In the vein of my theme for this class (Cyberpunk) and our current discussions of how arguments work I wanted to present some Cyberpunk Art and what arguments they make and how.
The piece I’ve chosen is NSFW but I censored it to an appropriate level.
It is fine to view the image without any warning NOW.
The piece is titled: Medialand: The Bastardization Of Humanity In A Time Of Great Need and is by Jeffrey Scott.
Jeffrey is utilizing pathos to establish his argument on the future of media. My interpretation of his art is that Jeffrey believes that people will focus more on media rather than the reality and the things happening in media will be considered more important than what is happening in our reality. We will live in media, rather than life itself. Notice how all the men watching the TV all look the same; this could be to show the anonymousness of the people on media. We know that people in real life have different characteristics to each other so that we can identify various people around us but people we see through media are all anonymousa and thus cannot identify the true identity of each other.
Notice how all the men are affixed to the television girl despite the real figure being right behind them. This illustrates how people view what is on TV more “reality” to them. TV presents more detailed views of the woman (see in the separate TVs) to the people which provides more satisfaction to these viewers.
Also, notice the darkness and the gloominess of the picture. The overall theme going on in this scene provides a negative feeling to the subject at hand. The metalic feeling and the dark cyber world atmosphere almost represents how cold human relations got and the extinction of physical interaction between real people. The nudity of the censored woman (which I censored myself for better view) shows explicit sexual content and warns how the media is being filled with sexual materials. Every element leads to a dark argument of the future that Jeffrey is trying to show. The picture could be interpreted in many different ways and this is the way I view Jeffrey’s ideas and arguments.
Hacked by – MinChul Han
Hacking Rhetoric 
November 19, 2013 at 3:52 am
In the vein of my theme for this class (Cyberpunk) and our current discussions of how arguments work I wanted to present some Cyberpunk Art and what arguments they make and how.
WARNING: The piece I’ve chosen is NSFW, view at your own discretion.
The piece is titled: Medialand: The Bastardization Of Humanity In A Time Of Great Need and is by Jeffrey Scott.
Jeffrey is utilizing pathos to establish his argument on the future of media. My interpretation of his art is that Jeffrey believes that media will become more important than reality and media will become our new reality. We will live in media, rather than life itself. Notice how all the men watching the TV all look the same, this could be to show a future filled with clones, or a race that has evolved to be the same, or maybe that people don’t care about the fact they look different anymore. Notice how affixed to the television girl the men are despite the real thing being right behind them. This could be because the TV is more important to them, this could because the TV provides more for them (see in the separate TVs that there are more enhanced views of the woman). Notice how dark and gloomy the picture overall is, providing a negative feeling to the overall subject at hand. Notice how sexual and blunt the picture is, this might be a warning of media becoming too sexualized. (Albeit, nude photography seems to be a preference of the Artist’s style). Everything lends to a dark argument of the future that Jeffrey is trying to make that can be interpreted in many different ways.
EDIT: To make things easier for people who do wish to comment on this post, what argument do you think Jeffrey Scott is trying to make?
November 19, 2013 at 5:35 am
Hey Joshua, cool blog post! You should definitely check out James Pinkerton’s blog posts, they are breathtaking and compelling. When I read his beautiful prose I cry every time. Check his stuff out.