# Marlon's Samples

## marlon's canva

is [here](https://www.canva.com/design/DAFJrpTzoiQ/QddwqTLFFBS9UE6RWekR_g/view?website#2).

## some html and css

you can use standard html for embedding and styling if you know it:

<p style="font-weight: 900; font-size: 200px; color: rgba(255, 5, 50, .8)">
big <span style="font-size: 7px; font-weight: 300; color: black"> just for reference</span>
</p>

<div style="color: white; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 50, .8); width: 200px; margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 50px; padding-bottom: 50px; border-radius: 10px; margin-bottom: 20px" >
a box
</div>

<div class="sketchfab-embed-wrapper"> <iframe title="Granite head of Amenemhat III" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; xr-spatial-tracking" xr-spatial-tracking execution-while-out-of-viewport execution-while-not-rendered web-share src="https://sketchfab.com/models/64d0b7662b59417986e9d693624de97a/embed"> </iframe> <p style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; margin: 5px; color: #4A4A4A;"> <a href="https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/granite-head-of-amenemhat-iii-64d0b7662b59417986e9d693624de97a?utm_medium=embed&utm_campaign=share-popup&utm_content=64d0b7662b59417986e9d693624de97a" target="_blank" style="font-weight: bold; color: #1CAAD9;"> Granite head of Amenemhat III </a> by <a href="https://sketchfab.com/britishmuseum?utm_medium=embed&utm_campaign=share-popup&utm_content=64d0b7662b59417986e9d693624de97a" target="_blank" style="font-weight: bold; color: #1CAAD9;"> The British Museum </a> on <a href="https://sketchfab.com?utm_medium=embed&utm_campaign=share-popup&utm_content=64d0b7662b59417986e9d693624de97a" target="_blank" style="font-weight: bold; color: #1CAAD9;">Sketchfab</a></p></div>

## unpacking that Vox video

In my (pretend) department, some of the Art History professors have been discussing the idea of students creating short video essays about artworks in the Fogg.

So in search of examples, I happened upon this Vox video that identifies and investigates a visual trope that recurs again and again on album covers.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_V10kWLh71U" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

### presentation of visual evidence

- first, the basic fact that it is in **visual rather than textual form** should be noted, and this alone makes this form a nice fit for disciplines (like Art History) that work is visual data.
- but let's take an additional step here and note with greater specificity some of the moves this piece makes with its visual data:
- repetition of a visual trope through montage: key here is the sheer **QUANTITY of visual evidence** provided. In the academic writing we've analyzed--much of it written by professional art historians--we typically see 1 or 2 examples per paragraph . . . perhaps 3-5 in a paragraph truly devoted to calling out instances of a recurrent trope or form. But none of them approach the hundreds of pieces of data we encounter in this short piece. (true--there are outlying print works that make similar moves--like Goffman's _Gender Advertisements_ or Berger's _Ways of Seeing_, but one could argue that these are proto-Vox-videos, because what we see on Vox's YouTube channel seems more influenced by these works than are the pieces we see in academic journals and monographs)
- it also takes the pressure off of the textual stream to provide all of the descriptive text, which
- **allows the voice to do some playful rhetorical stuff**, like the pleasingly rhythmic anaphora we hear in the four "This is" sentences at the outset
- allows the argument to be pursued with **greater speed and economy**
- one could also argue that the move to shift from text-based **"telling" to "showing"** is more persuasive

### rhythm, pacing, music, story

- like many academic articles, the piece begins by **announcing a puzzle or problem** (which, as discussed above, happens by way of a montage of visual examples)
- short pieces of this sort need to obey (or at least frequently do obey) certain basics **story structures---a move from problem to solution, from tension to resolution**, and this is a great fit for the narrative structure of academic inquiry, which also moves from tension (a confusing set of observations in the lab, a complicated literary text, a competing claim from another scholar, etc) to resolution (your new theoretical model for parsing the data, your novel interpretation of the text, etc.)
- among the tools academic essays do NOT possess is the **music bed**, which serves here to underscore this first move of the story, and, really, works through **to structure and augment** our encounter with the evidence and argument. Calls for a clear and precise grasp of your argument's structure--perhaps even more so than in writing, but also probably sets the reader up for a deeper (even embodied) grasp of the conceptual "schema" of your argument