Visual Rhetoric

The Secret History of Lines

A photograph by Colin Stearns

Image Credit: Colin Stearns

With 24 hours to go, media outlets projecting the outcome of election day are covered in geographical maps of states and counties painted starkly in red and blue.  I’ve enjoyed the responses of armchair intellectuals like Randall Munroe, who playfully reinterprets the red/blue divide to create a complex and comprehensive visual history of the Republican and Democratic parties.  The proliferation of regional and ideological divides across multiple media this week urged me to explore two important questions in visual rhetoric: What does it mean to visualize a geographical boundary?  And what does it mean to visualize an invisible line?  (I would be remiss not to mention the enormous amount of border studies that exist in postcolonial and Anglophone literature and criticism—but today on viz I will try to confine myself to a discussion of the visualization of intranational borders.)  Here to help me is the photography of Colin Stearns, Assistant Professor of Photography at Parsons. Stearns' current project is photographing the Mason-Dixon line in order to capture "this border of cultural distinction at the places of its occurence."  Each of his photographs contain the invisible interstate line somewhere within their composition.  I'll also put Stearns in dialogue with William Byrd II, the 18th century commissioner of the colonial line between North Carolina and Virginia. 

Secret Ballot, Public Voting: The Subtle and Not-So-Subtle Persuasion of the "I Voted" Sticker

cat with "I Voted" sticker

Image Credit: Kevin Lau

The image above of feline Lefty sporting an "I Voted" sticker is not, as some activists might worry, evidence of voter fraud. Rest assured, cats and other domestic animals are not posing as voters. Lefty's message is much less nefarious if vehement: "YES, I am talking to YOU! GO VOTE TODAY!" I already wore my "I Voted Early" sticker last week, thanks to the early voting available in Travis County, Texas. And I look forward to seeing fellow citizens from across the nation sporting "I Voted" stickers tomorrow regardless of their choices inside the voting booth.

Selling Beer and Selling Democracy: American Bald Eagle Logos Today and Yesterday

Eagle logo hangs over Obama and Romney; Eagle clutches arrows, olive branch and banner that reads, "The Union and the Constitution Forever"

Image Credit: Commission on Presidential Debates

Despite its vaguely governmental-sounding name, the Commission on Presidential Debates is a private, non-profit corporation funded by a handful of businesses, as described by George Farah. The Commission serves to accommodate the Republican and Democratic Parties' desire for a relatively controlled eventcontrol which drove the League of Women Voters to withdraw from hosting the debates in 1987. One of the long-standing contributors to the Commission is the Anheuser-Busch corporation (owned since 2008 by the Brazilian and Belgian conglomerate InBev). While watching the debates, I couldn't help but notice the similarity between the eagle that hangs above the heads of the candidates and the Anheuser-Busch eagle, both of which draw on deeply set US political imagery.

Seeking a Universal Language of Symbols: The Noun Project's Crowd-sourced Creation of Icons for Communication Across Languages

icon of people with speech bubble coming out of front person

Image Credit: UNOCHA

How can you quickly communicate concrete concepts to an audience that includes speakers of many languages and those who can't read? The Noun Project sees an answer in symbols, and it offers a platform for people to submit icon designs that others can download and use. On its "About" page, the Noun Project describes itself as:

a platform empowering the community to build a global visual language that everyone can understand. Visual communication is incredibly powerful. Symbols have the ability to transcend cultural and language barriers and deliver concise information effortlessly and instantaneously. For the first time, this image-based system of communication is being combined with technology to create a social language that unites the world.

But do symbols "have the ability to transcend cultural and language barriers" as they suggest? In looking at the symbols on the site, I wonder whether these icons rely just as much on enculturation for understanding as any written language does. The benefits of speed of comprehension and intelligibility across languages and cultures seem to depend on a similar learning process to that any literate person goes through if, perhaps, abbreviated.

