viz.

Since fall of '06 I have been giving a PowerPoint visual rhetoric presentation in UT's RHE 306 and RHE 309K classes. The presentations have been pretty successful and seem well received by students and instructors alike. I have had some requests to distribute the presentation but have been holding off for a couple of reasons: 1) the presentation is composed almost entirely of coprighted material and unlimited distribution would almost certainly violate the fair use terms under which I am currently using the materials; 2) the images I included are often controversial, for a variety of reasons, and I am hesitant to distribute the presentation to instructors without backgrounds in visual rhetoric or who might not be attuned to some of the delicate classroom issues some of the images present.

With Vonnegut's recent passing it seems worth noting that his books almost always featured a simple hand-drawn image at least once per novel. I'm not exactly sure how to describe the rhetorical effect of these drawings, but someone with more time could do a fascinating study of how these drawings operate within Vonnegut's texts.

I am happy to note that at Vonnegut's official website, http://www.vonnegut.com/ , the favicon is a replication of the asshole drawing from, if my memory serves, "Breakfast of Champions".

For a light-hearted example of someone who does some amazing "rhetorical analyses" of visual texts, check out the Comics Curmudgeon blog at http://joshreads.com.

Josh routinely uses visual cues in the crappy comics, the ones you read but aren't sure why and never make you laugh, to transform the comics into much more entertaining texts than their original authors were capable of achieving.

According to this story from Wired, NASA has developed a workgroup devoted to providing open source solutions to the organization’s programming needs. The project is called “CosmosCode,” and what I find most interesting about it is that the meetings that led to its creation were held in Second Life. Also interesting is the fact that the group meeting on NASA’s island were not all experts, but often featured anything from doctoral students and retirees.

At the beginning of the month, the Daily Mail published a series of distorted maps of the world, using the map area to track some other variable, like HIV prevalence, alcohol consumption, and military spending.

The people at Project Hamad (who I mentioned a few days ago in this post) have a poster campaign with a stylized image of Mr. Hammad reminiscent of the “André the Giant has a Posse” stencils.

Andrew K. Woods has a short piece on Slate titled “The YouTube Defense: Human Rights Go Viral” where he argues that judicial decisions, from Brown v. Board of Education to recent rulings on Guantanamo detainees, have always used public opinion as a bellwether, despite claims of strict fidelity to established law. Realizing this, lawyers for one Gitmo inmate, Adel Hamad—who Mr. Woods identifies as a Sudanese school teacher—have posted a video on YouTube outlining the paucity of evidence supporting to his detainment. After 70,000 viewings, the U.S. government has placed Hamad on a list of detainees to be released.

The BBC has created an interactive graphic that displays Baghdad’s shifting ethnic population as well as the date and location of bombings in the city. Using the slider at the bottom of the graphic, the user can see small points appear and fade away at the bombing locations. Moving through time, the bombings become more frequent. Not only is this a well-made graphic, it is a disarmingly simple demonstration of the rising violence in Iraq’s capital city.

Barack Obama has taken some heat for remarks made to a New York Post reporter attacking Al Sharpton (who’s had a lot to deal with lately, thank you very much) which pundits are arguing were made by an Obama operative. Now there’s this:

The French theorist Jean Baudrillard died this week. As this obituary from the BBC notes, Baudrillard was well known for his post-modernist theory and controversial statements.

His work is important to visual studies for his theory of the spectacle, which, the article points out, he argued “is crucial in creating our view of events--things do not happen if they are not seen.” You can read his article “Simulacra and Simulations” by following this link, which is referenced through the site’s bibliography. Or, if you are just interested in how his work relates to The Matrix, you can read this Wikipedia article.