sentences, phrases, and words as seemed to fit my overall intention.)
In two- or three-dimensional arrangements of a nonlinear nature, the connections between elements are more latent that determined. It is the reader, audience, or viewer who determines the connections between the elements, as much so as, if not more so than, the composer. We might read a website by jumping from one framed box of information to another; we might dive down through hypertextual levels, or follow a link to another website. All the time we are navigating the configuration of text and image that the composer has created for us. The experience of reading a website or a multipaneled work of any kind is thus different from a sequential reading, just as the act of composing these different works isdifferent. We deploy sequentiality and other types of configured spatial relations as we see fit
in order to make meaning
.
This act of navigating not only what is within each of the framed texts that we “read” but also the lines of engagement and juxtaposition between them—and any spaces that surround or stand between them—is central to the act of composition and reading. The two sides of the communication act—that of the composer and the reader—are reciprocal, and each construes the intentions of the other. For the composer, the reader is often “within” rather than an actual reader or audience without. That is to say, the composer carries within him- or herself the ability and need to listen to, read, and/or view the work he or she is creating in order to help to make it cohere. In these ways, the act of composition is as much an act of decoding and interpreting as it is an act of making and configuring. And the “meaning” is created in the interaction between composer, reader, and “text”—a space that is filled and put together to enact old meanings and to create new ones. Thus rhetoric is the social mapping of relations between ideas and feelings via the composition of modes, media, and other resources.
What Are the Limits of Composition?
We have already suggested, and will elaborate further in the chapter on rhetoric and framing, that the immediate limits of a composition are its frame. The act of framing—either using existing off-the-shelf frames (“text types,” conventional genres in any art form or social encounter) or creating a new frame—determines the boundaries of the composition. To give some quick examples: a painting on canvas that is intended to be framed for exhibition provides the parameters for the composition. There is some leeway afforded the painter as he or she works on the canvas, in terms of the bleeding off of the edges of the composition (which a mount and a frame might cover in due course), but the edge of the canvas is the limit of the compositional space. In another nonverbal example, a conventional piece of music is composed in five movements that fit together in a sequence to create some degree of artistic unity. The “edges” of the composition are defined by the score, spatially, in digital format or on paper. In performance, the work is framed by time, with a clear beginning and end, often marked by a moment's silence and (ritual) applause.
Even in these examples, however, we have defined two kinds of framing that mark the limits of composition: one is the actual creation of the work, and the other is the work in performance (if these two aspects can be separated).
The act of composition is a critical/creative act that works toward a product. That product is a poem, novel, playscript, painting, sculpture, installation, score, or other art form. Each of these is driven by anaesthetic impulse that dictates that the work will have an internal unity, balance, proportion, and elegance that, combined with framing, will distinguish it from non-art. The product can be enshrined in print or digital form (if it is a verbal or musical work), photographed, reproduced, transported, and experienced by
In two- or three-dimensional arrangements of a nonlinear nature, the connections between elements are more latent that determined. It is the reader, audience, or viewer who determines the connections between the elements, as much so as, if not more so than, the composer. We might read a website by jumping from one framed box of information to another; we might dive down through hypertextual levels, or follow a link to another website. All the time we are navigating the configuration of text and image that the composer has created for us. The experience of reading a website or a multipaneled work of any kind is thus different from a sequential reading, just as the act of composing these different works isdifferent. We deploy sequentiality and other types of configured spatial relations as we see fit
in order to make meaning
.
This act of navigating not only what is within each of the framed texts that we “read” but also the lines of engagement and juxtaposition between them—and any spaces that surround or stand between them—is central to the act of composition and reading. The two sides of the communication act—that of the composer and the reader—are reciprocal, and each construes the intentions of the other. For the composer, the reader is often “within” rather than an actual reader or audience without. That is to say, the composer carries within him- or herself the ability and need to listen to, read, and/or view the work he or she is creating in order to help to make it cohere. In these ways, the act of composition is as much an act of decoding and interpreting as it is an act of making and configuring. And the “meaning” is created in the interaction between composer, reader, and “text”—a space that is filled and put together to enact old meanings and to create new ones. Thus rhetoric is the social mapping of relations between ideas and feelings via the composition of modes, media, and other resources.
What Are the Limits of Composition?
We have already suggested, and will elaborate further in the chapter on rhetoric and framing, that the immediate limits of a composition are its frame. The act of framing—either using existing off-the-shelf frames (“text types,” conventional genres in any art form or social encounter) or creating a new frame—determines the boundaries of the composition. To give some quick examples: a painting on canvas that is intended to be framed for exhibition provides the parameters for the composition. There is some leeway afforded the painter as he or she works on the canvas, in terms of the bleeding off of the edges of the composition (which a mount and a frame might cover in due course), but the edge of the canvas is the limit of the compositional space. In another nonverbal example, a conventional piece of music is composed in five movements that fit together in a sequence to create some degree of artistic unity. The “edges” of the composition are defined by the score, spatially, in digital format or on paper. In performance, the work is framed by time, with a clear beginning and end, often marked by a moment's silence and (ritual) applause.
Even in these examples, however, we have defined two kinds of framing that mark the limits of composition: one is the actual creation of the work, and the other is the work in performance (if these two aspects can be separated).
The act of composition is a critical/creative act that works toward a product. That product is a poem, novel, playscript, painting, sculpture, installation, score, or other art form. Each of these is driven by anaesthetic impulse that dictates that the work will have an internal unity, balance, proportion, and elegance that, combined with framing, will distinguish it from non-art. The product can be enshrined in print or digital form (if it is a verbal or musical work), photographed, reproduced, transported, and experienced by
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