On Blogging

Usually, I'd be doing all of these blogs at the last second. But, I didn't for this class. I made two posts each week (except for the first week I think...) and it's been fun and easy. I'll admit, it did entertain me to see most of the class panicking and complaining. Blogging became very habitual and you've probably noticed that they are pretty casual and perhaps even too short (and they certainly weren't very visual), but they were simply my musings on this very interesting subject of Visual Rhetoric. This is my last post and I wanted to say I really liked the class. Perhaps I've been more invested in the art aspect but I have learned a lot about design and have enjoyed the 3 hours spent each week. I know I'm really quiet and may seem to be a slacker sometimes but I am really glad that this class is a requirement for the Publishing Major, because I would've missed out on a great class just because I was uninterested in it.

On Visual Culture in the Future

Only after reading the chapter on the globalization of visual culture have I realized that it really has been a recent thing for the "visual medium" to be the preferred medium of the world. This I think is from the creation of the internet/television. Everything is on a screen now: computers, television, and even cellphones have a very interactive screen (if not two). Even the way we listen to music, from Walkman to CD Player to iPod. The iPod has a screen, it provides something to be looked at just like the rest of our recent innovations. Also, I've noticed people preference of moving images to still images. Like movies to comic books or the fact that animated items are considered more techniclogically advanced. In the future, I won't be surprised to see billboards on the highway that are just big 30 second commercials. People like pictures over words, colored over black/white, and the moving over the still. The term visual culture would probably cease to exist as everything will be accompanied by visuals.

On My Final Project Again....

I've decided to word paint an image of New York City at the moment of the terrorist attacks on 9-11-2001. The big issue right now is whether I should create each item (Statue of Liberty, Twin Towers, Airplane, City Skyline) inside Microsoft Word and moving them together into Photoshop or should I Photoshop all items to get the best outline at the cost of words getting cut off. I don't quite know. Another issue is about how big I want this to be, and the more I think about it, I think I would like the picture to be larger than the regular 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper so that I can fit everthing I want at a readable size (probably at least 12 point font) without being crowded (I would really like a lot of white space for some unknown reason). Furthermore I can't decide if I actually want just white space or if I should textualize everything, including the sky and the water that would've been left alone. And one more item to consider, I don't really know what font I want to use and that'll probably make a lot of difference. Thus, I need to get just about everything planned and thought out before I begin... I doubt I'll have time to go back and fix things whenver I want to.

On Scientific Images

After reading chapter 8 from the Practices of Looking, I've really gained a new perspective on pictures as evidence. Having read earlier chapters from PL which discussed photographs never being able to be the "truth", this chapter shouldn't have came as that much of a surprise. But now I do see how people believe any image that's under the label "scientific." Thus, visual evidence isn't necessarily all that true. Like the video tapes of Rodney King's beating being used as a tool for prosecution as well as the defense. It is possible then, that almost everything can be false. I've never seen rare birds of paradise or Mars or my spleen except for the occasional picture or on Discovery Channel, so there is no confirmation for me of whether these things exist or not except for word of the expertise over and over again. Just because there's a picture, it doesn't mean it's real, especially with camera tricks or technology nowadays. But this thought can go a long way, after all, is the screen I'm typing these characters into really real as well?

On the Final Project

Form poetry is what I'd like to do. And with the skills I've picked up from this semester and the wonderful Adobe CS3 suite that is available in the classroom and in my roommate's Mac, I think I can do this and take it to an extreme. This idea is plausible, but the key issue right now on figuring out what exactly I have in mind. There are some stories and some poetry of mine that could be made into a painting, but it's difficult to say which would be the most successful or even useful. Meanwhile, there are various images I would like to "paint" but to do this would seem to take up a lot of text that might not be very legible after it's all done. Also, do I want my words to work by themselves and be coherent and readable? Or do I want something more abstract, making things more difficult to read and perhaps making the piece nontraditionally read? For example, I can take Van Gogh's Starry Night, and illustrate it with words: making the moon an actual moon composed of the words moon against the sky that is actually the word sky repeated over and over again and so on. Similarly, I can find different images and make them out of the words they are then combine them into one. Like making a tree out of the word tree (via Type Masking) and inserting it into a desert made up of the word desert. I don't really know, but I'll have to figure it out soon enough.

