viz.

This summer I taught a rhetoric course that focused on the idea of a University. The course used Cardinal Newman's nineteenth-century treatise as a jumping off point but also looking at other ways a university might define itself as an institution. One of the more interesting discussions in class was one in which we investigated the relationship between art and the university...

The University of Texas, our home institution and object of study, has an archive (describing itself as a "world-renowned cultural institution") that not only houses important pieces of visual, textual, and performing art but also has its own galleries to put these objects on display. The building itself was recently renovated, and the atriums converted into "galleries" themselves that display the Center's significant collections on etched glass windows:

Perhaps a good point of departure for a discussion of Women in Film would be the creator's earlier attempt to give us an overview of Women in Art:

Does high art create/communicate normative body structures or gender roles in the same way as popular culture?

Earlier this month, a Texas Tech fraternity found themselves victims of their school's solicitation section of the code of conduct. One of the students in the fraternity was selling t-shirts to raise school spirits for the A&M game. The shirts echoed the (strange) A&M motto "Gig 'Em!" with the more timely "Vick 'Em!" The back of the shirt had a football player wearing the number 7 (Vick's number) hanging the Aggie mascot Reveille by a rope:
Texas Tech halted the sale of the t-shirts; citing the code of conduct, the school said it doesn't allow the sale of material that is "derogatory, inflammatory, insensitive, or in such bad taste." The student in question argued that he planned to donate part of the profits a local animal defense league because of "Animal Rights, stuff like that." I guess when it comes to obscenity, like Justice Stewart, those administers "know it when they see it."

I'm not quite sure how to write about this for Viz., but when I found out about it, I thought it was important to think about in terms of the limits, possibilities, and intimacies of visual rhetoric.

A tattoo artist in NYC recently wrote to Mod Blog about her first job drawing in the nipple and areola for a mastectomy patient. The entry, titled "Rx Tattoo," describes how a surgeon contacted the artist to supplement the work of reconstructive surgery.

Following our earlier discussions about the intersection of science, art, and rhetoric, I bring you the o-chem tattoo. I think the tattoo not only promotes science as a field of visual representation but is also among a growing corpus of "geek" tattoos. These tattoos frustrate the long standing assumption that body art and body modification is an unintellectual enterprise, one in which you tear at, pervert or destroy the body. In this way, these tattoos also work against the mind/body split, demonstrating how thought is not separate from but also occurs on and through the body.

Check out the following link to see a group of geek tattoos at ModBlog

Building off of John's blog about naval barracks, I offer another form of visual rhetoric made possible by the aerial shot:

They have corn in Phoenix?

This week the Village Voice reported that Anthropolgie is joining the legion of designers suing Forever 21, the chain that (re)produces trendy looks for the masses (read: their clothes are really cheap). Anna Sui campaigned against the store during Fashion Week (she handed out t shirts with the store's owners on a "wanted" poster) and Diane Von Furstenberg is lobbying Congress to "improve" copyright law when it comes to fashion.