voi Cesextending the existing vocabulary. drawing on rhetorical vocabulary which provides
or names concrete images can help bridge the articulation between visual and
alphabetical that can contribute to artistic invention, but art research can also expand
our understanding of the visual and alphabetical intersections.
Visual and performance instructors have their vocabularies which, in turn might
be adapted by those working alphabetically, helping them more closely examine the
performative values of their productions. art practice research might therefore seek to
explore the communicative barriers that exist as a person switches code from one world
view to another, both within art practice and without. Rhetorical vocabulary combined
with visual and performance production or reflection might find useful such terms as
diasyrmus. in alphabetic language this refers to
rejecting an argument through ridiculous comparison. examples: arguing that
we can clean up government by better regulating elections is like asking a dog
to quit marking his territory by lifting his hind leg.
(Burton 2009)however, visually diasyrmus is the stuff of posters and political cartoons – another
visual subject of rhetorical analysis. By researching creative communicative moves
through traditional rhetorical terms, an art practitioner can expand the knowledge
and understanding of their own work. What this might accomplish in terms of art
practitioner scholars is a series of examples for how others think about various media,
their use and effects, creating a vocabulary that doesn’t contain another practitioner
but gives additional tools for intuitive creative practices. such scholarship would still
use the medium of words, though visuals would be primary in the production of a print /
on- line final product.
using rhetorical approaches and alphabetical text to investigate how an affect
is created and received is also useful when examining the intersection of artistic
and natural worlds. performance art and landscape design through the eyes of a
rhetorician- art practitioner might illuminate how they practise/might practise. This
would also be primarily word- based, but has the potential for becoming more visual
and performative as arts research comes into its own. michael halloran and gregory
Clark ‘explore the rhetorical functioning of landscape in general, suggesting that the
public landscapes constituted by the us national park movement display symbols that
enable citizens to participate in a civic religion’ (halloran and Clark 2006: 141). This
‘religion’ valorizes a particular national image by examining the terrain, replacement
of original buildings and design of historical artefacts within such spaces: a door of
the nielson farm house (c. 1777) left open, but entry not permitted; a tape of the
original owner who sacrificed land and self during the american Revolution plays in
the background.
The image of an idealized, pastoral america alternates with the image of
John and lydia nielson’s sacrifice in pursuit of that ideal ... depicting the
Jeffersonian ideal of the united states made up of self- sufficient farmers living
on land won by sacrifice, determination and labor.
(halloran and Clark 2006: 153)