The rhetoric and rhetoricality of Bio-Design

Abstract

This paper discusses the relevance of rhetorical concepts as powerful tools to address the workings and meaning of visual Bio-Design reflecting on biotechnology. It examines the visual rhetoric of two Bio-Design projects making for an effective agency of emotions on the one hand and intellectual considerations on science and ethics on the other hand. The paper applies common devices from classical rhetoric for the first time to these contemporary forms of visual design and combines rhetorical analysis with the art historical methodology of iconography and iconology. In so doing, the paper aims to produce meaning while acknowledging a common method of semiotics and literary studies as to personal subjectivity of the viewer as narrator.