Visual Media, Allegorical Consciousness, and Postmodern...

Visual Media, Allegorical Consciousness, and Postmodern Culture I think many of us would agree that we are living in an era of transition: generally, from one phase of modernity to another; more specifically, it is harder to say. Lets ask ourselves for a moment how this sense of change might guide the rhetorical study of visual media. Of the many possible answers to this question, there are two I want to put on the table. The first consideration is that the study of visual media is likely to be occurring at all, or in a particular form, because our society now is moving beyond those media to other communication technologies. Here I am applying an observation from the history of communication: We know that the study of the forms†¦show more content†¦Not surprisingly, the study of meaning quickly became articulated through terms such as symbol that could work in both verbal and visual media, while subsequently verbal and visual terms have become interchangeable as we referr to all manner of practices as discourses and read a limitless range of artifacts, or at least gesture in that direction. And now we find ourselves amidst the study of visual media, visual cultures, visual literacy, etc.--which is more, by the way, than previous investigations of the individual visual arts, which always arise soon after their moment of origin. I cant help but wonder if, once again, the study of communication is caught in a slightly retrograde enterprise. Are we focusing on the visual because we are already under the influence of a successor technology? If so, isnt it likely that our account of visual rhetorics is itself already bearing the stamp of a post-visual mode of perception or cognitive style, or that if it is not, it wont last once such an account emerges? One more time: could it be the successful account of visual media is likely to be the one that also works with its successor medium? If so, then we need only specify that successor. To suggest how this logic might play out, if the successor medium is interactive computing generally and the internet/web practices currently, the n our account of visual rhetorics will be likely to feature interaction