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February 10, 2008
For those who talk about literacy---the ability to use language in its written form---- assume that visualisation is an unproblematic kind of 'translation' from one semiotic mode into another - as a simplistic kind of translation from one language to another. From a text based one to a visual one. The context here the way school and the university in Western societies, says that writing is serious and most highly valued; whereas visuality (ie visual art) is for the aesthetic development of the individual, as is music. This kind of structure has shaped not only the representational landscape, but also the cognitive and affective potentials of individuals.
In the digital visual media world we are finding ourselves doing things differently. Whereas the old-fashioned book was read from beginning to end, the archive of digital images is used as well as interpreted. The shift here is from an older organisation of text to a newer organisation of resource; from an older concern with knowledge, to a newer concern with gathering information to manage a task demanded by, or set, in a unit of work.
So the semiotic landscape that we inhabit is changing. The Web is fundamentally a window into the concerns and narratives of popular culture. If we factor in the role that computer and online games have in defining a cultural orientation, then there is a need to develop creative tools to critique visual cultures, and this needs to become more central to the task of teaching and learning.
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Gary,
if we look back on our school and undergraduiate university education then it was structured like this:
1. imparting of academic knowledge (lectures, tutorials & essays)
2. Students are empty vessels to be 'filled' the model of the learner>. It was a model of an empty pot to be filled with knowledge or a tabula rasa to be inscribed upon by the expert teacher.
3. the classic texts or works (literary,visual, musical) in a discipline had to be mastered and assimilated.