On Graphic Design Again

I really can't get over how impressive the work presented in Lupton's and Phillips' book is. The sky-building alphabet seems to be just so ingenious and it must've been fun to create it... walking around town looking up into to the sky, trying to match English letters. And according to the captions, these are work from MFA students, which makes me wonder where will all these talented graphic designers be in a few years? I've always appreciated visual art, but I'm not into it enough to know if the art here would be displayed at a museum or something. I do know that artists typically make little money while everyone is always looking for graphic designers. So is this capitalistic society taking these artists to better paying jobs involving big corporations and forcing them to do the "fun" things on the side? I wouldn't be surprised if this is true, because it is definitely true for writers as it is impossible to live off of your creation even if it is ingenious.

On Making Flyers

Honestly, I hate flyers. I haven't really seen one I liked or one that moved me to do something or caught my attention enough that I remember it now. Thus, it is really difficult for me to think of how to design module 6 for maximum efficiency. If I were to put myself into a young Latino's point of view, just pondering life after high school, I don't know how much influence a flyer can have on me. If I saw an attractive flyer in the hallway informing me on the department of English at ISU, would I really be so easily influenced? Unless the flyer is incredibly creative and effective, I'm thinking the answer is no. I just don't really know how to make ISU and its English Department look attractive and be informative at the same time. But I'll figure something out by next Wednesday.

On Socially Responsible Design

It is interesting that a document can be considered socially responsible. But, if we look at the big picture, shouldn't everything we create be socially responsible? Whenever I write, be it an essay, a poem, or a work of fiction, I am always thinking about its purpose. Especially for a piece that has an audience, there needs to be a bigger social purpose in the writing. Often, I think this is forgotten, and Rock makes a really good argument that we need to be more aware. So perhaps when we write a bestselling 500 page book we should definitely make sure the book is socially responsible enough to compensate for all the trees getting made into paper.

On Magic

After seeing the mentalist last night, as well as numerous magic shows both live and televised, I'm skeptical on all things "magical" including Paul Draper's mind reading. I feel that it was him just using visual cues to "read" someone. With the exception of maybe 3 males, all the subjects and volunteers he selected were young white females. Perhaps he's sexist and racist, but I think these are the people he feels most confident in reading because he "struggled" with many of the male mind readings. Also, I think a lot of tricks were just completely based off of research on human reactions/behaviors. For example, by making a sign that the third chair would be empty in the seating assignment trick, he has effectively cut the probability of him being wrong by half as he can count from the left or right to name the empty seat the 3rd (2nd) chair. If they don't sit in the correct formation right away, he has a handful of speech tools to convince them to move. Similarly, thinking up a particular flower has a good probability of being the same as how many flowers does the common person know anyways besides roses, daisies, tulips, and sunflowers? The big red curtains might have had an effect on half the room guessing red too, not to mention red is a primary color and is the first color of the color spectrum.

On Postmodernism

Last semester I took Dr. McLaughlin's Postmodernism literature class so this week's reading was a lot of review. Something I learned though was on how similar Modernism was to Postmodernism. Concentrated on postmodernity, I hadn't really grasped what modernity was. It is also interesting how abstract these concepts are and even now, if I were to be asked to define one or the other, it'd be at least a paragraph long to explain the terms. It is even more interesting that to define the term postmodern is essentially against everything postmoderism stands for. And on a similar thought, I feel that the label of something being postmodern is used way too often. I feel that it's become the categorization of things undefinable which is not only ironic but almost hypocritical. If we were to be true to the theories behind Postmodernity, the word "postmodern" would cease to exist.