WP1 Pre-Writing 1

This photograph is from the gallery "Through the Eyes of Children" reached from a link on the Wysocki site. The photograph was taken by a boy named Musa at the Imbabazi Orphanage in Rwanda. The project started in 2000 and gave cameras to orphans so they could document their lives after the Rwandan genocide. Most of the pictures in the gallery were taken with 35mm disposable cameras and in 2005, digital cameras started to be used. This photo, "Sitting on Rail," was taken with a disposable camera.

The people in this picture are most likely other children at the Imbabazi Orphanage. As the title says, they are sitting an a rail overlooking the water, probably overlooking Lake Kivu, a lake in western Rwanda near where the orphanage is located.

Most of the children were probably orphaned as a result of the extensive violence and genocide that occurred in Rwanda in the 1990s. Rwanda is not a rich country, so most of these children would have had hard lives despite being orphans displaced by tragedy. Growing up in an orphanage would not have been easy, especially after losing or being abandoned by their parents, but the children were provided food and shelter, as well as some degree of protection from the instability of the country. Literally translated, "Imbabazi" means “a place where you will receive all the love and care a mother would give” so likely, the children in the orphanage would have been relatively well off compared to other impoverished children in sub-Saharan Africa.

It is probably warm outside because sub-Saharan Africa is typically hot, and this is shown by the clothes the children are wearing and the fact that most of them aren't wearing shoes. This could also be because they are poor and can't afford shoes. It is also really cloudy in the picture, suggesting that it is in a season that gets more rain or is cooler than usual.

Some of the children appear to be friends given that they are in clusters along the rail instead of all spread out, and this could be because of the similar situation they were forced into. It looks like the children are on some kind of bridge or road because of the rail, and the photographer is standing behind them, possibly on the other side of the bridge. If you look closely, you can see a beach and part of a person on the beach on the right hand side of the picture. This beach might have been a place where the children went in their free time for fun and relaxation, or maybe the children couldn't go there and that is why they are all standing on the bridge. In the picture, they seem to be looking out across the water at something, but you can't really tell what it is from looking at the photograph. They could be watching the person on the beach or something else that isn't visible to the audience.

Weekly Blog Post 7

I wouldn't consider myself an expert at photography by any means, but I enjoy it and I have some experience with it. I just got a new camera, a Nikon Coolpix S220, which is not the most high-quality, top-notch camera out there, but it works well for what I use it for. I mostly use photography to take pictures when I hang out with friends or go on trips so it's nothing that serious, but it's fun and I always enjoy going back and looking at pictures. Pictures help me remember things and are a lot easier to share with other people. I would rather go through and look at someone's vacation pictures than hear them tell me all about the trip. Like the saying goes, "A picture is worth a thousand words."

I really like playing around with different camera settings and filters. Black and white photos are my favorite because I like the visual appeal of them. They are very simple and classic, and I think they look more artsy than standard color photos. I do like color, but black and white or sepia works better with some photos. Generally, I think black and white is better for more formal pictures of people, but color is better for things like landscapes or informal pictures. I had a lot of my senior pictures done in black and white, and those were my favorites, but I usually just use color when goofing around with my friends.

I'm getting more into photography lately because my dad is an amateur photographer, and he is very good at it. He has several cameras for different uses, and has shown my brothers and I how to use them and what they are for. We have a darkroom in our basement because he develops his own film, and I would like to learn how to do that. It's really interesting to me, but I just haven't been home enough or had the time to work on it.

Weekly Blog Post 6

In the video for "Man on the Moon" by R.E.M., the creator of the video uses a variety of rhetorical appeals to add to the overall effectiveness of the video.

One of the most apparent strategies is the use of logos. The video is in black and white and often shows Michael Stipe, the band's lead singer, walking through the desert, but there are other images projected in the background. This creates a structural visual hierarchy because Stipe is always the most focused aspect of the video and is what the eye is drawn to first. However, as Stipe is just walking and singing, the audience tends to pay more attention to what is happening in the background after initially noticing Stipe. Occasionally, the video cuts back to just showing Stipe, again making him the central focus. As the video is entirely in black and white, there isn't a lot of contrast colorwise, but as mentioned earlier, Stipe tends to contrast with the background clips. The background clips generally look like old TV shows with fuzzy pictures and horizontal lines across them, while Stipe is often shown in a clear picture.

