viz.

Image Credit:  Screenshot from Radical Software

H/T:  Chris Micklethwait

As Noel prepares to lead a Best Practices for Digital Images workshop here at UT, the rest of us in the Visual Rhetoric group hope to make some of this work public here on viz. for others to use.  One website that presents some interesting work done in the 1970s that theorizes the use and creation of digital/video media is Radical Software.

Image Credit: Screen shot from whatscookinggrandma.humanbeans.net

I first noticed the phenomenon of grandmothers cooking online when I came across Chow's "Cooking with Grandma" series. The first episode featured "Grandma Alvina" who shows her granddaughter how to cook prawn curry and coconut rice while telling the story of her 1972 move to the US from Burma. Chow has since added several more episodes in the series, and matriarchal kitchens seem to be sprouting up all over the internet and all around the world, offering their grandchildren and Youtube fans lessons in cooking and living history. More about culinary octogenarians, including video, after the jump.

Andi, I enjoyed reading your post from Saturday, as I'm struggling myself to think about how to teach visual rhetoric in my classroom-although, the concerns I'm undergoing are much different from yours.  There may be ethical concerns about using podcasts to teach a variety of songs united around a different theme, but most of what I do will involve looking at pretty pictures.

Hardworking Assistant Directors in the CWRL have posted videos of this year's lecture and workshop series to Vimeo.com, including this presentation on using Google Maps in the classroom. You can subscribe to the "CWRL Lecture Series" channel and the "CWRL Workshops" channel to see future updates.

Using Google Maps as a Writing Tool from CWRL on Vimeo

(Disclaimer: there is some blood and guts in this video.)

Slate V has posted a video celebrating the collision of the lovey-dovey Valentine holiday with the seemingly incongruous tradition of releasing gory movies with Valentine's day themes. The video was inspired by the upcoming release of the remake of Friday the 13th--on, appropriately, the upcoming Friday the 13th, the day before Valentine's Day. Surely the collision of these two elements says something deep about our culture? Maybe love really *is* the devil. Or is it just that machete-wielding maniacs are as good an excuse as any to get a little close to that special someone? Surely this is a very old idea: while I was writing this I thought of the motto engraved on the Wife of Bath's amulet in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: AMOR VINCIT OMNIA [Love conquers all]: an ominous pronouncement then and now...

So I showed the video “The Story of Stuff” to my rhetoric and writing class this past week. We’re doing the basics in this class—learning how to argue by learning how to analyze others’ arguments. Made by a woman named Annie Leonard, the 20-minute half-animated video details the history of our post-World War II consumer economy.

Here’s another hybrid proposal argument / introductory video, the likes of which I think are perfect for rhetoric classrooms. It was produced by girleffect.org:

While it is certainly possible to disagree with parts of the argument here, I think this format is fascinating. This emerging genre of public discourse is something that rhetoric instructors should be teaching their students to create.

via Information Aesthetics

I saw this video on BoingBoing last week:

I think this is a perfect example of a video proposal argument, the kind that students should be making to connect their work in the classroom with the outside world.

Some people still think design matters. (link is NSFW)

I think this video should be able to spark a great discussion as to whether or not digital tools help to improve visual culture.

via Boing Boing

Artist Lena Gieseke has modeled Picasso’s “Guernica” in 3D.

Here’s how Gieseke describes her work:

“The idea of creating a 3D version of an influential artwork came out of doing jigsaw puzzles of famous paintings. When you assemble a jigsaw, you study a painting in great detail and you become aware of the very lines, shapes and colors that the painting is composed of and how these elements merge to create a unified expression. Through the puzzle, you explore the artwork, examining details your eye might not have caught otherwise.”

Link (via SuperTouch)