1. The document outlines the agenda for a class, including an icebreaker, discussion of visual illusions, analyzing the concept of "aura" from a reading, and designing a new banner for the course website. 2. Students will introduce themselves and share their favorite artist. They will then view and discuss visual illusions that use intricate lines, color, and the mind's tendency to see patterns. 3. The class will analyze Walter Benjamin's description of the "aura" of art and how it relates to traditional and cultural contexts using two example images. They will then redesign the banner for the course website in groups.

2. TODAY
1.Icebreaker
2.Quick and fun: visual illusions
3.Benjamin’s “Aura” – quick discussion/writing activity
4.Make a new header for the course website
5.Homework

3. ICEBREAKER
Today’s icebreaker should be fairly easy, I hope. Say your
name for everyone– like last time– and tell us your favorite
artist.

4. Dr. Phill’s favorites:

5. Some quick Visual fun
Take a look at the next few slides and tell me what’s
going on here. Look carefully. Sometimes you might
need to squint.

8. These illusions depend on
intricate line work, very
specific color and contrast
choices, the mind’s desire to
complete shapes and
patterns and the fact that
our eyes jitter a bit
normally.
If you squint hard and look
at each of these images,
they WILL become still. But
not for long.

9. From the readings
Next class meeting– on Thursday– we will put the full set of
readings for this week in conversation. But to start us out
today, I want us to think for a few moments about the
concept of “aura” which Walter Benjamin describes.

10. From page 5
“The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from
its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition. This
tradition itself is thoroughly alive and extremely
changeable. An ancient statue of Venus, for example,
stood in a different traditional context with the
Greeks, who made it an object of veneration, than
with
the clerics of the Middle Ages, who viewed it as an
ominous idol. Both of them, however, were equally
confronted with its uniqueness, that is, its aura.”

11. What, then, is Aura?
Open up ye olde Tumblre.
I’d like you to take a few minutes to write about what this
concept of “aura” means in relation to two different images.
The first is on the next slide.
Please write, for let’s say three minutes, about
how (or whether or not) in this setting you are
experiencing the aura of this piece as Benjamin would
describe it.

13. And…
And also, the same question. Are you, or how are you,
experiencing the aura of the next image.

14. [this is a billboard image]

15. For the rest of class…
..group up. Make sure at least one person can use
Photoshop or InDesign.
I want you to spend the rest of class re-designing the banner
on our course website. It needs to be 160 pixels high. You
can fudge a bit with the width (mine is 1200 pixels).
When you finish, email your banner to me at
alexanp3 at Miami Oh dot EDU.

16. For Thursday
Read for class: Wysocki “The Multiple Media of
Texts” and “With Eyes That Think and Compose and
Think,” (on Niihka)
In class we will put these two readings in conversation
with the three from today and look at how the
collection might modify our definition of visual
rhetoric.