"The Sticky Embrace of beauty" Response

I should admit that the sentiments I am about to express are likely not really mine but rather Shipka’s sentiments regenerated through me. This is not a bad thing. I agree with Shipka; I only feel it is necessary to acknowledge that these thoughts are not completely original—I don’t want the credit for their intelligence.

Wysocki spends her entire article discussing an a vision of new media as visual communication through the page or the computer screen. She, however, refuses to acknowledge that communication happens aurally or more importantly that visual representation can happen in non-two-dimensional media. Consider our upcoming project in class: we are creating cultural “quilts.” Even if a student literally creates a “standard” sewn quilt, she will be communicating in a rich visual way that is neither on a page nor on a screen. I think it this lack of recognition of media beyond the digital-paper binary that hinders Wysocki’s classroom. If her students are still limited to applying design techniques to a Web page, they have no more freedom than students who are limited to the techniques of writing “effective” prose.

My biggest complaint with Wysocki is her declaration that visual design is English composition. I do not disagree that composition moves beyond the boundaries of text. However, I dispute the equality between visual design and English composition as disciplines. Studying visual design at the level Wysocki reaches is beyond the casual unit one might employ in the fresh-people composition course. She uses the vocabulary of the discipline to analyze an article at a theoretical level, involving Karl Jung, Karl Marx, the Russian formalists, and a host of other theoreticians. She does to a magazine add what we as English professionals/scholars do to a literary work. If the entire study of applying theory and special vocabulary to effectively analyze a work denotes a discipline, how can’t the work Wysocki does in this article be considered its own autonomous discipline?

I do not disagree with what Wysocki says about the beauty or the elements of visual design. I just do not agree that such depth of visual design analysis is relevant in the English sector of education. I do not disagree that understanding visual design is important. However, it should work for its placement as a discipline just as English did.