Marc C. Santos

Visual Rhetoric

"A Way of Seeing is a Way of Not Seeing." Kenneth Burke.

Since the majority of this course will explicate the term "visual," I would like to spend a bit of time exploring the term rhetoric. It is a somewhat historically tortured term. Its roots can be traced back to Ancient Greece and an ongoing philosophical debate between Plato and the sophists. On the one hand, you have an Idealist philosophy concerned with a transcendental world, a world beyond the realm of the local and the physical. The real world for Plato resembles little more than a distraction averting our eyes from "higher" truths. Physical or aesthetic beauty is at best irrelevant and at worst seductive and, for lack of a more subtle term, evil. There primary question might be: "what are the highest truths necessary for living the Good life?"

On the other side of this debate stood the sophists-particularly Gorgias and Protagoras. They denied the possibility of a transcendental realm, and argued that "man is the measure of all things." They thought physical and aesthetic beauty was extremely important, since their primary interest wasn't in pure abstraction of ideas, but rather the impure motivations of the people surrounding them. We might consider their primary question: "how do you get people to do things?"

Plato simultaneously named and disparaged this interest with the term "rhetoric," and set it in opposition to his Ideal philosophy. At its best, rhetoric was for Plato unethical manipulation, more often it was simply an art of bullshit, at its worst it was the tools for tyranny. A few years later his pupil Aristotle, in an attempt to reconcile sophistic politics with Platonic philosophy, would write a handbook On Rhetoric. For Aristotle, rhetoric is "the ability to see the available means of persuasion" (I.i.1). At first glance this seems to echo Plato-rhetoric as a tool allowing one individual to dominate the masses. But Aristotle is careful with his words-for learning to recognize the means of persuasion also heightens our resistance to them. Learning rhetoric helps inoculate the populace from manipulation; it is an art of self-defense.

In the 20th and 21st century, the image has become the dominant social form of information. It is no longer sufficient to study simply words, since words often compose such a small amount of the total message. The Internet has spurned an interest in sophistic political practice (how do we harvest all those couch potatoes, nurtured by the television, into a body of doing?). This course reflects this new emphasis on design and composition, not just reading-which is the core part of a Platonic orientation toward the Idea(l) of an image, but also on composing, the sophistic dedication to constructing a social.

Our 21st century society is increasingly becoming saturated by images-the social is now constructed in pictures, still and moving. A few hundred years ago, the social laid fixed on the pages of newspapers and books. Our generation can still learn and work in print-but we also need to rhetorical training to navigate and utilize the unique communicative opportunities the Internet and the computer provide. Our images, the images that show us variations of possible lives ("but are they Good screams Plato?"), are fluid. More importantly-the tools to construct such images are in our hands. Learning how to "do" them is the goal of this course.

Contacts

• Email: insignificantwrangler at gmail dot com
• Office: Cooper 301c
• Office Hours: Tuesday and Friday 2:00-3:00

I am also available at other times-email if you want to make an appointment (or shoot me a question).

Required Materials

Course Texts

• Reynolds, Garr. Presentation Zen Design. [ISBN-10: 0321668790]
• Adobe Creative Team. Adobe InDesign CS4 Class in a Book. [ISBN-10: 0321573803]
• Steele, Julie and Noah Illinsky. Beautiful Visualization: Looking at Data Through the Eyes of Experts. [ISBN-10: 1449379869]

Course Technologies

• Prezi
• Moviemaker, iMovie, and/or Adobe Premier
• Photoshop
• InDesign
• Wordle

delicious links

Things You Probably Know

But That I Have to Write Anyway

Students with a disability and thus requiring accommodations are encouraged to consult with the instructor during the first week of class to discuss accommodations. See Student Responsibilities: http://www.sds.usf.edu/Students.htm. Each student making this request must bring a current Memorandum of Accommodations from the office of student Disabilities Services.

You are excused from class for major observances of your religion. Inform the instructor at the beginning of the term when you expect to be absent for these events.

Plagiarism: See http://www.usg.usf.edu/catalogs/0405/adap.htm for USF Undergraduate Catalog's definitions and policy, and consult with the instructor if you are uncertain.

