of your choosing. Choose something which reflects your interests, talents, or future plans.
You should cite outside research (including any of the work you have read for this class) to help develop and sustain the analysis that you are making — for example, you might make reference to similar analyses or cite information which provides context for your analysis. You will have time in class to do outside research. You should cite information from outside sources using MLA or APA style.
For undergraduate students, the paper should be six to eight pages; for graduate students, the paper should be between twelve and fifteen pages.
This paper will be assessed on how well you analyze the piece of communication using the principles for visual rhetoric discussed in class. It will also be assessed how well you use and attribute information from the readings to shape your analysis and on your use of standard written English. You can earn a total of 250 points for this paper (25% of your course grade).
Due Dates
Topic/visuals due via email: April 4
First draft due: April 11
Final draft due: April 16
Discuss your observations about online identity production and Web page design.
Visual arrangement of information (layout): where elements are placed on a page and how elements are delineated from each other (content, headings, navigation, whitespace, contrast)
Use of visuals or visual elements as content or to influence the reader/create a “look and feel” (images, video, animation, color, fonts)
How is information usually arranged on profiles? Why do you think it is arranged that way?
What visual elements do people choose to represent themselves on Web pages? Are there expectations (or tropes) for how people present themselves visually in pictures and what visual elements they choose for self-representation and presentation? What are they? Why do you think they are the way they are?
What is the standard “look and feel” of profiles? Are there expectations, and if so, what are they? How do people use color, fonts, images, and animation to create an overall visual impression?
Discuss the visual arrangement of information and the use of visuals to convey meaning in Web design.
What do these two things have to do with visual rhetoric?
How do designers take these two concepts (as well as principles bout visual arrangement and visual content) into account when creating Web pages? What happens when they don’t?
Your mission, should you choose to accept it:
Choose one of the worst Web pages of 2007 that we didn’t discuss in class, or another Web site that you feel is unsuccessful at creating a good visual presentation, and write at least a paragraph that makes reference to specific visual principles or ideas that explains why it fails.
Discuss how visual rhetoric and visual culture connect to and function within online environments.
Key terms:
Information age
Information economy
Information overload
Information architecture/design
Arrangement
Attention economy
Networked economy
Web 2.0
Social networking
Online identity
Identity production
Ethos
Self-presentation
Audience awareness
Examine some examples of online identity production and discuss them.
Please choose an online profile (yours or someone else’s or one for a group or organization with which you are familiar) and answer the following questions about it. When you have finished, email the answers to the instructor.
What’s the purpose of this profile? Does it fulfill this purpose? Why or why not?
Who is the audience for this profile? How does the creator address and appeal to a specific audience?
How is information arranged visually on the profile? Is this an effective arrangement? Why or why not?
How are images and/or multimedia used and arranged on the profile? Is this an effective arrangement? Why or why not?
What type of ethos does the creator project with this profile and how do visuals contribute to the creation of that ethos? Do you think that the ethos created here matches up with other presentations of this person or group? Why or why not? Is the ethos effective or appropriate?
Do you find this profile an effective or useful representation of the person or group? Why or why not? How do visuals work or not work to help create that representation?
Today we’ll make sure that everyone has finalized their visual redesign projects. Then we’ll discuss issues and principles of visual rhetoric as they apply to the creation and production of identity online and the concept of information overload.
Open up a blank Word document and put these questions into it:
What’s the purpose of this visual? How does the visual use different elements, color, and font choices to achieve its purpose? Is there anything that needs to be changed to help the visual better achieve its purpose?
Does the visual appeal to its intended audience? Does anything need to be changed to make it appeal more?
What do you like about the visuals? Which version do you like better and why?
What suggestions do you have to improve either or both of these visuals?
Move to the computer of the person next to you and answer the questions in their Word document.
Move on to another person’s computer after you’ve finished. Try to answer questions for at least three people.
When you’re finished, look over the visuals and the feedback you’ve received and use that to help you consider your decisions.
Continue working on your redesign projects.
Assignment for Next Class
Continue working on redesign projects and reflective essays.
