If all I have to draw on is the article for this week, visual literacy seems to be about the interpretation of visual representations of reality. Like Becky Schaller, I'm still struggling with this definition and wondering exactly how intuitive it is to understand the world visually. The words at the end about aesthetics are especially troubling to me – it says "visual expression is the product of highly complex intelligence, of which we have pitiful little understanding."
But is it, really? What happens when we look at the process of creation instead of its products - do we always find "highly complex intelligence"? Visual artists differ, not all "see" in the same way and some do not see at all. What do we do with our interpretation of images that are produced by machines? My computer could not write this posting for me or anything else that would "communicate" meaning. But it could easily be set up to take images without any direct intentionality and those images might still communicate meaning.
I'll try to parse this out a bit - I understand the world in a certain way as a photographer, as an "artist," that I think they would define as very visually literate. But I do not consider myself a "visionary" person. My brother is an illustrator and can "see" things in his mind in ways I never could. Where does the imagination fit in this? Is it another form of visual literacy? Or is it an individual trait, a "learning style," his personality? Is it a "higher level" of aesthetic ability, like writing poetry requires a "higher" understanding of language than writing for this blog?
What can be learned and what is innate? By pursuing photography and honing my drafting skills, my eyes have been trained, at least a little bit, to see the elements that we use in our western art forms. Looking at a movie, a website, or a scene in front of me I can see sight lines, contrast, perspective, lighting, proportion, curves, and sometimes the potential "punctum" of a photograph. I can't use the zone system, but I have a rough understanding of tonal contrast and can sense when my composition just entered "the rule of thirds." These are things that can be learned by taking experience apart, by focusing attention on a separate pieces of reality to abstract out the relationships into flat lines and shades within a limited border.
But is that visual literacy? To know how to decode and encode reality according to the representative media we're used to using? All my photography and drawing classes never helped me begin to previsualize things the way my brother does. What if my photography was not based on seeing at all? After all, the camera doesn't need my eyes to take a picture. There are no rules that say a good photograph must be in focus or carefully composed to work and communicate meaning. When I think about taking photos, there are many things that are not strictly visual. Knowing how to catch the right moment in a conversation when a person's characteristic expressions appear (not my gift, unfortunately), a sense of light, of motion – some of these are things that your whole body can feel or your eye cannot actually perceive and separate – it is a form of instinct. But is it visual?
Thinking about artists and sight, this exhibit niggles at my mind: Beyond Sight: A multi-sensory exhibition of photographs by the blind and visually impaired What can I learn from looking at their photographs about the difference between sight and experience and visual literacy? I'm frankly still not quite sure. It "feels" more honest to me, that somehow if I examine the photos I will understand their experience of life in a way that words cannot convey. Where did they hold the camera? Why did they choose to point it there? What did they feel as they pointed it there? Is it reasonable for me to expect any of these things to be communicated in these photos?
As an "artist" myself, the experience and choices of the other person holding the camera or picking up the pencil or moving the pixels is something I can't help looking for as I examine a created work. For instance, the reading this week irritated me to no end because it was a text about visual literacy but the page layout is hideous. A book on sight should offer a graceful, intuitive design of the text and spacing so that it is easy for us to absorb the content. Reading is a visual experience, but this experience was mediated by a computer's layout instead of careful kerning and spacing and a font designed for easy visual transitions between letters. The human element was missing and I could tell, because book layout matters to me. (nerdy, yes)
Several years ago I was traveling in Britain and had a chance meeting with a woman who saw me writing a paper and liked the font I'd chosen to use (Garamond, for anyone who likes typography). Her odd comment led to a conversation about her experience in the older printing industry with traditional book design and the changes she saw as everything was computerized. Font weights changed, spacing on the page wasn't as carefully designed for the person holding the document, scanning the page. We take these "technologies" of print for granted, but careful thought can go into them (see here for a historical overview).
What do we lose as we are presented with automated images, or even just the prepackaged formulas of mass media representations? How are we separated from the world we could be experiencing firsthand or seeing more clearly with better design? When it all relies on generalized formulas or machinery, how do we struggle to understand the choices being made?
I'll end with a visual illustration. In a discussion on flickr, someone asked if photography was doomed because of the ubiquity of automated digital cameras. If everything is recorded, if Google Streetview captures every corner of my city, does that mean I don't need to take any more photos in my neighborhood?
Here are my photos of the corner high school from Monday night:
A Google Streetview image of the same location from this Summer:
What differences do you see between these images? Does it matter in terms of visual literacy, or only for the “subjective aesthetics” that the article derides at the end?
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3 comments:
Emily, I loved your photos. I looked at them last night and have been thinking since about what makes some photographs or images art, and others not. I haven't really figured out how to articulate much of an answer though! The purpose can make a difference, such as here Googlemaps has a goal of recording a location. Artists usually, (but not always,) think about their composition: how they capture light, framing, space, the shapes and lines and the way your eye is drawn across the work, etc. These things working together to make it different than other images, like the Streetview shot. The difference does have to do with "subjective aesthetics," too, but that seems a harsh way to put the beauty, meaning, and emotional response that images can have. You also raised great questions about what we are losing as we are bombarded with mass media representations and automated images. We definitely are losing something when we rely on only these for seeing and capturing the world.
I didn't realize photo's on google had become so close up. I remember a few years ago they were primative.
Nell
Nell, you might be interested in this NY Times article about a woman who tried to sue Streetview for privacy infringement when it debuted for NY last year. When is it too close? :)
Becky, you're definitely thinking the same way I am - I'm glad the pictures help illustrate these issues. To answer my own questions, the difference to me is very much about viewpoint and personal connection.
Google Streetview involves a complicated camera attached to a car (actually a fleet of cars) that simply drives down as many streets as possible in a city on a sunny day, recording images you would see walking down the street. Sort of.
The thing is, I do walk down this street almost every day. But the interactive images in Streetview, while handy for giving directions to anyone coming to visit, do not reflect my perception. Which conveys more "truth" about the reality of this one half block? The pasted-together passerby images of Streetview, or my individual snapshots?
They chose a day that would make for clear images, but the trees obscure a lot of the building. I took my pictures on a foggy night. As you navigate through their viewer you can see the "whole building" - mine are partial images, but carefully framed to give a sense of the experience of the place.
Both are now online. You could use both to see what each camera saw. If you go to my flickr page I've tied them to precise geospatial locations on the map, so you could actually figure out how to stand where I stood. Does that make mine more objective or not?
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