In all the discussions about black, white, color, and technology, I became interested in the idea that in today’s world we need to be able to decipher what is real and what is not.  This is laid out in the reading by Nancy Allen, “Ethics and Visual Rhetorics: Seeing’s Not Believing Anymore.”  In the article, Nancy says “Because technology has made enhancement and, in some cases, distortion so easy, visual alterations are becoming common.”  It is so easy to create an original picture or idea just based on the manipulation of visuals.  The art of photo shop can introduce entirely new creatures such as these:

While the first picture is recognized immediately as a fake, because most adults know without a doubt that a Crocaduck does not exist, the second image may take a moment to catch the cut and paste.  If you pay a little more attention, you see that one of the ducks has evolved into the beautiful Duckatoo.  The perfection of the photo shop is so impressive that the imagination runs wild picturing creatures like these in our normal environments.
Not only can this art create brand new creatures of the animal kingdom, it can also completely change the meaning and perception of an everyday picture.  The picture below takes what may be a very bland and “normal” picture of a bus in London, and transforms it into something full of wonder with a dark and elegant feel.  If this picture were not modified, we would most likely see a simple overcast sky during the day, with some people, a dingy bus, and a clock tower in the background.


Lastly, there is virtually nothing that we (humans) look at in the natural world that is viewed through our lens as black and white.  It makes the picture below seem odd to me, because we all know what Lucy and Ricky really look like; one being a bright red-head, the other having hair of jet black that is actually lightened by the black and white picture.
 
Nancy is right, what looks real, is oftentimes not real at all with technologies today.  Or in this case, technologies of the past as well.
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In class, we discussed Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics," which is really the seminal work in well, understanding comics.  McCloud discusses just about every, and any aspect of comics that can be conceived, and our discussion on 'gutters' was interesting, as I hadn't read "Understanding Comics" in some ten years.

As an avid comics fan (buff?), I had always been told that Neal Adams was one of the genre-defining comics-book artists of his day (which happened to precede me by some 15 years).  As you can see in the examples to the right, his use of panel arrangement was completely "outside-the-box," to coin a phrase that came up in class.  That is not the interesting part, however.

Trap. The combination of the genres of trance and rap usually through sound mixing and editing, has become a staple of parties and festival shows. They share similar use of synth, heavy base and spoken words to create music. But what interests me out of these is the artwork and how the artwork mimics the mixing of themes between rap and techno much in the same way the music does.

Arguably one of the most recognizable symbols in the Western cultural lexicon, or even that of Eastern cultures, is the silhouette of Mickey Mouse. Popularized in the late 1920s by a series of short films, America’s favorite rodent has come to represent the Walt Disney Studios and the Disney corporation at large.

The above comic by Robert Berry appears in his Ulysses “Seen” adaptation of the James Joyce novel Ulysses.

We watched "The Machine is Us/ing Us" and had an interesting class discussion on whether it was a scholarly work or not. It was not, perhaps, “scholarly”; but it was an argument, and it made me think about the sociology of internet communication.

During our in-class discussion of Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art," the composer brought up gutters, the space in between frames of a comic (or newspaper, cartoon or other media).  In a comic, as McCloud states in the image to the right, gutters "play host to the magic and mystery that are at the very heart of comics."  These gutters are vital, and can serve as more than a space to let the reader's mind wander.

When we talked in class about usability and the internet, it sounded like the conclusion as to what makes a usable website is simplicity. Creating a website to serve a very obvious purpose is the key to usability. But even when a site is usable, there are aesthetics that make a website a more enjoyable experience for the user. Color, formatting, and graphic elements can enhance usability by making a website visually appealing.

In Vitaly Friedman's article "10 Usability Nightmares You Should Be Aware Of," the first item listed is  problematic hidden login links on websites. Friedman uses Backpack as an example because the login link is very small and placed right underneath a block of text that looks like an advertisement, rather than placing the login somewhere else on the page where it can be easily located.

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Of the recent readings for this course, I feel most compelled to comment on the writings of Jakob Nielsen. I had heard of him before, touted as the leading expert of usability. A great deal of the discussion in class was devoted to some apparent contradictions between his ethos and one of his now defunct websites. However, I noticed contradictions on the very page we were asked to look at for class.

Professor John Logie teaches us that comics have a place in academia. He teaches it in Visual Rhetoric. Why not? Comics are visual and they are graphic and they are certainly full of rhetoric. Comics teach us to engage ourselves with the comic we are viewing, on our own time, in our own space. Professor Logie teaches that Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" is an essential book to do just that, understand comics.
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