This project asks you revise and redesign a piece of visual communication to make it more effective and appropriate for its rhetorical situation. While the instructor must approve your choice of material, you may choose any short piece which matches your interests and is appropriate for a classroom setting.
To complete this project, you should:
Choose a piece of visual communication (print or digital) to revise: it could be an advertisement, a public service announcement, the splash page for a Web site, a poster, a sign or display, a PowerPoint presentation, or any other short communication where visual rhetoric and design are important. It must be a static piece of communication; video or multimedia is not acceptable for this project.
Choose one of the following options:
revise and redesign the piece of communication so that it is more effective and appropriate for its rhetorical context while still containing the original message OR
create a recontextualization, remix, mashup, or parody of the piece which subverts or comments on its original message.
Write a one to two page reflective essay which explains why you made the choices you did in your revision and which principles of visual rhetoric and visual design you chose to apply.
You’ll create two different “draft” versions of your visual for peer review; those will be due on Monday, March 10. The final version of your project plus reflective essay is due (in print or digital form) on Friday, March 14.
This project will be assessed on how well you redesign the piece so that it is rhetorically appropriate and effective for its context or how well you comment on the original message by satirizing the visual elements and rhetoric present. It will also be assessed on how well you explain and justify your choices and show how they relate to principles for visual rhetoric. You can earn a total of 200 points for this project (20% of your course grade).
You have two choices for this assignment. Choose one.
1) Create an original comic of your own which conveys a specific message. The comic does not have to be drawn; you could also assemble it from “found pictures” or clip art or use a sprite comic maker or comic creator to create it.
Discuss the readings on their own and as they apply to your comics.
Write about these things for a bit:
Who is the audience for your comic?
How does the creator appeal to the audience?
What is the purpose of the comic?
What message is the comic sending?
What are the visual elements in your comic?
What are the major color and font choices?
How do these choices convey the message?
Why do you think that the artist made these choices?
Tell me about this painting and how McCloud uses it.
How does McCloud define “icon?” What kinds of icons are there?
According to McCloud and according to you, “What is the secret of the icon we call the cartoon?” and “Why are we so involved [with cartoons]?”
What is the “way of seeing” or the “focus” that cartoons present? What does this say about our culture, and about “the visual turn?”
How do the comics you have brought in represent reality? Is it in a photorealistic way or in a more abstract way? How does that change the message being presented and the way the reader reacts and interacts with it?
Watterson says:
Amazingly, much of the best cartoon work was done early on in the medium’s history. The early cartoonists, with no path before them, produced work of such sophistication, wit, and beauty that it increasingly seems to me that cartoon evolution is working backward. Comic strips are moving toward a primordial goo rather than away from it. As a cartoonist, it’s a bit humiliating to read work that was done over 50 years ago and find it more imaginative than what any of us are doing now. We’ve lost many of the most precious qualities of comics. Most readers today have never seen the best comics of the past, so they don’t even know what they’re missing. Not only can comics be more than we’re getting today. but the comics already have been more than we’re getting today. The reader is being gypped and he doesn’t even know it.
Consider only the most successful strips in the papers today. Why ate so many of them poorly drawn? Why do so many offer only the simplest interchangeable gags and puns? Why are some strips written by committees and drawn by assistants? Why are some strips still stumbling around decades after their original creators have retired or died? Why are some strips little more than advertisements for dolls and greeting cards? Why do so many of the comics look the same? If comics can be so much, why are we settling for so little? Can’t we expect more from our comics pages?
Do you agree or disagree with these statements? How? Why? Why not?
What factors does Watterson identify as the causes of these problems? Do you agree with him? Why or why not?
How has the Web (and webcomics) changed the possibilities for comics and cartoons? Is this change positive, negative, or both?
Is the comic you have brought in from the newspaper or from another medium? How do you think the context that it has been published in has affected its content, message, and style?
Discuss the rhetorical considerations for mini-project four.
Who’s the audience? What appeals to them? (Visually or otherwise.)
What’s the message being sent by the ad? How will you design one to have a rhetorical impact on the audience?
What appeals (logos, ethos, pathos) might you use, and how might you use visuals to achieve those appeals?
