From Proceedings Seventh Annual Workshop: Presence 2004. Ed. Mariano Alcaniz Raya and Beatriz Rey Solaz. Valencia: Universidad Politecnia de Valencia, 2004, 279-82
Introduction |
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Rhetoric has always borne its interests to the site
of particular cases -- artfully employing its means of persuasion
to influence the judgments and actions of intended auditors. Accordingly,
rhetoric's effective engagement is always negotiated anew as its
aims are constrained by circumstances constituting what are called
"rhetorical situations." Rhetorical situations require
phronesis or practical wisdom -- the apt adaptation of communication
to the complex of autonomous people, measured times, and cultural
contexts. It is through the strategic adaptation and mediation of
symbols that rhetoric coactively induces cooperation without coercion
-- that rhetoric achieves its persuasive aims in the "realm
of the probable and contingent" at particular times and places.
Web-enabled
cellphone video recording devices, such as the Nokia 3650, provide
a site for creating and broadcasting rhetorical discourses adapted
to the time and place constraints they present. Most video-enabled
cellphones allow up to 10 minutes of recording and playback (in
Europe and Asia video cell phones have greater functionality than
in the United States because of early service provider decisions
to standardize methods of data transfer, thus allowing more effort
to be directed toward functions within a particular phone model).
The videos may immediately be sent over the Internet as multi-media
messages. In turn, the videos can be received and viewed by video-enabled
cellphones, handhelds, or by web- and video-enabled desktop and
laptop computing devices.
On cellphones, the videoclips are displayed on screens ranging from
1 inch X 1 inch to 1 inch X 2.2 inches. On handheld devices (e.g.,
PDA's, Tablets) the videoclips are displayed on a slightly larger
screen. On desktop and laptop computers, the media player's viewing
window can be enlarged with considerable loss of quality to the
video images. The sound quality of the original footage is fairly
good at 16 bits mono with an 8000 Hz sample rate. On a cellphone,
sound is mediated through the speakerphone function and the volume
is adjustable as it is on all computer-based media players.
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Web-enabled
cellphone video recording devices, such as the Nokia 3650, provide
a site for creating an d broadcasting rhetorical discourses adapted
to the time and place constraints they present. Our project explores
the rhetorical constraints of time and place as they relate to
the production of persuasive multi media messages with video cellphones.
We employ rhetorical strategies of enargeia to meet
the time and place constraints posed by current video cellphone
technology and its media of audio-visual an d text-based communication.
Among other presence-inducing rhetorical techniques, we employ
audio-visual repetition, association, rhetorical questioning,
and key dialectical terms to persuasively display the conflicts
over conflict -- the operative positions advanced in arguments
for and against war.
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Our
project explores the rhetorical constraints of time and place as they
relate to the production of persuasive multimedia messages with video
cellphones. Specifically, we focus on the production of multimedia
messages that persuasively display attitudes toward war.
Rhetorical presence
may constitute a fundamental rationale of a given discourse's persuasive
appeal. In the history of rhetoric, presence has been associated with
visualization through stylistic devices of ekphrasis or enargeia.
Enargeia is understood as a quality of vividness that strategically
operates under the maxim that "seeing is believing" and
the cultured assumption that vivid discourse can induce a sense of
"being there" that provides the discourse's creator and
receiver with a sense of witnessing and experiencing the discourse's
claim. In his Orator's Education (6.2), Quintilian refers
to this quality of experience as phantasia -- a sort of "functional"
hallucination -- prescribing that speakers mentally engage a visual
representation of their subject at the time of a given speech's utterance
as an inducement to deliver the speech in an emotional tone commensurate
with the speech's intention. For example, mentally "seeing"
a husband and wife stranded in the ocean with sharks encircling them
during the course of speaking of their plight will induce an emotional
tone in the speech that evidences the speaker's emotional connection
to the subject. Similarly, the vivid depiction and emotional speaking
of the couple's plight is designed to evoke an emotional tone in the
listener commensurate with "being there" closing the experiential
gap between simply "hearing" the report of their plight
and eye-witnessing it.
