viz.

Image Credit: RoseVallentine

I teach a class about the new rhetoric of internet commerce. I have my students write a standard rhetorical analysis paper around the middle of the term, and for their primary texts I ask them to use the digital marketing materials of dotcoms. Of all the paper genres I assign (expository, persuasive, etc.) rhetorical analysis is generally my favorite. I prefer these papers because I'm a literary critic, and rhetorical analyses are essentially close readings that use a standard rhetorical methodology.  But there's another reason I especially enjoyed reading my students' analysis papers this semester: they introduced me to several fantastic websites that I didn't know about before. I feel compelled to share one of these sites with viz. readers because of its novel interventions in visual culture. (And I want to thank my student, who I will refrain from naming, for the great find!).  The company is called hitRECord, an open, online platform for collaborative filmmaking and other artistic expression.

"Bug and the Machine" Poster, Stephanie Rosen

If you are interested in science, art, video installations, interdisciplinary work, or maybe if you just like bugs, we'd recommend you stop by the following event at the University of Texas at Austin tomorrow evening.  Read more about the super-computers at the Texas Advanced Computer Center from a past viz. blog post.  Following is the summary description of "Bug in the Machine" by the Vital Arts and Theories Group: "Sixty years ago a small moth flew into a large room on the campus of Harvard University. It fluttered around, disoriented by the artificial light, until it slipped in and got stuck between two of the 700,000 moving parts of the automatic calculating machine MARK II, one of the world's first computers. The moth was