What will be the primary visual elements in your ad?
What font and color choices will be most appropriate for the context of this ad? How will the ad tie into existing font and color choices made by the client?
Analyze and share the advertisements you brought in.
Please answer these questions and e-mail them to the instructor for sharing with the class.
How would you classify your ad accoridng to the categories in the “Twelve Kinds of Ads” article?
Who is the audience for the advertisement and how does the ad appeal (visually and non-visually) to the audience?
What are the primary visual elements in the ad, and how are they arranged?
How are colors and font choices (if there is text in the ad) used to specific effect in the ad?
Are any visual elements used to signify or symbolize other things (such as ads which use “associated user imagery”)? What are the primary visual elements and what are they signifying or symbolizing?
If there are people in the advertisement, how are they posed, and how are their gazes directed? (Refer to the second article for help with this question.)
Is the ad rhetorically effective? Why or why not? How do visuals play a role in that?
This project asks you to apply some of the principles and concepts of visual rhetoric as they are used in advertising to create a print advertisement for a specific client.
Right now, the Writing Center at Niagara University is experiencing a shortage of students, and Heather McEntarfer, the director, has asked faculty for suggestions on how to advertise in ways that reach out to students and explain the positive benefits that visiting the writing center can have on their grades and on their development as students and writers.
For this assignment, please create a visually-focused advertisement which could either appear in posters and flyers on campus or which could appear on the University’s Web site which encourages students to visit the writing center for tutoring.
These guidelines on preparing print ads may be helpful. Be sure to use images that are royalty-free or issued under a license which allows people to re-use them in other projects. See any of the links in the “Finding Images” section of the course Web site for help with finding images that you are allowed to re-use without violating copyright. If you would like to use pictures of NU, here is a royalty-free picture archive of some that you can use.
The assignment (in print or electronic form) is due on February 29th and is worth 20 points. Submissions will be passed on to the Writing Center director, who may contact you to ask you for permission to use them.
What aspects of the ballot might you have found confusing as a voter?
How does this ballot differ from ballots that you might have used to vote?
What aspects of the ballot do you find confusing or troubling from a visual design standpoint?
Whose responsibility ultimately was it to make sure that the ballots were used correctly?
The designer of the ballot said that she was attempting to make the ballot easier to use for the elderly by making the names on the ballot bigger. This change lead to the need for the butterfly ballot, since all ten candidates could not be presented on the same page of a normal ballot. How did her decision impact the way the ballot was designed? How could she have accomplished the same goal without causing that problem?
What should be done to help prevent situations like this from occurring again?
Good information design develops a visual logic for the document that clearly signals the reader as to how information is to be interpreted so that they can create meaning and/or take action. It organizes related information and separates unrelated information; it signals important elements and indicates the relationship(s) between pieces of information. The visual layout of information on the page (including the use of white space, headings, bolding, lines, and other visual cues) can help a reader to understand and follow the document. As we’ve seen in this class, poorly arranged information can have real-world consequences in terms of how people use the information to make decisions.
The 2000 election in Florida asked voters to use “butterfly ballots” to vote for presidential candidates and other local candidates. Many people claimed that the ballots were confusing to use because of how the candidate information was presented. While the designers sent out sample ballots for voter approval, they never asked voters to use the ballots, nor did they conduct any formal usability testing. The ballot is presented below.
(image from CNN.com)
Your assignment is to design an alternative ballot that re-arranges the same information found on the butterfly ballot in a way that you feel is easy for voters to understand and use. Here are the guidelines for your redesign:
We’re going to assume that voters will still be punching their ballots (rather than using electronic voting systems), and that the ballots will be standard sized (no larger than a normal piece of paper).
Your ballot must include all ten candidate pairs listed on the butterfly ballot.
You may either design your ballot by hand or produce it on a computer.
Your re-designed ballot is due on February 25. It will be graded and worth 20 points.
What would it be like today if presidential candidates “remained silent” and stayed home? Given our visual culture, is that even possible?
How do the changes in how presidential candidates represent themselves (and are represented as themselves) mirror the larger “visual turn” that our culture has taken?
