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Thinking Through Worlds Fair: Evolutionary Rhetoric

M. A. Syverson

University of Texas at Austin

Published in Computers and Composition, Vol 18,
special topic issue on Visual Rhetoric spring 2001¹ Single copies of this article can be downloaded and printed for the reader's personal research and study.

Abstract: Instructors may hesitate to incorporate visual rhetoric into their composition courses because of their own lack of training or experience in visual arts or graphic design. They may also be uncertain about what kinds of demands visual rhetoric will make of students, and what kinds of learning are involved. One of the best ways to gain understanding about the challenges and potential of incorporating visual rhetoric into our courses is to develop a project of your own. This paper describes the creation of Worlds Fair, a project which evolved over several years from a sketchy short story idea into a full-blown web-based multimedia project with over 80 contributors, and proved to be an education in incorporating visual rhetoric into composition pedagogy.

Keywords: visual rhetoric, design, multimedia, cognition

Introduction. One of the great difficulties I have faced in incorporating visual rhetoric into my composition teaching is my own lack of expertise and experience. I have been aided by some early art training, and by reading widely in topics such as information architecture, design, typography, architecture, and the manuals and tutorials associated with graphics programs such as Painter and Photoshop. But the most useful and engaging learning I’ve done has been the result of trying to develop a project of my own that depends on a strong visual component. Worlds Fair (currently online at www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~syverson/worldsfair) confronted me with issues ranging from the technical to the pedagogical to the rhetorical and aesthetic. For all of its frustrations and its inadequacies, it has demonstrated for me some unexpected dimensions of composing in new media. And it has also given me deeper insights into the challenges students face in developing projects that require the integration of graphical and textual elements. I thought an explanation of the process of thinking through this large-scale project might perhaps benefit others who are teaching aspects of visual rhetoric in their classes.

Worlds Fair started as a text-based story idea I meant to work out for myself, rather than a graphical or pedagogical project, but it evolved into an extended exercise in rhetorical design and exploratory pedagogy. The title of this piece, "Thinking Through Worlds Fair" refers both to the process by which I thought about how to design the project, and also the way in which I used the project itself to think with.