In a somewhat deflated postscript to my “Annotated Obama Poster” piece from 2009, Shepard Fairey and the Associated Press have apparently come to a workable solution to the copyright dispute surrounding Fairey’s “Hope” poster. I say “deflated” because this was an out-of-court settlement, and that settlement apparently entails a sharing of rights (and, by extension, any $$$ generated by the image). While that mediation might work for the principle parties involves, those of us wanting a clear legal precedent pertaining to digital-era IP/copyright issues will have to wait a bit longer. Read WIRED‘s coverage of the story here.
Thanks, Kate, for the great post on McCandless’s animated visualization. (Information is Beautiful is also the title of a truly terrific book of visualizations that I highly recommend checking out.)
The use of the word “problem” set me thinking. If there is a problem, what is it and where is it? One could argue, I think, that the sheer selection of certain numbers to work with posits an argument of sorts (opting for these categories instead of others suggests their relative importance, in other words). There’s even a bit of narrative quality to the piece, with the credit crisis debt trumping all others and set in the sequence such that the music dramatically picks up as it’s dropped. So perhaps the piece does have an argument; it’s just not clear-cut.
Which suggests to me that if there is a problem, it does not lay with the piece–but with us. Our problem is that we are asked to interpret the information and construct an argument of what it’s arguing. Our interpretation–what does it mean?–is then automatically pitted against other interpretations, which is to say, argument against other arguments.
McCandless actually has another visualization that provokes a similar line of questioning using different terms:
Using this vocabulary, the problem we’re presented with is transforming information (the simple story of linked debt-centric elements) to knowledge. This transforming act is no doubt affected by the natural trajectory towards wisdom (us rhetoricians may think phronesis would fit better here than plain old “wisdom”), which makes the entire interpretative process infinitely more complex–and interesting.
I’d be curious to hear what you think of this chart: its basic assumptions, what might get added, how it might be altered for teaching, etc. And I’m sure McCandless would, too. In his posting of this he actually links to a rhetoric blog run by Catherine Schuler, Assistant Professor of English and Professional Writing at East Stroudsburg University, so he’s demonstrated that he’s linked to our community in some fashion.
On a final note, I was intrigued by McCandless’s mention with “Debtris” that we should expect more “motion infographics” in 2011. Interest in infographics has exploded in the past several years (even though it’s been around for a long time), but the move towards animation and video is taking new routes recently. Check out this fascinating video by the dynamic Hans Rosling, for example:
I have often wondered what I should do when cats, dogs, and various other animals lay on my wrapping paper (or school work or books) and won’t move. Now, I have an answer.
I’m not saying that this is particularly rhetorically savvy or anything, but, I mean, look! The cat just lays there!
(And, yes, my brain is good and fried at the end of this semester.
Did anyone see any zombies at the mall this weekend? Smell any stink bombs? Was there a special Critical Mass in your neighborhood? Trickster performances? General harlotry?
I’m curious, because today concludes Carnivalesque Rebellion Week 2010:
A few people start breaking their old patterns, embracing what they love (and in the process discovering what they hate), daydreaming, questioning, rebelling. What happens naturally then, according to the revolutionary past, is a groundswell of support for this new way of being, with more and more people empowered to perform new gestures unencumbered by history.
Think of it as an adventure, as therapy – a week of pieing and pranks, of talking back at your profs and speaking truth to power. Some of us will put up posters in our schools and neighborhoods and just break our daily routines for a week. Others will chant, spark mayhem in big box stores and provoke mass cognitive dissonance. Others still will engage in the most visceral kind of civil disobedience. And on November 26 from sunrise to sunset we will abstain en masse – not only from holiday shopping, but from all the temptations of our five-planet lifestyles.
“Buy Nothing Day” has been celebrated for over a decade now, a protest against the celebration of consumerism known as “Black Friday.” I’m a fan of the alternative, and not just because of how much this scares me:
Buy Nothing Day has a lot of appeal, and I know plenty of people who observe it for reasons more or less anti-consumerist but not necessarily proactive. This year, though, Adbusters seemed to be kicking it up a notch. Then again, carnivalesque rebellion doesn’t come from a journal, but from local jammers…
So, my fellow local rhetoricians, what did you see?
“When Confucius was asked what would be the first thing he would do if he were to lead the state—a never-to-be-fulfilled dream—he said, Rectify the language. This is wise. This is subtle. As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: You liberate a city by destroying it. Words are used to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests. Finally, words must be so twisted as to justify an empire that has now ceased to exist, much less make sense. Is rectification of our system possible for us?”
With all the controversy about the building which will have Islamic prayers on Park Place in New York City (yes, that was very carefully worded), I thought it very pertinent that I pass along this this article from The Huffington Post by Matt Sledge. In it he discusses the use of the term “Ground Zero Mosque” and how it is being used to draw people into a certain way of thinking. An interesting read, to say the least.
The LXD (legion of extraordinary dancers) is a new web series on Hulu. This series endeavors to tell a story comic book style. There is the wise old man who narrates all his wisdom at the beginning of each story and then we see how each person or group came to be included in this “Legion of Extraordinary Dancers” while unraveling the dark and dangerous bad guys at the same time. So, essentially we have this conflict between these two groups of dancers (think hip-hop West Side Story) who we have not yet been seen doing much battle, but a little bit. For example, the webisode “The Uprising Begins:”
This particular use of dancing as combat reminds me of the Zulu Nation, the primarily ’70s/’80s to today hip-hop movement which called for more dance offs, rap offs, and DJ competitions and less gang violence. It’s even in Guitar Hero. If you’ll notice from the following clip, the difference I see is that Zulu Nation used dance and hip-hop as a form of uniting the community:
The LXD specifically creates a chasm between two groups of dancers rather than uniting them in the joy of dance. You can see this in the story line of ”Antigravity Heros.” Two friends find some special warehouse that gives them the ability to dance like no one has danced before. When one friend is invited to the LXD and the other friend’s invite gets stolen, there is jealousy in the “other friend’s” face. The emergence of one of “The Uprising’s” main characters implies that this guy is going down the evil path and will most likely be facing off against his friend at some point.
Now, the series is still going, so I can’t say that it’s foreshadowing because I haven’t seen the entire series, but having seen many a narrative played out, that is my educated guess as to how it’s going to go. Also, at the beginning of this clip, the two friends practice a form of capoeira, which was a form of dance that involved fighting/martial arts type of moves (and let me tell you from personal experience, it is not easy). Choosing a form of dance where these two friends appear to be fighting just tells me that they will be fighting/actually dancing competitively against each other in the future.
So, the idea of dancing rather than fighting is not a new one and the acting in this series is not the best I’ve seen by far, but I find the intent to recreate this idea important. It’s as if we as a society want to express our aggression, struggle, and conflict, but without the permanence of actual death. I’m interested in seeing how this story will play out–will there be the continued trite binaries of good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, etc. or will there be unity in a shared enjoyment? Is this purely a simple dancing super hero comic book or an exploration of our own humanistic desires?