How have new technologies for producing and broadcasting visuals (and/or other forms of media) continued to change the visual-rhetorical tactics of US presidents and people who would be president? (Or the political landscape in general?) In other words, what recent media developments has Keller not covered in this article?
Do you agree with Keller’s rather pessimistic assessment of the visual rhetoric of current US presidencies as being one that is devoted to “the production of moving television stories about itself, making discursive speech progressively expendable”? Is “the presidency is on its way to become a completely watertight, self-referential, pictorial system”? Why or why not?
How do campaign logos (as discussed in the New York Times article) fit into the discussion of the visual rhetoric of US presidencies that Keller discusses?
What “stories” are the 2008 presidential logos telling? Are they effective stories?
What critiques of the visual designs of the logos does Sutton offer? What elements of the logos does he critique? Do you agree with these critiques? Why or why not?
Sutton’s article concludes with “Then again, all campaign logos are in the eyes of the beholders.” What does he mean by this?
Analyze and share the pieces of political visual rhetoric that you brought to class.
Please write down the answers to these questions and then email them to the instructor. Volunteers will be asked to share their logo and their answers to these questions with the class.
Questions:
Is it rhetorically and/or visually effective? (Does it persuade the viewer? Why or why not? Which viewers might it persuade and which ones might it dissuade?)
Why is it rhetorically and/or visually effective? (How does it affect the viewer?)
How was the visual designed to achieve a certain rhetorical impact? (Explain how it works; use some of the tools and terms we’ve been using this semester.)
Discuss the readings and the issues raised in the last class.
Questions for group investigation (each group gets a question and five minutes to discuss and prepare a response, then emails it to the instructor) and then whole-class discussion:
What are the arguments being made in the Kress article?
What are the arguments being made in the Hawisher et. al article?
What are the literate practices described in the Hawisher et. al article and the Kress article and what do they have in common? How are they different?
What is the “future of literacy” described in the Hawisher et. al article?
What do these arguments have to do with visual culture or visual rhetoric?
Do you agree with the arguments being made in these articles? Why or why not?
How is our visual culture shaping education? What ideas or concepts from the “visual culture” are shaping it or should shape it the most?
How is education depicted or represented visually in in our culture?
in media?
in textbooks?
in classrooms?
in advertising?
in architecture?
in art?
Work on some visual exercises from the visual exercises CD.
Today we’ll continue discussing some issues related to visual rhetoric and visual culture in educational settings. You’ll also have time to work on some visual exercises from your CDs.
Find an example of political visual rhetoric (digital or print; any time period you’d like) and bring it to class.
Wednesday, February 20
Today we’ll discuss issues related to visual rhetoric and visual culture in political settings. We’ll also go over the guidelines for Mini-Project Three.
create your own primarily visual depiction of your vision of students today. Your “vision” does not have to explicitly refer to any of the video nor does it have to imitate that style, but you could also use any of the ideas in there as a starting point.
You may create any type of visual depiction you like (photo montage or collage, PowerPoint presentation, chart or graph, poster, short series of video clips or short animation, etc.)
You may use outside sources for visuals and text in your work, but you must credit them (either with a set of credits at the end of your work or by captioning pictures and/or quotations within the work itself; choose whichever one would work best for your project).
This will be graded and worth 20 points. This time the instructor will use a rubric and assign points for quality. The assignment is due on February 18.
Today we’ll introduce some issues related to visual rhetoric and visual culture in educational settings. We’ll also go over the guidelines for mini-project two and you’ll have time to work on them.
What were the key problems in visual communication?
What principles of visual communication/visual rhetoric should have been (or should be) used to clearly communicate and present information visually?
How could the presentation of information been improved in both cases?
How should key relationships, significances, and conclusions be presented to non-experts?
What principles or ideas about visual communication and visual rhetoric for the workplace and/or for the presentation of data and evidence can we take from this?
“Information displays should be documentary, comparative, causal and explanatory, quantified, multivariate, exploratory, and skeptical.” (Tufte)
Okay. So how do you do that?
Work on your case studies.
