Abstract
Addressing the theme of seeing in the age of big data, this paper proposes the vital need for visual literacy in learning. Historically, images have played an important role in developing consciousness and the relationship of self to surroundings. We learn who we are by seeing ourselves reflected in images, and we learn who we can become by transporting ourselves into images. Images and the pictorial world are powerful communicators and creators of culture. Literate societies have been surrounded by visual rhetoric, overt or subliminal, since before the dawn of the “optical age.” Most people are overwhelmed by the flood of images in this digital world. Beyond seeing a thing is attaching value to it. The acts of perception and evaluation are generally experienced as inseparable phases of the same process. If art is an expedition to the truth, then critical analysis and communication provide the path, and it would be both frustrating and frivolous to approach art without the necessary training and intellectual equipment. Visual literacy enables us to better understand, critique, communicate, and ultimately contribute to the culture. Many in higher education passionately plead that it is time to embrace visual literacy and revamp the educational system.
Presenters
Siu Challons-LiptonExecutive Director and Professor of Art History, Department of Art, Design and Music, Queens Univeristy of Charlotte, North Carolina, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Visual Literacy, Pedagogy
Digital Media
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