Visual Choices
Earthrise: How the Space Age Revolutionizes Our Vision of the Earth
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jacques Arnould
At the end of the years 1960, the Apollo missions offered unforgettable images of the Earth and contributed to the development of ecological sensitivity. But the main revolution comes from the alliance of the computer and the satellite. Placed in Earth orbit, optical and radar observation instruments offer a global view of the Earth, regularly renewed; from now on, any place is accessible in an instant, any spatial and temporal distance seems indeed erased. But what terrestrial reality do these images allow to access, for example when they are associated with information to form geographic information systems (GIS)? Is the risk of deserting the Earth greater when the screens of our computers ignore the distance that previously invited to use symbols? What becomes the responsibility of humans, with regard to their alter ego and environments, when, to quote Paul Virilio, "Here is no longer, everything is now?" Modern image of Earth invites to new ethics.
Digital Storytelling as a Hybrid of Visuals, Sounds and Temporality
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Wen-Shu Lai, Yi Chen Hsu, Chih Yi Wu
A storyteller is a person who relates stories to an audience through one medium or another. However, storytelling was transformed by the advent of hybrid media and technology. Therefore, a storyteller is now more of a hybrid performer than the traditional concept of a storyteller, as emerging media and technologies are applied in storytelling. The non-traditional forms, methods, and aesthetics have affected storytelling in many ways. This paper will present an innovative storytelling through real-time interactive images, using devices such as light boxes, document cameras, webcams, computers, projectors, etc., alongside the support of Quartz Composer. The storytellers interact and converse with the online images using real-time projection from an optical table combined with animation, live storytelling, and singing. This allows the storytellers, as well as the audience, to meander through memories, imagination, and life journeys, then contort and expand into the online world. During the storytelling and performing process, together they construct a hybrid of visuals, sounds and temporality.
Art and Design Pedagogies after the Situated Turn
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Michel Van Dartel
That humans are inseparable from the world around them will not surprise anyone, but this only makes it more remarkable that humans are frequently isolated from their surroundings in human-oriented research and development. The result is invariably that knowledge and products are produced that do not correspond to the reality in which they are used or applied. Fortunately, in many disciplines, so-called ‘situated’ approaches have emerged, which take as their central premise that humans can only be understood in relation to their environment. Although the notion of "situatedness" has had major impact on many disciplines that perform human-centered research and development, it has not gained much ground within the fields of art and design. This paper will claim that a situated turn in art and design is immanent and discuss its consequences for the production and presentation of art and design. Finally, the paper will go more deeply into the consequences of the situated turn for art and design education and will conclude with six practical recommendations regarding art and design pedagogies after the situated turn. These recommendations include: The build-up of expertise on the dynamic relationships that humans hold with environmental, social and cultural factors; a focus on how humans are situated through technology; providing familiarity with the reality of practices in other disciplines; advocating creation on the basis of instructions for a process; offering experience with post-studio and post-venue practices; and teaching the appreciation of other human actors in the process of creation and presentation.
A Multimodal Analysis of Analog Visual Descriptors in "Post-Trust" Digital Content
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Amrita Joshi
The term "post-trust" (Maslansky et. al., 2010) representing consumer scepticism pervades not just the political sphere but increasingly, also the manner in which the wider range of communication practices are consumed by their audiences. Recommended practices in such "post-trust" usage are particularly focused on the linguistic choices that communicators make in these consumption spaces and point to the need for increasingly qualified descriptors to underscore the trust value of that which is being consumed. Here, we extend this understanding to the visual choices made in communication output by drawing attention to the role of analog visual elements in the use of digital persuasive content. We conceptualize an analogic schema through a comparative understanding of verbal and visual qualifiers to examine the impact of the modalities (Kress and Leeuwen, 2006) of compositional invariants such as line, shape, form, colour, perspective and space. We discuss theoretical and conceptual implications of this understanding of analog elements and experiences. To do this the study carries out a visual analysis of a range of communication outputs in the public sphere such as a company sustainability campaign, a social marketing campaign, a place branding campaign and a commercial advertising campaign. The study demonstrates how visual compositional elements and resultant cues are used to address consumer scepticism by identifying degrees of modality in these visual units. The study contributes to image studies and research and also has significant implications for communications professionals and planners engaging with issues of trust and impact.