Assignments for Next Class (Monday)
Undergraduate students: Case study due.
Grad students: work on literature review.
(There was reading here, but I moved it to next week.)
This assignment is for graduate students only; undergraduate students will work on the case study instead.
To complete this assignment, you must:
Choose a topic in visual rhetoric in which you are interested. You may also use this topic (and the literature review) to help you write the critical analysis paper later in the semester.
Email the instructor with your possible topic.
Research and read at least ten (10) works related to your topic (for example: articles in journals and/or edited collections, books, exhibits, online resources). You may use some or all of the assigned readings as part of the literature review, but you must also locate additional sources.
Write a five to seven page literature review which organizes, summarizes, and synthesizes these works.
Use MLA or APA style to attribute sources.
The literature review is due on Friday, February 22nd.
You can earn up to worth 150 points for the literature review (15% of the course grade).
The power of rhetoric, especially visual rhetoric, is most noticeable when it goes awry. Theorists have argued that poorly-designed visual communication played a significant part in the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters. Because the people at NASA could not clearly understand some of the data due to poor visual presentation, they formed a flawed idea of the data which shaped their decision-making.
In this project, you will:
Read articles analyzing the visual communication issues at work in these two disasters as well as articles about the principles and practices of visual rhetoric.
Analyze some of the actual visuals (PowerPoint slide and charts) used in both cases.
Write a four to six page paper (with accompanying visuals; visuals are part of the page count) where you:
Analyze the charts and slides in question and discuss how principles of visual rhetoric and visual design apply to them.
Compare and contrast how faulty information design played a key role in both disasters.
Summarize the analyses of other sources and discuss whether or not you agree with them and why.
Make recommendations for how NASA should present and arrange information in the future.
Choose a piece of information that played a key role in the disaster and create a visual presentation of the information that presents the points more clearly and effectively.
You should cite information from outside sources using MLA or APA style.
This paper will be assessed on how well you explicate how poor visual communication contributed to the disasters and make recommendations for changes. It will also be assessed on how well you use and attribute information from the readings to shape your analysis and recommendations and on your use of standard written English. You can earn a total of 150 points for this paper (15% of your course grade).
What’s Tufte’s main problem with PowerPoint presentations as they’re used in the business and academic worlds? What are the “corrupts within” and what should we do about them? What is “chartjunk” and how can we get rid of them?
What points does Byrne make in his defense of PowerPoint?
Anderson’s presentation argues that “Eye candy Aesthetics is a critical business requirement” and “Pretty is function.” What does that mean? What do you think about that?
How can we (use visual rhetoric to) make better presentations of evidence and better products?
What methods should we use to present information in the workplace?
What kinds of visual languages (or what sets of images) and what arrangements of information work best to communicate complicated information and statistical data in the workplace?
Undergraduate students: Read “The Challenger: An Information Disaster“: “The Feynnman-Tufte Principle“; “Corrupt Evidence Presentations” (pp. 140-155) and review passages on Columbia (pp. 162-168) in Tufte.
Graduate students: Read “Delivering the Message” in Handa; choose topic for literature review.
Today we’ll discuss the readings, all of which relate to the use of PowerPoint for the design and presentation of information in the workplace, and then review the guidelines for the case study assignment.
Assignments for Next Class
Undergraduate students: Read “The Challenger: An Information Disaster,” “Corrupt Evidence Presentations” (pp. 140-155) and review passages on Columbia (pp. 162-168) in Tufte.
Graduate students: Read “Delivering the Message” in Handa; choose topic for literature review.
Wednesday, February 6
Today we’ll discuss the case study readings, highlight their key points and implications, and you’ll have time to work on your case studies.
Assignments for Next Class
Undergrad students: Work on case study.
Grad students: work on literature review.
Friday, February 8
The instructor has to meet with a visiting job candidate (again! But this is the last time!) today. You’ll have studio time to work on your case studies, including your visual re-presentations and can e-mail her with questions. If you need to have the lab opened, just ask the people at the help desk.
Assignments for Next Class
Undergraduate students: Case study due.
Grad students: work on literature review.
