rhetoriC: writing, reading and ProduCing the visuaLarms and hands is not straight, but acute (less than 90 degrees relative to the
centre of the torso). picture elements that have a 45 degree angle of rotation,
then, are more congruent with the physical position of the reader, creating the
sense that they are more ‘within reach.’ in the alphabet book, objects over
which the viewer is most likely to have the power of manipulation or use, tools
and food, appear at 45 degree angles. objects which are likely to be outside
the reader’s influence appear at an upright angle: house, Queen, Clown, ears,
nose. The interactive participant is thus constructed in a social relation of
power over tools and food and a relation of equality or of inferiority to people
and certain objects such as houses.
(Wiest 2001: 6)By interpreting these positional codes, Wiest opens space for the development of a
tactile rhetoric, a potential methodology for art practitioner research that would benefit
both the observer/viewer of art production and the artist (especially, for example, the
sculptor, potter, fashion designer, collage artist) who could employ the vocabulary to
examine, create, and push his or her own vision.
in susan delagrange’s examination of the Wunderkammer (delagrange 2009: see
Figure 9.1), rhetorical analyses of the visual become an artistic expression of that which it
analyzses; it becomes a piece of interactive art. embarking on delagrange’s examination
of one rhetorical canon, ‘arrangement’, the viewer clicks on the link to the article listed
in the content page of that issue of the journal Kairos. The first sight that meets the
viewer is of what appears to be the top of an elaborate carved wooden box or a massive
door. if on- line instinct doesn’t take over and cause one to click on the top of the box,
the word ‘open’ in script appears in the bottom right hand corner as a clue. Clicking on
the word ‘open’ however, does nothing; the visual has displaced the alphabetical as the
key to enter this ‘text’. once clicked, the panels of the box top (doors?) slide back and
there revealed is the Wunderkammer, a shadow box of thirty- six squares, each offering a
colourful invitation to ‘pick up’ what is only glimpsed by the contained contents.
Clicking, one can open any individual square and the viewer/participant quickly
finds that, not only does each square hold a myriad of objects – visual, alphabetical,
filmic, auditory – but that reading this text does not have to occur from left to right,
or in any order. as with any visual, the viewer participates in creating the perspective
by wandering around, changing angle, focusing, stepping back: the point of careful
arrangement on the part of the artist and an interactive engagement in the act of
arrangement on the part of the observer.
at one point in the box of possibilities, delagrange compares her work and her
examination of the rhetorical concept of arrangement to the artist Joseph Cornell’s
shadow boxes:
many of Cornell’s constructions made use of the evocativeness of the partly-
seen, using screens with holes, frosted glass, layered paper and wood, sand,
bottled objects, and mirrors to provide multiple perspectives while never
revealing all, insisting that the viewer both accept the ambiguity and continue
striving to construct meaning in the gaps.
(delagrange 2009)