Fuller references, Emily? It would be helpful.
In general, in discussing this topic, I find it helpful to keep
in mind
three inter-twined conceptions of literacy in discussion of it
that lead to
confusion:
1. the quality or state of being literate, esp. the ability to
read and
write. 2. possession of education: to question someone's
literacy. 3. a
person's knowledge of a particular subject or field: to acquire
computerliteracy.
To me what is significant is the (perhaps necessary, see Larry's
remarks)conflation of being able to mediate
action/interpretation through a code
like kanji and knowledge about some topic.
Forgetting this issue leads to people speaking past each other
with respect
to, e.g. computer literacy.
mike
On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 5:39 PM, Duvall, Emily
<emily@uidaho.edu> wrote:
One of the more interesting experiences I have had is when I was
preparing to teach a course on Visual/ Critical Literacy:
Using Picture
Books, Comics, Graphic Novels, Anime, and Film in the
Classroom. I sat
down with vol 1 of Bone and began to read. I ignored the
pictures and
read the text. Zipping along, I realized (a) I didn't know
what was
going on, and (b) I was bored. I went back and spent time with the
entire text and am now thoroughly addicted. It really depends
on the way
the pictures are used... in tandem, as conjoined text; as the front
runner (as in children's writing where the pictures are the
important> aspect a story); or an add-in (as in children's later
writing when
pictures illustrate, but don't really tell us much... they
fill up time
in a classroom... "go back and illustrate"). Some texts, like The
Invention of Hugo Cabret, weave words and pictures and you
need to read
them both.
I highly recommend Molly Bang's theoretical work (sorry if I am
repeating anything already said, I'm jumping in)to really dig deeply
into the pictures; her children's books are interesting as
well. Anthony
Browne has some pretty amazing children's books...they are
edgy and
post-modern at times.
Meanwhile I have a doc student who is working on financial
literacy...> there are some fundamental elements of a literacy
that ring across
domains it seems... like discourse, eh?
~em
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-
bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]> On Behalf Of mike cole
Sent: Monday, December 21, 2009 5:05 PM
To: Jenna McWilliams
Cc: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Fwd: Visual literacy? Surf an art museum -
Lifestyle> - SignOnSanDiego.com
No doubt, Jenna. And forms like Youtube allow for users
to be producers
in
a big way. But I see no need to knock museums and
the pleasures of "reading" paintings that have endured over a
long time!
(The cost can be pretty steep these days though).
The "learning to see" theme runs through a lot of CHAT-related
work, and
seems an endless source of insights.
One way I find that i can learn a lot about paintings is by doing
jig-saw
puzzles. Jackson Pollock seemed a total fraud to me until i
had, with
lots
of friendly gossipy help, done a quite complex puzzle of one
of his big
canvases. Now jig-saw puzzles require their own
form of visual literacy, but what was amazing (a Klimpt also
provided a
similar experience) was that I actually began to see nuances
in the
paintings that i had simply never seen before. And once seen, the
ability to
see more deeply, at least for the given painting (after all
generalization
of the skill is a huge undertaking!)
it sticks with you along with the belief of the possibility
that, say,
a Russian 18th century icon may contain the potential for visual
experiences
that my naive eye, loving the combination of colors and
shapes, could
not
see.
I hear what you are saying that I am seeing.
:-)
mike
PS. Have you met Etienne Pelaprat, a great grad student here at
UCSD, formerly in cogsci but completing degree in Comm, who
has moved to
your fair city? If not, you should. He is rumored to be the sometime
savior
of xmca through his technical skills.
On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 4:25 PM, Jenna McWilliams
<jenmcwil@umail.iu.edu>wrote:
Mike, you write:
"I managed a D+ in my one obligatory art producing class in
college (a
work
later exhibited, by some really odd
error, in a show of student art which makes one wonder at the
judgments
involved on either side of the
process!). I am a hopeless plastic arts producer. But not entirely
illiterate as a reader, finder of meanings."
It's fair enough to argue that reading and writing are not
equivalent> forms
of literacy. But in this crazy multimodal culture of ours, where
reading and
writing both require adeptness with design proficiencies (remember
that even
the text we read on the screen is a digital product--the
'translation'> of
code into a specifically designed visual format that we can
interpret), what
we call "visual literacy" is increasingly an essential
component of
BOTH
reading and writing. Visual literacy goes far beyond what we
learned> in art
class--the color wheel and all that.
In fact, it seems a little strange to link visual literacy to
museumgoing.
I bombed art class right along with the best of them, and
success in
art
class still wouldn't have prepared me to engage in the sorts of
communications platforms that have become the most
significant message
delivery systems. Indeed, design and visual literacy (or
whatever you
want
to call them) skills are so embedded in communication
platforms that I
find
myself making design decisions without a thought (as when I
re-formatted the
chunk I quoted from the previous email in this thread,
because when I
pasted
it in the line breaks got all funky--distracting for the
reader!). I
don't
know if the fact that visual literacy (or whatever you want
to call
it) is
embedded within reading and writing literacy practices
strengthens or
weaken
the case for calling it a form of literacy; I only know that
it's both
important and different enough from reading and writing
skills to
deserve
its own label, if only so we know how to talk about it.
visually,
jenna
~~
Jenna McWilliams
Learning Sciences Program, Indiana University
~
http://jennamcwilliams.blogspot.com
http://remediatingassessment.blogspot.com
~
jenmcwil@indiana.edu
jennamcjenna@gmail.com
On Dec 21, 2009, at 7:06 PM, mike cole wrote:
The addition of production to definitions of literacy
is always a
good
move
in my view, Jay. Reading is not equivalent to writing. In
the case of
visual
literacy and museum art, it seems like what is being
referred to is
the
reading half. At least i hope so. I managed a D+ in my one
obligatory> art
producing class in college (a work later exhibited, by some
really> odd
error, in a show of student art which makes one wonder at the
judgments
involved on either side of the
process!). I am a hopeless plastic arts producer. But not
entirely> >> illiterate as a reader, finder of meanings.