The strategic manipulation
of strategies of enargeia provides an orientation toward a given
discourse that aligns its emphases with its intention to induce
a given judgment. That is, any given "observation" of
any given event is perspectival -- it is derived from a standpoint
that is usually underwritten by values or cultural and other screens
that call attention to features of phenomena and, therefore, conceal,
or put out of awareness, other features of the same phenomena. Accordingly,
two people can witness the "same" event and judge it differently
under different hierarchies of interest that highlight and downplay
aspects of the phenomenon under view.
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As far as rhetorical
narratives intend to constrain listeners' judgments of given events,
actions, artifacts, etc. in accord with the rhetor's intention,
strategies of enargeia project orders of emphasis that
are designed to preclude conflicted ways of seeing among a group
of observers. Where audiences are symbolically / rhetorically induced
to cooperate in seeing similarly they are able to coordinate their
judgments, arrive at collective decisions, and undertake conjoint
actions with a perception of deliberate, democratically-formed consensus.
This tactic of concealing and revealing is also metaphorically understood
as framing and reframing, where perceptions are induced and actions
motivated by linguistically or visually contextualizing or re-contextualizing
phenomena under view. In visual media, verbal narrative may frame
what is seen by providing linguistic prompts that pattern interpretations.
For example, the same painting with different titles may induce
different judgments of the painting's significance, different interpretations
of the artist's motives, and different interpretations of the painting's
meaning. With regard to a literal frame, different textures, widths,
colors and materials may also induce different experiences of the
differently framed painting's significance -- even to the extent
that some ways of framing are prescribed for some ways of painting.
For example, expressionist painting is typically framed with gilded
material. This operation may also be understood by the turn of phrase
punning on the homophones "gilt" and "guilt":
"Gilt by association." In this view, a given phenomenon
is framed, identified, or associated with some other phenomenon
thereby blending their meanings. This is especially effective in
visual rhetoric where, for example, people who are seen together
may be considered related in some way -- either by guilt or gilt
where the character of the dominant part of the pair may "rub
off" on the other. Of course, for better or worse, this strategy
of physical positioning resonates with the cultural maxim "Birds
of a feather flock together."
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Figure 1. Blood and Gas |
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Our project queries the
rhetorical limits of web-enabled video cellphone media, under the
constraints of time and place, for creating rhetorical presence
and inducing judgments of war's efficacy. Using Toshiba VM 4050
video cellphones and cellphone service provided through Sprint PCS
Vision with average data transfer rates between 50 kbps-70 kbps
(Sprint/Qualcom 3G CDMA 1x), we produced 43 "vidblinks."
A vidblink is the video counterpart of a sound bite -- a brief,
vivid, memorable, and rhetorically effective message. Operating
under the time constraint afforded by the Toshiba VM 4050, each
vidblink is 15-seconds long. The vidblinks display value-judgments
of war's efficacy. Some of the vidblinks engage war's efficacy-in-general.
Other vidblinks indirectly address current conflicts.
Each vidblink consists
of a visual image and an oral narrative. They employ rhetorical
strategies of enargeia to meet the time and place constraints posed
by current video cellphone technology and its media of audio-visual
and text-based communication. Among others, the vidblinks employ
narrative repetition; visual and oral association, antitheses, metaphor
and synecdoche; rhetorical questioning; and a variety of camera-movement
techniques to persuasively display the conflicts over war -- the
operative positions advanced in arguments over war's efficacy. These
stylistic strategies enable the creation of rhetorical presence
within a relatively brief time-period; within the size- and place-constraints
of the cellphone's screen; and the recording, editing, broadcasting,
and playback capabilities of the device.
