Journal 3--Haven

The three artifacts I chose for the project are:

1.     Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

2.     Elizabeth Gilbert’s Blog http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/thoughts-on-writing/

3.     The Film Score for Eat Pray Love the movie.

Eat Pray Love is based on a true story about Elizabeth Gilbert’s journey to find herself, with the notion that to find oneself you must “give yourself up, travel, and sacrifice.” The three different artifacts I chose taught me a lot about rhetoric, but most importantly, they taught me that you can persuade, spread your ideas and send the same message to audiences of all kinds through the use of different mediums. For instance, big readers may be more persuaded by the detailed version of Elizabeth’s story, whereas another person may be motivated to travel and explore after listening to the different cultural music in the film score.

I noticed a trend of people selecting audience as their focus for their three artifacts. I think this is simply because audience is a major part of rhetoric. Anyone that is using rhetoric to persuade is trying to persuade an audience—not themselves. Therefore, audience is a great term to research and study because of its influence on the different content and approaches that are used to effectively persuade a specific audience.

Edbauer talks about circulation and its transformative nature, which alters and expands the accessibility of texts—just as it did to the “Keep Austin Weird” phrase. According to Wysocki, the role of design is important because design selection has an impact on the audience you are targeting. Therefore, the design of your text should be appealing and in alignment to the audience you are targeting. The design should also be appropriate for the particular message you are sending. According to Gladwell, the role of material affordances should not be shunned just because they are not the latest and greatest form of technology. Gladwell makes a point that we tend to assume that the latest form of technology is the most efficient or the best way to complete a task, without thinking about the benefits of previous or traditional options and their pro’s. Gladwell also believes that material affordances are easier to edit without altering the original document, and when piled on a desk, they act as a history of different pieces of work someone has tended to, instead of simply storing them in a virtual file.