Mitt Romney vs. Big Bird: When Enthymemes Attack

Big Bird stands behind Romney at an outdoor microphone

Image Source: Unknown

In last week's debate, one of the more memorable moments was Mitt Romney's vow to cut off government funding to public television despite his appreciation of both Big Bird and Jim Lehrer. Because he would neither raise taxes nor borrow money from China, Romney argued, he would cut programs like PBS. I suppose Romney intended the statement as a bit of red meat for his basethose who would rather their tax monies not go to PBSand perhaps also for the putative independent/undecided voter who also distrusts such government spending. I also suppose that for such audiences the line worked. However, for other audiences, Romney's enthymeme provoked an outcry, because those audiences do not share the unstated premise in his argument that PBS does not merit continued funding. Sesame Street lovers (and Romney haters) across the web responded with a torrent of photoshopped images criticizing Romney's position.

The Visual Rhetoric of Space: Optimism, Pessimism, and Realism in Astronomical Imagery

thousands of galaxies billions of light years away

Image Credit: NASA

With the recent passing of Neil Armstrong, the decommissioning of the space shuttles, and the release of the latest "deep field" image from the Hubble Space Telescope, the rhetoric of space imagery has been on my mind. Except for the occasional "why waste money on this?" argument, astronomical images find wide appreciation, appreciation which I certainly share. However, I also see a certain risk in the arguments made using space imagery that can be lost amidst the optimism and wonder.

Of Ponies and Patriarchy

Women in Secular webpage screenshot

Image Credit: Center for Inquiry's Women in Secularism 2 Conference Website

Controversies over sexism have recently embroiled the online and in-real-life spaces of the gaming, fandom, and atheist communities. The sexist behavior that has sparked controversy and the backlash facing those speaking out against harassment are too hateful and ugly to discuss at any length here. I'll link to two examples with trigger warnings for threats of sexual violence: Rebecca Watson and Anita Sarkeesian. The controversy in the organized atheist community, however, has also seen an act of resistance and some levity in the face of abject misogyny by repurposing a visual trope well known to the community.

The Funny Faces of Politics: No Photoshop Required

McCain lurches after Obama

Image Credit: Reuters

As we’re in the middle of another presidential campaign, I thought I’d devote my inaugural viz. post to an aspect of visual political rhetoric: photos capturing politicians with odd facial expression or in odd poses. One of the better known examples of this phenomenon is the above photo of John McCain from the last debate in the 2008 presidential campaign. In the still image, McCain stands behind Barack Obama, seeming to lurch after him while disrespectfully sticking out his tongue and reaching out with his hands. I want to stress “seeming,” though, because viewing McCain’s movement in context offers an alternative explanation.

I Turn My Camera On, Then My Photoshop

Picture of celebrity Shia LaBeouf posed next to an unknown black-haired white man.  The two are posed in the middle of a house; LaBeouf is on the left and the other man on the right of the shot.

Image Credit: Everett Hiller

H/T:  Crushable

While I’ve done some recent fangirling over Ryan Gosling and Benjamin Franklin, I would have never imagined I could be in a photograph with them.  At least, not until I saw Everett Hiller’s holiday party photographs, into which he Photoshopped various celebrities.

What would Proust do with Google Maps?

Screenshot, horses in cemetery

Screenshot from Google Maps via Jon Rafman

In David Sasake's blog post, "How to read Google Earth like Proust," he notes that Marcel Proust liked to read train timetables before bed.  According to Alain de Botton, "[T]he mere names of provincial train stations provided Proust's imagination with enough material to elaborate entire worlds, to picture domestic dramas in rural villages, shenanigans in local government, and life out in the fields."  Place names can float up in our subconsciousness, rekindling memories long forgotten like rabbits pulled out of a magician's hat.  So what would Proust make of Google Maps, and especially Google's massive, ongoing "Street View" function, where an ever-expanding swath of the globe is mapped, photographed, and instantly accessible?  What happens when you can view almost anyplace, anytime?

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