Image saved by behemoth on Wookmark from inspiration hut.net.

Image saved by mrg on Wookmark from fr.pinterest.com.

Free Choice image from 2geeks-at.

________________________________________

These (linguistic) annotations were completed prior to the explanation of visual annotations needed for class…

Recently, using Hypothes.is has become a bit challenging.  Certain documents, such as Mary Hocks’ “Understanding Visual Rhetoric in Digital Writing Environments,” are protected behind the GSU library server and do not wish to load for the annotation server.  Therefore, I have typed my annotations for this paper and will post them below:

“Visual rhetoric, or visual strategies used for meaning and persuasion, is hardly new, but its importance has been amplified by the visual and interactive nature of native hypertext and multimedia writing” (629).

Technology has shifted the visual into a spotlight, not just with the use of images, but layout and format in general. Whereas before the thought behind the presentation was transparent, just disregarded; however, now at times, the thought is out in the open and the format is an element of the composition in a way it had not been before. Transparency.

“…new media requires a complex relationship between verbal and visual technologies” (630).

Images and words work together, replace on another, or distract. It is a fine balance to say what you want to say and show what you want to show in a clear manner. Another level of consideration for the composer.

“internetworked writing” (631)

the process viewed as writing and not just the product

“…looking at the computers around us and analyzing them as intensely visual artifacts. The screen itself is a tablet that combines words, interfaces, icons, and pictures that invoke other modalities like touch and sound” (631).

Typically the only times we notice or think about computers themselves is when they are either outdated or brand new. But to think about the computer as a tablet, an artifact, a physical thing you are working with surprises me. I think I typically consider what is on the computer instead of the computer itself.

“…the Web inherits book page design, it embeds the cultural assumptions about order on a page that come from our history with print texts” (634).

“…what order is reinforced by a design, and what designs give us chances to re-order?” (635).

It is called a web”page” after all.

If “cultural assumptions about order” are passed from print to Internet, what other societal practices and power structures are within the Internet as well? What forms of “tradition” or “oppression” exist within the web? And why is it “inherited”?

“Audience stance describes hot the work visually gives readers a sense of agency and possibilities for interactive involvement” (635).

“…reinforce the audience’s sense of agency and interaction” (636).

A topic that keeps coming up this semester and in particular interests me. How much agency does the audience really get? Is it true choice or the illusion of choice?

“Transparency refers to how the writer designs a document in ways familiar and clear to readers” (636).

In print this is typically overlooked. On web pages designed like book pages, again it is typically overlooked. Is this because we are used to it? It certainly doesn’t catch our attention. I was thinking that this was only challenged in the digital realm, but then I read the two articles in this section about comics. I think the comics highlighted in the articles challenge the typically print design and allow the design to become part of the purpose. Perhaps in traditional documents the design is part of the purpose too, but it just seems to play a much larger role in the comics and online.

“…creates an experience of open-ended possibility with these proliferating texts and interpretations” (640).

In A Sin of Color one of the main characters is an author and talks about how once you write something it lives beyond you and takes on a life of its own. This seemed like the same idea to me. It then exists outside of the author.

“At every turn, then, readers are offered multiple choices, allowing them to construct very different readings of the text” (641).

I wonder what an experiment in this would reveal: Would there be a myriad of ways people interacted with it or are we as authors only thinking that people would branch out and try differing paths? Is it likely that since people are creatures of habit they would tend to interact with the site in a narrow number of possibilities?

“…‘critical technological literacy’ in its recognition of the political implications of technological literacies and its commitment to diversity” (644).

Access is not equal. Economics and politics affect the ability of people throughout the United States and throughout the world to be online.

“Design shapes the future” (644)

As we move away from traditional print standards. Interactivity creates possibilities.

Interesting and powerful.

“…‘double-consciousness’ that Knadler saw in his student’s portfolios and that teachers often find in students working to assimilate personal voices with disitanced and objective academic discourse” (648).

Mainly due to the lie that academic discourse is objective.

I find myself with this problem. How do you own your writing but not sound cocky? And how do increase your confidence enough (as student and writer and thinker) to not rely too heavily upon the research that you have no voice? It seems like a catch-22 to me. I suppose it’s rather a fine (and difficult) balance.