(There was reading here, but I’ve moved it to next week.)
Your first mini-project is to make a postcard that could be submitted to the PostSecret project. Follow the guidelines given on the PostSecret site for creating postcards: .
Since this is a class project, obviously the instructor will know your secret (as will your classmates if they look around), so you will want to keep that in mind as you choose your secret. However, do not put your name on your final postcard — please attach a sticky note or a small scrap of paper with your name so that a grade can be assigned. The instructor will stamp and mail the postcards to PostSecret for you.
You can earn 20 points for completing this project — it’s a “do it or don’t” sort of grade.
Questions, quotes, and other spurs for discussion:
What is Benjamin saying about art, photography, and film? What larger social changes did he identify that film and photography exemplify?
What does Benjamin mean by “aura” and how do film and photography challenge it? What does he mean by “an orchid in the land of technology”?
Benjamin’s essay was written over 70 years ago. (How) Is it still relevant to today? What changes would a version written today have to take into account?
What’s “the gaze” and what are these “theories” about it?
What are Benjamin’s theory and theories of the gaze saying about how we perceive, understand, and make meaning out of the world around us? What do they tell us about our visual culture?
What does any of this have to do with visual rhetoric?
“Around 1900, technical reproduction had reached a standard that not only permitted it to reproduce all transmitted works of art and thus to cause the most profound change in their impact upon the public; it also had captured a place of its own among the artistic processes. For the study of this standard nothing is more revealing than the nature of the repercussions that these two different manifestations–the reproduction of works of art and the art of the film–have had on art in its traditional form.”
“To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility.”
” For the first time, captions have become obligatory. And it is clear that they have an altogether different character than the title of a painting. The directives which the captions give to those looking at pictures in illustrated magazines soon become even more explicit and more imperative in the film where the meaning of each single picture appears to be prescribed by the sequence of all preceding ones.”
“The audience’s identification with the actor is really an identification with the camera. Consequently the audience takes the position of the camera; its approach is that of testing.”
“The film responds to the shriveling of the aura with an artificial build-up of the “personality” outside the studio. The cult of the movie star, fostered by the money of the film industry, preserves not the unique aura of the person but the “spell of the personality,” the phony spell of a commodity.”
“Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art. The reactionary attitude toward a Picasso painting changes into the progressive reaction toward a Chaplin movie. The progressive reaction is characterized by the direct, intimate fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment with the orientation of the expert. Such fusion is of great social significance. The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.”
” The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web.<14> There is a tremendous difference between the pictures they obtain. That of the painter is a total one, that of the cameraman consists of multiple fragments which are assembled under a new law.”
Duhamel, who detests the film and knows nothing of its significance, though something of its structure, notes this circumstance as follows: “I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images.”
“Reception in a state of distraction, which is increasing noticeably in all fields of art and is symptomatic of profound changes in apperception, finds in the film its true means of exercise.”
Work on Mini-Project One (PostSecret). Have a topic chosen and a possible image or postcard to work with; bring them to class on Wednesday so that you can work on it in class.
Today we’ll discuss the articles that you read, and then you’ll be assigned mini-project one, which asks you to create a PostSecret card.
Assignments for Next Class
Work on Mini-Project One (PostSecret). Have a topic chosen and a possible image or postcard to work with; bring them to class on Wednesday so that you can work on it in class.
Wednesday, January 30
Today we’ll review some principles for considering images, and then you’ll have some studio time to work on your PostSecret projects.
Please create a visual using a specific sign which demonstrates your understanding of the following terms:
Sign
Signifier
Signified
Denotation
Connotation
Narratives/Myths
Codes
Ideology
(Hint: see this image for a model, but you don’t have to do it that way.) Email your visual to the instructor when you’re done.
More useful terms:
Symbolic
Iconic
Indexical
Questions and ideas to think about:
“What do connotations, narratives, and myths do to us? Do semiotic systems have any effect on human behavior? If we were exposed to different signs, would our lives be different?”
“How do individuals, busy living inside our culture, make sense of this complicated flood? Of all these complicated sign systems, which ones make a difference, and how do they make a difference?”
