Visual Rhetoric, January 24, 2013

Today

1) Icebreaker2) Quick overview of a few ideas from the readings3) Your turn – group work with readings4) Report back/email to Dr. Phill5) Some work time6) Next week…

Icebreaker

For today…Share your name, obviously, and tell us what the oldest thing you own is (excluding antiques… the thing you’ve had the longest, presumably acquiring new or newish).

Dr. Phill still has one of these:

It’s a talking Alf doll (it took cassettes, like Teddy Ruxpin). I got it for my 9th birthday. Interesting– perhaps—fact. I used it as a guest speaker as part of my senior capstone presentation.

It’s from 1986. Which means it’s older than most Miami students. *cringe*

Random digression: does my dog look like Alf?

Today…

… I want us to engage the readings and really sort of grapple with them, but as you might guess, if we tried to grapple with every part of all five of those readings we’d end up sitting here a long, long time grappling with a big ol’ bunch of ideas.

So I’m going to suggest a strategy– pull key ideas and illustrate how they work/see if we can convert them to a sort of tool, or a roadmap, if you will, to understanding visual rhetoric.

Something like this:

Roland Barthes

Barthes challenges us thusly:

“Now even– and above all if– the image is in a certain manner the limit of meaning, it permits the consideration of a veritable ontology of the process of signification. How does meaning get into the image? Where does it end? And if it ends, what is there beyond?”

What?

So….

.. Images carry meaning. But how’d the meaning GET there, Barthes asks us to consider.

Gunther Kress

Kress tells us:

“The approach from Social Semiotics not only draws attention to the many kinds of meanings which are at issue in design, but the “social” in “Social Semiotics” draws attention to the fact that meanings always relate to specific societies and their cultures, and to the meanings of the members of those cultures.”

Like…

These images have meaning…

…because we know them.They emerge from our culture and are reinforced by our culture.

Recognize this?

That isn’t this, is it? = SOr is it?

Walter Benjamin

Benjamin, who I promise is not the bad guy from Apt Pupil even if he looks like him, reminds us:

“In principle a work of art has always been reproducible. Man-made artifacts could always be imitated by men. Replicas were made by pupils in practice of their craft, by masters for diffusing their works, and, finally, by third parties in the pursuit of gain.”

More on copying later…

Anne Wysocki

Wysocki reminds us:

“Because we have all grown up in densely visually constructed environments, usually with little overt instruction or awareness of how the construction takes place, it is easy to think of the visual elements of texts as simply happening or appearing…as though… television sitcoms were the result of a camera crew following a typical family through their day.”

Single, nerdy college professor on TV

IRL

This remind you of your friends sitting around?

And these are just normal people enjoying normal products, right?

What Wysocki would ask us to do is…

..ask why. Think about why those images are chosen.

And maybe more importantly… why don’t people think about it/why isn’t it sort of a big deal to most Americans?

Now it’s your turn

Break into five groups. That should mean 4 or 5 per group. Once you’re grouped, from my podium going clockwise around the room:Group 1: KressGroup 2: BarthesGroup 3: Wysocki, EyesGroup 4: BenjaminGroup 5: Wysocki, Meaning of Texts

Pick between no less than 1 and no more than 3 main ideas, support them with source quotes, and find examples for discussion. As you finish, email me your materials: alexanp3@miamioh.edu

With our remaining time…

..please resume working on your class website headers.

Also note that design task 2 is to create a header– much like the class one– for your response blog. You may work on that during this time if you wish as well.

For Tuesday

Read for class: Williams non-designers design book Chapters 4 & 5: repetition & contrast; Kimball & Hawkins Chapter 1

In class, we will begin talking much more about how all of this relates to down and dirty document design.