Most of the vidblinks
draw their visual substance from objects "found" in the
local environment -- gasoline cans, baseball diamonds, playgrounds,
chessboards, ceiling fans, and road signs. Using the readily observable
environment as their visual scene and context, each vidblink's narrative
rhetorically frames its objects as relevant to contemplating war's
aspects in different ways. Additional presence is created through
the combination of visual commonplaces and uncommon rhetorically
framed narratives that bring to awareness "meanings" embedded
in the everyday environment that may transform their commonplace
observation into sites of contemplation as taken-for-granted surroundings
are imbued with meanings induced by the vidblinks' narratives. For
example, one vidblink portrays a gasoline container sitting on a
wrought-iron patio table. It is narratively framed by a rhetorical
question that metaphorically associates gasoline with blood: "How
much blood does it take to fill your tank?”
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Given the current war
in Iraq, and the relevance of blood and gasoline to its prosecution,
an association is made between a commodity and a conflict that may
bring to awareness an economic rationale for the war that calls
into question pronouncements characterizing the war as an operation
in service of liberation and democratic social reform. All this
happens in a 15-second time line, that, in its brevity and intensity
as a re-contextualization of the commonplace, rhetorically induces
presence and the possibility of remembrance of the message's associative
import the next time the observer purchases gasoline, and so long
as the war continues. This may, in turn, stimulate a repetitive
recognition of a disjunction between the claims of the government
and the realities of the war's interests: humanitarian vs. commercial.
In addition,
one inducement to attend to some of the vidblinks relates to the
already-established symbolic significance of given props. For example,
one vidblink is set on a baseball diamond. The camera moves around
the bases and each base is characterized by a term related to war's
tragic losses. As the camera crosses home plate, the narrator asks
"Isn't it time we came home?" In this vidblink, there
are kinetic associations (movement around the bases) as well as
associations to the game of baseball and a play on the word "home"
as the camera crosses "home" plate. In sum, given baseball's
commonplace characterization as "America's pastime", the
baseball diamond is a site of strong cultural-symbolic significance
to many "Americans." Its association with war will probably
be especially memorable, and possibly alienating, to baseball fans.
As a potential site of alienation, the vidblink may prompt anger,
thereby raising consciousness of the observer's taken-for-granted
position. |
Figure 2. Come Home |
Other vidblink props with generally established symbolic significance
include the American flag, cemeteries, and playgrounds. So, in the
found environment there may be objects and sites symbolically charged
with political and social significance as well as objects and sites
that are taken for granted in their own right as commonplaces of everyday
life. It is difficult to determine which set of props are most apt
to be framed in the interests of our project. In the case of commonplace
objects and sites the rhetorical challenge is addressed by constructing
narratives sufficient to symbolically charge them with unprecedented
emotional, political and social significance appropriate to the contemplation
of war's efficacy -- as in the case of the gasoline container. In
the case of the objects and sites with established symbolic significance,
the rhetorical challenge is addressed by narratively downplaying their
typical associations and foregrounding their place in disputes over
war's efficacy. Nevertheless, all of the props are "found"
in the environment and may therefore prompt recollection of given
vidblinks' narratives as they are encountered in the course of everyday
life. |
Assessment
The 15-second format enables and drives the compact and potentially
intense engagement of an audio-visual message (1) displayed by the
cellphone's small-screen, (2) heard through the cellphone's speakerphone
function, (3) wirelessly broadcasted and received as a multimedia
message, and (4) apt to be successively rebroadcast by first-wave
recipients to other recipients.
The
wireless cellphone video medium affords the potential for the exponential
chaining of single multimedia messages toward all web-based nodes
of reception, constituting a cyber-grapevine and genealogy of meaning
that may surpass the audience-in-view of the message's creators,
constituting the message anew as it may be taken up and rebroadcast
world wide.