There is, a few blocks from you apartment, a show at the SD
Museum of
Contemporary Art by Tera Donavan. I think you will find it as
fascinating
as
I did. I plan to take the family during their visit.
Donovan take
everyday
objects (tar paper, straws, cups, and more) and creates
installations> with
thousand of only one object aggregated in the most
fantastic ways.
She
states her goal as wanting to explore the properties of
objects seens
as
parts of very large populations rather than as individual
objects.> The
effects she achieves are mind boggling with the play of
light and
texture
over surface sufficient to reorder our perceptions in ways
we could
never
anticipate.Again, art as tertiary artifact, re-admired.
Since you have written more on time scales, I'll stay away
from the
topic
in
general; we have agreed too often here to warrant repitition.
But quite specifically, our work in creating the "Fifth
Dimension"> was to
be
able to study changes in a pre-pared system of activity
over a long
time
period (from inception to death) at several scales of time.
The idea
was
part of our interest in the failure of "successful" educational
innovations
to be sustained-- how did they die and why and how did their
implementers
enter in to and respond to the process. Still wrestling with
analysis--
lots
of 5thD's were born and died but others keep being born.
Some are,
today,
strikingly like their originals in the 1980's, others have
morphed so
that
only a few features remain. The children participants, who
are almost
impossible to track over time are now adults -- i sometime
encounter> one
at
ucsd. The college participants are parents I sometimes hear
from. All
recorded in their fieldnotes written at the time. I have
some money
salted
away so that "when it dies" (or if i can manage to retire before
doing so
myself) I will have the full range of instances documented
and a lot
of
the
data in digital form,
so that I can look at that object from both ends of its
history. A
preliminary report is in the book, *The Fifth Dimension*.
As to LCHC, that is another matter. It seems to me a
certainty that
it
will
die. It had a near-death experience a couple of years ago.
As a way
of at
least marking its passing, a number of former and current
members of
the
lab
are in the process of creating a book that traces its
origins and the
many
offspring it has generated. THAT collective narrative I
hope to live
long
enough to see come into being.
Now if Yuan or anyone would like to see LCHC live,
proposals for how
to
arrange that would of course be seriously entertained, and
perhaps> maybe
even entertaining! I thought I saw a nibble at
collaboration on
making
XMCA
a more powerful medium the other day, but it turned out to
be a
mirage.
So
for now, we keep on keeping on.
mike
On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 12:07 PM, Jay Lemke
<jaylemke@umich.edu>> wrote:
Thanks for the link, Mike. Was nice to see someone in the mass
media,
affiliated with a newspaper no less, arguing for critical visual
literacy
to
protect us from advertising!
Of course that is an old idea in visual education circles,
and it
can
build
on the widespread folk-skepticism toward advertising.
Unfortunately> the
more
pernicious effects in ads are probably at subtler levels
than what
basic
visual literacy skills can foreground.
"The ability to find meaning in images" is the definition
of visual
literacy used. That seems a little too basic. I think
everyone finds
meaning
in images, with or without any literacy education. Maybe
there is an
implied
emphasis on FIND, in the sense of digging below the
surface/obvious,> >>> which
would be better. But more recent ideas in the field put more
emphasis on
visual production relative to interpretation, so I'd
probably go
with a
definition more like "the skills of making meaning with visual
resources,
for your own purposes", and include in that the meaning-
making we do
with
others' images by way of interpretation, critique, etc.
Have you ever noticed that when anyone, docent, tourguide,
or just
me,
speaks authoritatively about a painting in a museum, that many
bystanders
seem to become interested in listening? People generally
seem to
believe
that art images, at least, require some professional
interpretation> or
benefit from having specialist knowledge (esp.
historical). People
also
seem
to enjoy visual interpretation more than textual. Textual
interpretation
is
seen as superfluous, even obstructing to enjoyment of the
work. No
one
really reads literary criticism, or book reviews beyond
the "it's
good"
part. But people are fascinated by the exegesis of visual
works. The
is
one
basis for the popularity of the DaVinci Code and similar popular
works.
And there is not a word about visual interpretation skills
in our
standard
curricula (meaning as practiced in schools, there are some
nods in
the
official standards).
JAY.
Jay Lemke
Professor (Adjunct, 2009-2010)
Educational Studies
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
www.umich.edu/~jaylemke
<http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke> <
http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke> <
http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke>
Visiting Scholar
Laboratory for Comparative Human Communication
University of California -- San Diego
La Jolla, CA
USA 92093
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