The video also sometimes shows several clips of the same thing at the same time. They appear to be randomly located on the screen, and are each portrayed a bit differently. Since they are of the same object or clip, they serve as repetition and create a sense of visual unity. Sometimes the video shows several different clips at the same time, and this can be confusing as there is a lot going on visually and the audience may not know what to focus on and so has to try to take in everything at the same time. This is effective in that it gets the audience to see everything that is being presented in the video.

The structural use of logos helps to formulate pathos and ethos within the video as well. The only hues used are black and white and don't have much brightness. This keeps the video simple, and the simplicity helps the audience to focus on the clips in the video instead of having to take in all the different colors. This avoids over-stimulation, especially when there are a lot of different images shown, and this contributes to the overall effectiveness of the video.

The video is arranged to visually support the argument of the song that there are a lot of things, both true and untrue that people will believe or not believe as discussed in Weekly Blog Post 4. The clips and images used in the video are all of the references made in the lyrics of the song and are organized in such a way to draw the attention of the audience to each aspect and highlight their importance. The end result is a music video that is both argumentative and entertaining, which was probably the original purpose of the makers of the video.

Weekly Blog Post 5

The video for R.E.M.'s "Man on the Moon" opens with Michael Stipe singing and walking through the desert in a cowboy hat. Coupled with the fact that the video is made to look like an old-fashioned black and white movie, the video immediately establishes an emotional appeal with the audience. Stipe is seen as a down-to-earth cowboy, just a regular guy like the rest of us, and the audience can relate to that. This feeling of identification is confirmed at the end of the video when Stipe goes into a truck stop and everyone there starts singing with him. This intwines both ethos and pathos, as the audience can see Stipe as not a famous musician, but a person, and this identity evokes the emotions of the audience.

Ethos is also established by the name-dropping throughout the song. Andy Kaufman, Fred Blassie, and numerous others including Elvis, Darwin, and Moses are mentioned. Most listeners will be able to recognize these names and understand what the song is about. I had to look some of the events and information up, but when the song first came out in 1992, Andy Kaufman had only recently died and was probably still fairly well-known to the intended audience of the song. This gives a sense of credibility to the band because the audience is able to relate to the song.

Logos is brought forward in the actual lyrics of the song. The whole song is an argument about society's susceptibility to believe things and also the tendency of people, like Kaufman, to take advantage of that fact. Page 203 of Compose Design Advocate names "Lists and Repetition" and "Arguing by Example" as two forms of logos. While these aren't made blatantly obvious in "Man on the Moon" as they would be in a formal written argument, the song mentions and repeats several examples although it doesn't explain them in depth. It is then up to the audience to infer what the specific argument is, which is not that difficult.

Weekly Blog Post 4

"Now Andy did you hear about this one..."

The context of the song "Man on the Moon" by R.E.M. is possibly one of the most important things to take into account when analyzing it. I love R.E.M. and this song, but before this, I had never watched the video and I had never really stopped to think about the context of the song.

The song includes a lot of references to pop culture hoaxes that might not be understood out of context. A major one in the song refers to Andy Kaufman who, I will admit, I had never even heard of besides "Andy Kaufman and the wrestling match" that is mentioned in this song and shown in the video. This "wrestling match" turned out to be a staged act between Kaufman, an entertainer/comedian, and a professional WWF (now know as WWE) wrestler. Kaufman was also known for his Elvis impersonations which are shown in the video ("Andy are you goofing on Elvis?") and there are rumors that Kaufman may have staged his own death.

The chorus of the song "If you believed they put a man on the moon/man on the moon/If you believed there's nothing up his sleeve/Then nothing is cool" refers to the widespread belief that people never really went to the moon and it was all just a War of the Worlds-type hoax. The song goes on to mention Darwin and Newton and Moses, among other things, and ultimately back to Andy Kaufman.

Taken out of context, this song is simply that: a song. But when you take into account everything that makes up the song, I think "Man on the Moon" has a deeper meaning. It is a criticism of society's tendency to doubt things they shouldn't, such as space exploration, while believing things that aren't true (Kaufman's wrestling match and the possibility that he faked his death). It puts questioning Andy Kaufman on the same level of questioning God, which raises the question that since there are so many hoaxes that people fall for, how do we even know what to believe? Are we so gullible that we will believe just about anything, or are we so distrustful that we question everything? As the song puts it, "Are we losing touch?"