voi Cesdemonstrate how rhetoric that combines with art scholarship becomes itself visual,
aural and kinaesthetic. Finally, art practitioners might not only use rhetoric to create
new ways in which academic scholarship is defined, ‘counted’ and communicated, but
contribute to how the ancient art of rhetoric continues to adapt itself to the media in
which communication takes place.
Must it always be alphabetical?most would think that rhetoric would be most closely aligned with art history since
they envision rhetorical/art examinations occurring within a historical period,
identifying a series of marks that were applied to produce a building, painting, music,
landscape, dance or other objects. Both art historians and rhetoricians often produce
an argument as research whether they focus on traditional uses of marks and medium,
or on multimodal productions. They may examine the interplay of print, image,
sound, movement on a page, website or film to persuade someone how the context
in which these occur contributes to their impact, whether it be an exhibition hall, a
stage, or a natural or community- built space. such examinations require attention and
observation skills, as well as a vocabulary from a rhetorician/art historian’s toolkit, and
stand as professional productions: printed critiques, analyses, interpretations.
admittedly the practices of art history shadow centuries of commentary that have
explicated and dissected the long history of rhetoric, defining and debating who said
what in greece, how the Romans reinterpreted greek rhetorical principles, and
how each successive historical period changed or rediscovered rhetorical practices.
however, rhetoric does not have to be tied to print or alphabetic language, and in fact
has relied on the performative and visual since its inception. The focus of rhetoric
has always been on communication, and it is here that there is a function for rhetoric
within scholarship by arts practitioners. Whether communicating a movement, state, or
emotion in dance, music or clay, or making a political point in graphics or architecture
to an audience, rhetorical techniques are used to shape, measure, understand or
influence a desired effect.
While art practitioners either intuitively or logically find results and effects,
rhetoricians choose the medium of words to determine what oral and alphabetical
(written) texts mean, what effect they produce, how their communication is shaped by
a particular (kairotic) moment. They do this not merely to study other communicative
acts, but to more succinctly effect the impact they themselves seek to produce. While
over time, the medium used by rhetoricians to perform and paint has been words,
rhetoric has recently turned to its origins in the performative and visual. now a
rhetorician might study how the use of yellow on a website can cause an audience
to stop, click, and navigate in a direction. a rhetorician might well examine how a
pathway through a gehry building, mimics the expected architectural corridor, but
how anyone who walks the path is moved to stop because of the irregular ceiling
lines, or how another might not move quickly down the hall, despite its straightness,
but explore and meander because of the planes of the walls. a designer might intuit
or think rhetorically to more quickly understand that while yellow is the colour she
wants, lemon yellow does not create the effect desired. an architect might realize that
the building being designed becomes more useful and more playful when he changes