“The preceding analysis of signs in the media suggests that people’s attitudes and actions in cases of things like war may not be simply a matter of facts, lies, and distortions in the media, of truths and falsehoods. It suggests that structures of cultural common sense addressed and reinforced in the media — the “folklore” of the industrial world — operate less on a level of truth and falsehood than on a level of association and imagery.” What does that mean and why does that matter?
Work on exploring more terms used in visual analysis and production.
Finish defining rhetoric, communication, visual rhetoric, and visual communication.
We’ll hear our last two definitions, and then talk about all four of them and how we might use them.
Discuss the articles that we read for today and for last Friday.
Some questions to get us started:
What terms do they use to talk about visuals, images, and visual rhetoric?
Visual culture
Visual literacy
Visual design
Visual rhetoric
Visual analysis
Visual communication
Visual event
Mapped pictures
What is a “visual culture” and what does it mean to live in one?
What did the articles say about living in a visual culture?
What types of visuals are they examining, and how do they do the analysis?
What is a map?
What are the writers saying about maps and what and how maps represent reality?
Is the rise of visual culture dangerous? Is it making us stupid?
Is seeing believing? Is seeing “more than believing” (Mirzoeff)?
Why does visual rhetoric matter? What can it do for us/to us?
Examine two terms used in visual rhetoric: element and contrast.
On the IX Visual Exercises CD, work through the “Element and Contrast” exercises and answer questions in the “Assignment” section for “Contrast”: email answers to questions to the instructor.
Today we’ll finish generating our working definitions of various important terms. Then we’ll move into discussing and analyzing the articles you read for today in terms of what they are saying about living in a visual culture and the terms and concepts they identify as important. Finally, we’ll work with some terms used in the analysis and production of visual rhetoric: element and contrast using the IX Visual Exercises CD.
Please bring the IX Visual Exercises CD with you to class all this week.
Friday, January 25
Today we’ll discuss another important theory for understanding visual rhetoric: semiotics. We’ll also continue working with different terms used in the analysis and production of visual rhetoric using the IX Visual Exercises CD.
Come up with working definitions for rhetoric, communication, visual rhetoric, and visual communication
You’ll work in groups for this activity. Each group will have a term to define.
For this activity, please use the definitions that you and your classmates wrote (link to that), and the information provided in the readings and video clip for today. If you do not feel that this is a sufficient amount of information, you are also welcome to search the Web for more information.
Determine what all the definitions have in common.
Determine what how the definitions differ.
Create a textual definition as a group which incorporates elements from the different definitions and your own ideas.
Create a visual (image, chart, PowerPoint presentation, however you want to define it) which exemplifies, amplifies, or otherwise accompanies your textual definition.
Email your textual definition and visual to the instructor.
Present and explain your definition to the class.
Assignment for Next Class
All students: Read Mirzoeff, “An Introduction to Visual Culture“, Propen, “Visual Communication and the Map” (given out in class) and “Mapped Pictures” in Tufte.
Begin thinking about, writing about, and examining visual rhetoric.
Please compose an email to the instructor (ekarper@niagara.edu) where you:
In your own words, define these terms: rhetoric, communication, visual rhetoric, and visual communication. You may quote other people in your definition as long as you attribute them, but the bulk of the definition needs to be in your own words.
Provide a link to a visual, image, picture, or video clip that you find especially compelling and explain why you find it compelling.
Assignment for Next Class
All students:
Purchase textbooks and bring CD-ROM to class on Friday.
Today we’ll go over the syllabus, course schedule, and Web site. Then you’ll do a brief activity which asks you to begin to think about what visual rhetoric is.
Assignment for Next Class
All students:
Purchase textbooks and bring CD-ROM to class on Friday.
Today we’ll discuss some definitions for visual rhetoric and some common terms that we use to talk about visuals and communicating with them. You’ll complete several of the IX Visual Exercises to help you practice understanding and using these terms.
Assignment for Next Class
All students: Read Mirzoeff, “An Introduction to Visual Culture”, Propen, “Visual Communication and the Map” (given out in class) and “Mapped Pictures” in Tufte.
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