Popular Culture & Visual Rhetoric

What is pop culture?Popular - Everyday

things

What’s hot? Fashion Technology Music Food Lifestyles

Sports Places Entertainment Activities

Who/What makes pop culture pop?Media

Creative industries

Influential leaders / Thought leaders

Public intellectuals

Companies and corporations

Who?

Visual CultureVisual symbols are rhetorical

Visual possess the characteristics of presence due to their immediacy in creating consciousness

Visual CultureVC: A culture distinguished by the ubiquity of

visual forms of communication that appear in multiple media outlets at the same time

Visual Rhetoric: A signifying practice through which we make meaning and make sense of the world we live

Word + Images = Construct reality

Functions of imagesControl & Manipulation

Attention-getter

Make a statement

Style

Imitation

Creation of MeaningWhere do meanings reside?

Author + Material + Audience + Social Context + Mainstream influence Meaning (through interpretation)

Types of Visual Rhetoric1. Bodies

2. Photographs

3. Monuments/Buildings

4. Image Events

What represents your body?Draw a human figure that represents you.

What kinds of message(s) do you think your body represents?

What represents others’ bodies?Draw another human figure. This time, draw

someone that you admire.

Again, list some attributions you find from that person’s body.

BodiesBodies as part of the symbolic act

(representation)

Beyond biological entity

Gender, sex, race, class, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, ability, age, etc.

How do we use our bodies to make a statement?

PhotographsExact representations of reality, not!

A framed reality: what you see, what you don’t see

Meanings the image maker wants to transmit

Creating a sense of shared experience – identification with the viewer

What to think vs. What to think about

Photographs Iconic photographs

Monuments/BuildingsMemorials, museums

Direct people how to think about historic facts

Change in meaning / altered perception

Public memory is grounded by the present, guided by modern principles

Image EventsStaged acts

Designed for media dissemination

Flares – attention-getters

Deconstruct or articulate identities, ideologies, consciousness, communities, public, cultures

Don’t require viewers to seek

Protests as image eventshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=linnq9sZeVc

Visual AnalysisPersonal impact assessment (IPA):

Think about feelings Use words association Relating to self Inner symbols Personal stories

ViewersActive? Passive?

Commonly intuitive

Seeing is Believing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GdO4CNcvfw

AssignmentVisual Analysis of an Artifact