Attendance is mandatory. Given the once-a-week format of this class, I will excuse one absence this semester. Any absences above three will result in a 10-point penalty per absence. If you have a family or medical emergency that will require you to miss class, then you need to contact me as early as possible.

Class starts at 11:00. I will close the door at 11:00. The door locks. This is a computer lab. There is a computer in front of you. There is also a professor in front of the class. Know when to pay attention to the computer and when to pay attention to the professor.

While not an art course, this is a course that deals with aesthetics. This course will involve public instructor and peer criticism. Please be respectful, but also please tell us what you think. People require feedback to grow-while I don't want anyone to be mean, I also don't want anyone to be silent out of fear of hurting someone's feelings.

This is a course on writing; writing is a technology. We will be working with a few web-based technologies this semester. That said, I don't expect anyone in this classroom to be familiar with the technologies we'll be using in class. I do expect, however, that students will not fall back into "technophobia." I will expect a willingness to engage contemporary technologies.

Evaluation

Instructor evaluation is based on non-quantifiable factors, such as initiative, attitude, class participation, office hours visits, and accountability.

Projects

Project One: Visual Analysis of an Advertisement

Medium: Prezi or Movie [3:00-5:00]

Description: The first project asks you to analyze an image. There are many rubrics available online that can help you to do this. I have tagged a few on my delicious feed.

Particulars: To complete this project, send a link to your Prezi or a suitable video file to my gmail account by 11:59pm Wednesday, January 20th.

Project Two: Derive

Medium: Prezi or Movie [3:00-5:00]

Description: The second project reinforces the first, but its aim is expository rather than analytical. Working from Guy DeBourd's essay, you will construct an experience of an area of Tampa (or the surrounding area).

Particulars: NOTE that you will need access to a digital camera for this project. At this point, I would ask that "movies" be composed series of still images.

Project Three: Data Visualization

Medium: Manufactured Image

Description: For this project, I will ask you to select a set of statistics and translate them into two different visual representations.

Particulars: Final images should be a 1024x768, 300px resolution image.

Project Four: Book of Art Project

Medium: InDesign

This will be our first group project, inspired by Bravo's television show Work of Art. Working in teams of three, you will design a book cover for a work in public domain. Then you and your group will format the text for the work in InDesign (considering chapter headers, typography, line spacing, word spacing, etc). A major part of this project concerns the class presentation.

Particulars: There is a Wikibook on Basic Book Design that you should consult for this project.

Project Five: Menu Project

Medium: InDesign

Description: This project asks you to construct an awesome document in InDesign--redesiging a boring take-out menu into something fantabulous. (Obviously, more to come here).

Particulars: Forthcoming.

Project Six: Wordle Project

Medium: Prezi

Description: Working from Jonathan Feinberg's article, I would like to to Wordle three related documents and create a brief presentation that speaks to what the Wordle reveals.

Project Seven: Branding Project - Resiliant Tampa Bay

Mediums: InDesign, Movie, Prezi, other

Working in groups of four, teams will construct a range of materials for the Resiliant Tampa Bay coalition, a group of academics, professionals, and community stakeholders interested in promoting sustainable practices in our local area (and beyond). Teams will design an entire campaign around a logo--including a possible web header graphic, a tee-shirt, a bumper sticker, a single page magazine advertisement, a flyer (for hanging on University bulletin boards), a business card, and another promotional item of the groups' choice.

The redesign will be packaged into a brief video presentation to be delivered to Resiliant Tampa Bay's members. The video should be brief (3 to 5 minutes), but should also articulate the vision for the redesign and point to relevant research. Finally, the project should include a prospective cost report (the RTB is a non-profit organization with limited resources, the willing group will have to consider these economic restraints).

Project Eight: Final Visualization Project

Medium:TBA

The final project asks you to visualize research. The scope and audience of the project is up to you (although I will show you a number of examples). One requirement of this project is that you create, rather than merely select, visuals. The medium for the project should be determined on a case by case basis.

Calendar