In addition
to creating the vidblinks, we are currently in the process of broadcasting
them via the Internet to over 100 participants in our project. We
have created a survey to (1) assess their influence on the recipients'
impressions of the conflicts over conflict, and (2) ascertain the
scope of their rebroadcast. This feature of our project will enable
us to understand the messages' reception -- how relatively brief
small-screen audio-visual cellphone messages may effectively perform
a presence-inducing persuasive function and circulate in a global
network.
This aspect
of the project addresses the recurrent objections raised in critics'
judgments of "sound bites" and their potential to over-simplify
and subvert time-honored discursive practices characterized as central
to appropriately engaging ideals of rationality connected to the
formation of appropriate judgments. We are interested in the place
of vidblinks in the provision of "good reasons" backing
moral judgment. That is, in the history of rhetoric, specific concrete
vivid images and examples (nonverbal or verbal/fictional or actual)
have played a significant role in the inducement of cooperation
-- rhetoric's chief persuasive aim. Operating under the rhetorical
rationale of liveliness or vividness, and the idea that seeing is
believing, schemes and tropes -- especially metaphors (visual and
verbal) -- have been deployed to set striking images serving persuasive
functions within the three traditional genres of rhetoric: deliberative
(i.e. generally political and future oriented discourse), epideictic
(i.e. generally value-educative and present-oriented discourse),
and forensic (i.e. generally legal and past-oriented discourse).
We want to address
our assessment of the vidblinks' effectiveness and distribution
in light of our rhetorical interests in the visual and oral "arguments"
of style and delivery -- of symbol choice and media of communication
-- operating within the constraints of time and space -- as the
vidblinks may be freely distributed across the world-wide-web. At
the same time, however, we wish to assess the vidblinks' broadcast
and their likely drift to unintended auditors -- where their generic
intention as persuasive displays will probably be aborted as they
are planted in argument fields unreceptive to their telos --
to their actualization as fruitful insights into war's efficacy
to be cultivated and harvested by their observers. |
Conclusion
In sum, our project seeks to understand how the time- and place-compressed
communication medium of cellphone video can be rhetorically managed
to produce persuasive messages with political and social import potentially
communicable throughout the World Wide Web. That is, rhetoric has
always been associated with persuasion, as far as it may vividly display
-- give presence to -- the grounds of judgment in any given particular
case. Our vidblinks follow in this ancient tradition, adapting it
to new communication technology.
In a way, our strategy of associating commonplaces of the environment
with judgments of the efficacy of war potentially reverses the order
of technologically mediated presence by imbuing the found environment
with meanings that are derived from their mediated deployment as
invitational props to narratives considering war's efficacy. This
reversal opens the prospect of the possibility of contemplating
war's efficacy in any landscape that comes before one's view. It
may induce a hermeneutic of every-day observation with ancient roots,
stemming back to the belief in a divine logos permeating all phenomena
with messages of spiritual import emanating from an omnipotent,
omnipresent creator. In the case of our project, the vidblinks provide
a pretext for contemplating their intention at the intersections
of everyday life where their props are encountered and possibly
recognized as sites of significance, bringing to mind the vidblinks'
brief narratives and possibly inducing the daily contemplation of
war's efficacy as one moves through environments containing the
vidblinks' visual props. For example, when one of the authors filled
his lawnmower's gas tank from a red plastic container, he was reminded
of the "Blood and Gas" vidblink's rhetorical question:
"How much blood does it take to fill your tank?"
The interplay of mediated and unmediated presence may prospect
toward inculcating a "way of seeing" that is mindful of
the potential insights that can be gained from taking note of the
world-as-given through a consciously affected interpretive frame
-- inducing a quality of experience that can be gauged by the quality
of life it provides its bearers.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of The Center for
Educational Technology, Middlebury, Vermont; Vassar College's 2004
Summer Media Institute, its director and organizer, and the technical
support staff located at Vassar College's Media Cloister.
References
M. F. Quintilian, The Orator's Education, Ed. D.A. Russell
(Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University, 2001)
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