viz.

Image Credit: Magic Spoon Production's Vimeo

Few things will make a body more aware of its need of personal space than being in Austin during SXSW. At the height of the music festival, sixth street is a throbbing mass of bodies; most are hurting from the night before; many are pierced and tattooed; and all are in search of further sensory stimulation. Prominence and/or density of bodies are signal features of large scale cultural gatherings like SXSW. Consequently, advertising at these sorts of events often becomes embodied in visually arresting and sometimes ethically questionable ways. This post examines two advertising schemes that came to my attention this SXSW, and thinks about the stakes--rhetorical and otherwise--of confusing bodies with commercial products.

As the year closes, we're reflecting on the ways our posts have connected visual rhetoric, digital literacy, and pedagogy. We've presented lesson plans that use programs like Animoto, iMovie, Sound Slides Plus, Xtranormal, etc.  There are longer posts that detail how these programs were used available on the blog, but in the first part of this post, Elizabeth will focus on those that present ideas for using iMovie in the classroom. In the second part of the post, Ashley will explore one of the broad themes our posts this year have addressed and talk about the ways in which we are theorizing the connections between embodiment and pedagogy.

Screenshot "Full Body Twitter app" Johndan Johnson-Eilola

I experienced full body twitter this weekend.  Just by moving my body, I wrote a text and sent it into the twitter-sphere.  The experimental video installation "Bodies of Language" and conference panel with professors Anne Wysocki and Johndan Johnson-Eilola was really fun.  (You can see a snapshot of my interaction with the exhibit after the break.) The discussion also planted the disrupting thought that multi-media needs to get beyond the visual. What?  Get beyond the visual? 

(Photo credits:  The Athlete by Howard Schatz and Beverly Ornstein, via SocImages)

Thanks to fitness magazines and the weight loss industry, we've become acculturated to the notion that fitness looks a certain way.  This photo collection by Howard Schatz and Beverly Ornstein challenges our assumptions about athleticism by presenting Olympic athletes with an array of body types, ranging from the typical "shredded" bodybuilder look to bodies that we might view as "unhealthy" in a different context. 

An image series of Real Dolls from photographer Zackary Canepari's blog

No, this isn't a photo-essay about the box of human heads found on a Southwest Airlines flight last June.  But it's still a bit creepy.  The ominous and evocative image above is from series of photos by Zackary Canepari, documenting the construction of Real Dolls - anatomically correct mannequins that run about $6,000 for those in the market.  Not safe for work content after the jump.

October is breast cancer awareness month, so you may be seeing pink ribbons and products more frequently. While the pink ribbon is a powerful symbol of breast cancer awareness, "pinkwashing" (exploiting consumer grief or guilt to sell products, such as pink hair dryers or nail polish, with minimal donations to breast cancer organizations) has been the target of much critique, in part because it allows consumers to feel that consumption of material goods is a solution to a widespread health problem. The SCAR project, which takes and exhibits photographs of young breast cancer survivors, offers a different visual argument for cancer awareness. Depending on your office environment, the images after the jump may be NSFW.

Image Credit: Norton

H / T to my mom for sending me the video in response to last week's post

Last week on Viz I posted about glitter as an undermining agent in images of solemnity.  In this commercial for Norton security software, the glitter use results in deadly (and delightful) consequences.

Image Credit: Laura Kalman, Cystic Acne, Back (2009)

Via Bioephemera

In a post earlier this week, Cate discusses “Freeze! Revisted,” an art project that literalizes our consumption of violence. In response to the “sensual suicide” of mod-pixie models sucking on gun-shaped popsicles, I offer these blinged-out (and beautiful?) representations of diseased female bodies.