ENGL706 - Connect ALL The Things!

So Kress talks about different genres in the same "text" that take on different shares of the communicative burden, which is actually an interesting concept. I'd say any student who has ever written anything remotely hypertextual, or who has included an infographic/chart to represent something they've written about has experienced the singular pleasure of necessary appendixes. These vial elements often help make a point simply by existing as factual proof to support an argument that at least, in part, is visual. Kostelnick talks about Tufte's beliefs in his "The Visual Rhetoric of Data Displays: The Conundrum of Clarity" especially the "lie factor". This reminded me of the students, and how each of them diagrammed the onion slide in their lab reports in Kress' readings. After all, neither of the students aimed to be misleading in what they drew. Rather, one gave a more literal interpretation (still informed by the teacher's verbal instruction) and the other interpreted what she saw into a larger diagram that implied representation by being incomplete at the edges. If neither is intended to mislead (and most likely, objectively speaking, neither is fully "incorrect") then how can they be classified? Which is "more" or "less" clear?

Thinking more about these diagrams,  Welling's work on"Ecoporn"also comes to mind. Could the consumer produced diagram of the human eye count as a subgenre of Ecoporn? It provides its own brand of fantasy about the human body. The colors are saturated higher, the lines and layouts cleaner than a human body- often, when dissecting, what a chart looks like and what you find inside a once-living creature seem like apples and oranges. In this way, it is designed for the same kind of "quick, easy visual consumption" as pictures of sunsets and rainforests that casually leave the truth of the place out of frame are. Even if ecoporn isn't the correct term (although I feel like an argument can be made for human bodies and organisms to be self-contained ecosystems on a microscopic level) then I do believe that both of these concepts have similar themes when it comes to what can make them and their design problematic.

Ideas (in the form of questions)

1. Can commercially marketed scientific diagrams be considered as a type of ecoporn, given that they are both constructed for the same type of consumption? I think this is a fascinating idea, since it contains the argument that purpose = grounds for classification. This might all come down to semantics in the end.
2. Is there a way to negate textual power entirely and still have a functional document? Textual hierarchy dictates what is more and less important (like numbered lists, bullets, bolding, etc.) but is there a way to avoid this prioritizing of somethings over others without sacrificing clarity? (yo creo que no- I think in lists and outlines and see a world without them as anarchy. It'll be interesting to see what the classmates think).
3. Has the advent of digital media brought on a new wave of text/image meaning sharing? Is it more pervasive now than it was 10 years ago? 20 years ago? (that's only the 1990s *shudder*). Images can now be created and shared much more quickly than before, so does something like a meme fall under this same umbrella of multimodal thinking? (MEME STUDIES. Bring it on.)

Questions (also in the form of questions)

• Does delegating that all things have multiple layers of analysis in an effort to diminish the need to label mixed genre pieces make accessing multimodal messages more difficult for visual rhetoric scholars? A lot of VR is based on contextual and cultural understanding, so adding a two-tier layer system seems to add a lot of extra work into the equation.
• When trying to get across a complicated message or concept, does splitting the meaning between a strictly visual and strictly textual delivery method make for good VR? That is to ask, does it usually get the point across better than strictly one method or the other? This may be a type of study that has been measure in a scientific way, but I'd even be interested in opinions here. Does the visual/textual aid combo help you, personally?
• If the type of information is the same, but the delivery method is different (process list versus narrative account), is either one more or less accurate? I guess this depends on the instructions given, and the purpose. Is it also contextual? Like whether it's on a lab report or if you're explaining a lab experiment to a friend so they can do it at home later?