Conclusion
For Gries, “rhetorical transformation” is a “process in which things become rhetorical in divergent, unpredictable ways…as people and other things come into relations to achieve a variety of nuanced purposes” (Still Life 27–28). Mobile AR provides a new means for rhetorically transforming public images. Not only can writers re-mix, re-post, and re-tweet images in online spaces, but through the emerging affordances of the mobile internet and AR, they can increasingly discover and generate new avenues of visual creativity and remix as the physical and digital spaces of everyday life continue to converge.
This chapter has demonstrated the potential of mobile AR as a platform for analyzing and producing counterpublic remixes of public images. As the augmentation in my final section demonstrates, when couple with rhetorical theory, mobile AR offers a viable framework for activating more nuanced interactions between the isotropic narratives of certain public images and the counterpublics that form in response to them. However, this model is by no means exhaustive; as mobile computing begins to merge with ubiquitous and wearable technologies (e.g. optical displays, smart watches, etc.) our ability to access digital information across physical spaces and texts and intervene in public affairs will continue to proliferate in ways that this chapter cannot anticipate. As such, visual studies scholarship must continue to keep up with emergent developments and alongside them generate new strategies for analyzing and producing digital public rhetorics such as counterpublic remixes. By engaging in critical-rhetorical projects such as the one modeled in this chapter, we can more effectively produce and explore the new media genres through which public and counterpublic rhetorics will potentially circulate in an era of mobile and ubiquitous computing.
Finally, I want to emphasize that creating a more just and racially inclusive future for mobile AR composing requires that we continue to dismantle systems of white supremacy and center Black voices in our digital research practices. We might consider, for instance, how the practices of counterpublic remix offered in this chapter can be employed to foster networks of digital resistance against white supremacist and nationalistic imagery in our everyday spaces. Moreover, it is not enough to simply employ emerging technologies to promote counterpublic perspectives but that we also critically interrogate the underlying rhetorics of our digital composing platforms. Social media sites, for instance, continue to provide a safe haven for racist and sexist discourses of all stripes. What will happen when these same corporations are in control of the digital infrastructures of mobile AR? What organizations or entities will be responsible for tracking and removing racist AR experiences? As Black Americans continue to encounter racist discourses online and escalating police violence in their everyday lives, it is vital that digital rhetoric scholars critically investigate such questions as our research and teaching practices engage with the rhetorical affordances of the mobile era.
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