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Introduction to Visualization & Visual Studies. Photograph by Robbie Cooper ( New York Times 2007 ). Imagination. M.C. Escher Relativity 1953. Visual Representations as Documentation. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
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Introduction to Visualization & Visual Studies
•Photograph by Robbie Cooper (New York Times 2007)
ImaginationM.C. Escher Relativity 1953
Visual Representations as
Documentation
Jan Van Eyck, “Arnolfini Wedding Portrait” (complete identification at National Gallery of Art, Wash. website)
Burtynsky
E. Burtynsky, Abandoned Mineshaft (image info, site)
Greensboro Sit-in
Civil Rights: On the second day of the Greensboro sit-in, Joseph A. McNeil and Franklin E. McCain are joined by William Smith and Clarence Henderson at the Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.
(Courtesy of Greensboro News and Record) Freedom struggle site
Visualization & Concepts (Political Critique)
Jacques Louis David. The Lictors bringing to Brutus the body of his son. 1789
Visual Images & Concepts
Chris Henry Clarke Infinite Loop Go to Rhizome.org for more info.
Perception, Cognition and the VisualSeeing, thinking, knowing
Vision & the Mind
Inner Display?
Visual Cultures & Modes of Visualization
• Social and cultural, not natural– images and media as a process of
socialization in culture
• Rule-governed: grammar of learned rules– Minimal signifying units in meaningful strings
(syntax, grammar) to connected discourses
– theory and production rules already described the visual grammars of advertising, fashion, design, visual art, film, television genres.
• intervisuality, intermediality & visual literacy
• Trans-institutional and cross-media aspects of visual culture make it a large site for contested views of identity, power, and control
Course Administration
• Syllabus & Grading Scheme (Handout 1 and Schedule)
• Readings: Most from two required texts• First Design Project (Handout 2)• Lab Exercises (One set in Handout 3
but most will be assigned orally)• Course space (for resources/projects)
https://webdav.sfu.ca/web/cmns/courses/2008/387
Interest in Visual Culture/Visual Studies
• Rise of visual forms of communication in the postmodern world
• Merging of popular & "high" cultural forms
Intermediality
Visual Cultures as systems
• Cross-mediation, inter-mediality– Codes & contents migrate
across media, forms, genres– visual/textual opposition or
hybrid experience?
• studying visual cultures as systems– Institutions (macro, micro),
networks of communication
What is Visual Culture & How do our ideas of it inform Visualizations?
• Contested field• Multidisciplinary
approaches (read general intro. to the theory textbook)
Robert Doisneau, Sideways Glance (1948)
Practices of Looking (Sturken & Cartwright)
– Myth of photographic truth– Images & ideology– Meaning-making (producers’
intentions, “reading images”, appropriation & counter bricolage)
– Critical approaches to media production
• Representing representing (Irvine)
• Visualizations that position the creator
Other themes
– Visualizing things that are not visual
– Origins of “modern” visuality (visual arts & art history--Nicolas Mirzoeff, John Berger)
– Representation & mediation in global perspective
– Power/pleasureMr. Yuk warns children of poisons
MoreTheories
– British cultural studies/semiology (Stuart Hall)
– Visualization as discourse
– Society of the spectacle, simulacrum, male/female gaze, fetishism, voyeurism, reproduction, racialized discourse…
– Disciplinary & interdisciplinary ways of studying the visual (Elkins)
Falling Man, Photo by R. Drew, World Trade Center September 11, 2001
Strategies for Studying Visual Culture &
developing resources for
visualizations ?
• studying the ‘functions’ of a world through pictures, images, and visualizations, not just through texts and words
• But: “The visual is always ‘contaminated’ by the non-visual: ideologies, texts, discourses, beliefs, intertextual presuppositions, prior experience and "visual competence" (Irvine)
• meanings embedded in social institutions
“Representations of blacks by white Europeans” Exhibition curated by Lynne-Rose Beuze, Martinique, 2003.
Visualization & disciplinary approaches to studying the visual
• Levine’s Map of Disciplines
• Science & technology studies• Hacking (Do we see through the microscope?)
• Latour—“translation” in Actor-Network Theory)
• Pure & Applied Sciences
– Physics (optics etc.), Psychology (perception, cognition), Mathematics, Engineering, computer science
Adapted from M. Irvine(2005) applied media theory
Tying It All Together: Applied Media Theory
Media Object
Institutional Contexts & Preconditions
EncodingIntertexts & Intermedia:Prior, Contemporary, &
Presupposed works and genres
DecodingCommentary, Supplements,
Ongoing Interpretation
Ideologies &Discursive Practices
Media Systems:technologies & social hierarchies of media;social & institutional
history of media.
Receivers/Reception/Audiences:Media construction of subjects:implied receivers and subject
positions of interpreters
Subjectivities & Identities:
class, ethnic, national& gendered identities;sexualities
Producers/Production/SendingShared codes and Contexts
of Production
The Cultural Encyclopedia or “toolkit”:Learned Codes, Genres, Symbolic
Correspondences.Binary oppositions and semiotic
structures of meaning.
Economic and Industry Contexts;Consumer Market Conditions
Last part of Class: Video Screening• Black Sun 2005. Directed by Gary
Tarm. Screenplay and Dialogue by
Hugues de Montalembert.
But First: Presentation by Dave Murphy and Lunchtime
Assignment