Artist as rhetor: strategies for the visual communication of artistic & scientific concepts

Artist as rhetor: strategies for the visual communication of artistic & scientific concepts

The notion that art, like science, contributes to scholarly discourse remains a contentious issue in academic debate. However an increased interest in the visual image within intellectual inquiry and a shift in the scholarly position concerning the image as a valid form of inquiry has provided an avenue in which to argue that art is a legitimate form of knowledge. This argument is premised on the notion that images are significant to both artistic and scientific discourse in that both disciplines have long utilised the image as a means to construct meaning and communicate concepts. Consequently the key insights derived from this study’s research findings are understood through a framework of visual rhetoric.

This study, through a constructivist grounded theory approach, presents a substantive theory of the visual image in academic discourse and in doing so advances the understanding that art is an authoritative way of knowing. In this way this study identifies the image, which is the product of an image-making process, as knowledge artefact whereby knowledge exists through a plurality of practices involving both verbal and visual forms of representation. For this study the image-maker is considered significant to the production, representation and dissemination of knowledge. This is because as rhetor the image-maker, whether artisan or artist, utilises the image to bring forth new findings and thus new knowledge.