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Essay about visual literacy
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Studying visual literacy means understanding the process of formally analyzing art or architecture. Formal analysis includes identification of who, what, when, where, why, and how, along with the analyzation of formal elements of line, color, medium, texture, shape, and space. Visual and aesthetic qualities must also be considered, composition, movement, scale, light, mood, meaning, and style, when formally analyzing art or architecture. Formal analysis of art and architecture is what a knowledgeable artist or critic uses to form an opinion about a piece. The identification, formal elements, and visual and aesthetic qualities are a foundation upon which a person builds an educated opinion.
Visual literacy can be defined as a way of using sight to evaluate, apply or create. Education, art history, art criticism, philosophy, graphic designers and more use the term “Visual Literacy” to mean different things. The term is widely contested throughout the art world. Wikipedia defines it as “The ability to interpret negotiate, and make meaning, from information presented in the form of an image (Visual Literacy, 2011).” There are many definitions used to define the term and all are lacking, it’s like trying to put ten pounds into a two pound sack. No one definition will suffice to encompass the whole scope of what visual literacy means.
Normally sighted people think of visual literacy as the way in which we interpret and decode meaning in advertising, signage, art, and so on. This course in visual literacy has taught me, is that the term “Visual Literacy” can be altered depending on the individuals sense of vision. Looking at three different cases in Oliver Sacks An Anthropologist on Mars; Seven Paradoxical Tales, “The C...
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... These cases present us with an opportunity to question tradition helping to broaden our horizons. Visual literacy becomes defined as not just what we see but what is perceived. James Elkins comes the closest to the best description of visual literacy, “Understanding how people perceive objects. Interpret what they see and what they learn from them.” To be visually literate means having the ability to use the visual world around you to create and interpret from.
Works Cited
Elkins, J (2010) The concept of visual literacy, and its limitations, in: Visual literacy. New York, New York: Routledge. (217)
Sacks, O. (1995) An anthropologist on mars: Seven paradoxical tales. New York, New York: Vintage Books. (3-41,107-152,188 - 243)
Visual Literacy. (2011 February, 22) . Retrieved June 5, 2011 from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_literacy
Having such an image before our eyes, often we fail to recognize the message it is trying to display from a certain point of view. Through Clark’s statement, it is evident that a photograph holds a graphic message, which mirrors the representation of our way of thinking with the world sights, which therefore engages other
...central rather than peripheral in the forging of a more liberating and intelligent visual culture in the United States" (p. 37).
According to the Oxford dictionary, Art is an expression or application of human creative skill and imagination producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power. (oxforddictionaries.com). In the area of the Arts, it seems that knowledge is attained through a holistic lens, where its approach towards knowledge emphasizes the whole of an artwork rather than their constituent parts (simplyphyschology.com). Art can be accessible since the audience is able to experience it directly, with the help of our senses. As viewer we enjoy aesthetic pleasure, which involves an appreciation of the contents in relation to vehicles or supports. (Levinson, 1996) In fact, according to Jerrold Levinson’s ‘The Pleasures of Aesthetics’
Based upon the accounts he introduced and explained, to see the environment is to willingly use all available senses and to interact with all spaces, consciously and physically. The validity of reality is then brought into question, which Sack suggests that those with sight may be blind to reality. Those with sight are prone to rely heavily on specific connections and ignore other vital ones. Ignored connections may deny unimaginable sensory enrichment and enable narrowed perceptions, which is how sighted individuals remain blinded and unaware of the gravity of oneself and the physical space one inhabits.
“What counts as literacy, how literacy changes in response to the new media landscape, and what value we should ascribe to the new forms of communication that continue to emerge and evolve online? (Jenkins, 2009)"
The first party crasher, "readability," probably makes its presence felt in all of our venues at least occasionally, but it haunts our work all the time. At the simplest and most practical level, readability is a hermeneutic problem. But it is a special problem of interpretation, not just the "same old" questions that come up in any work involving the production of signs and meaning. We try very hard to reduce the special problem to the same old problems, as evidenced by terms like visual, media, and computer "literacy." The question is this: What makes us so confident that our "readings" of visual signs are legitimate or defensible? Okay, that does sound a whole lot like the "same old" hermeneutic questions, but I don't believe it is the same in the case of visual rhetoric as in spoken or written discourse. Or at least, it doesn't seem the same, given the degree of skepticism registered by readers and students about interpretations of visual signs. Leaving aside for a moment the possibility that my interpretations just aren't very good and that that's what's provoking this response, our own colleagues and my students seem to pose far more and greater challenges to such interpretations than they do to those of a speech or a written document. For them, apparently, even in the wake of deconstruction, natural language seems safer, easier, and more stable in its capacity of meaning generation than does the visual image. I wonder why that is the case, and particularly so in a culture in which "seeing is believing" and a "picture is worth a thousand words."
Schirato, T. and Webb, J. (2004). Reading the visual. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.
The textbook definition of “literacy”, is the ability to read and write. However, in my opinion, the true definition of the word depends on what literacy means to an individual. In today's society, being literate is almost always required to get any type of decent job. Literacy is definitely the first step of many to be successful in today's society. However, that is not the only means of importance that literacy holds. The fact that literacy has different definitions ties into the fact that literacy has had different effects on certain people throughout their lives. Most people in today's society seem to take literacy for granted because they view it as a hassle or obligation. I do not view literacy as that because of how it has helped me get through the toughest times in my life. In reality, you should love to read no matter what genre it is, and you should write until your hands go numb. Throughout my life, literacy has been a backbone of sorts throughout the struggles I've been through. By using literacy as a form of support, it has allowed me to grow a strong connection to reading and writing and truly appreciate it. To me, literacy means hope. Literacy has helped me heal and has helped me connect with people from all over the country who have changed my life forever.
My personal view of literacy is the ability to communicate and interact with yourself and one another. Without the ability to talk to one another, hear one another, or be able to understand what others are trying to say, you will be completely lost in a lonely world. I do not want to be stuck in a dark and quiet world, so I keep myself as literate and have as much knowledge as possible. Literacy is being able to communicate, read, and having knowledge while doing so.
Literacy is the ability to read and write and use written information and to write appropriately in a range of contexts. It also involves the integration of speaking, listening, viewing and critical thinking with reading and writing, and includes the cultural knowledge which enables a speaker, writer or reader to recognise and use language appropriate to different social situations (Freebody & Luke, 1990).
What is Literacy? “Literacy is the quality or state of being literate” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). The traditional element of literacy can be coached however in today’s society that is not the case because within this millennium the digital age has taken over. Literacy starts from an early age so therefore, having the ability to be literate has a strong impact on ones future, the traditional forms of literacy are also being erased and replaced with digital forms, literacy is something that can be improved, being literate is very important because in today’s society lacking literacy has major consequences. And also a person of literacy has certain skills that are never forgotten. Literacy is a fundamental that has a huge difference in one’s life and without it life will be even more complicated.
John Berger presents a multifaceted argument regarding art, its interpretations, and the various ways of seeing. Berger asserts that there is gap between the image that the subject sees and the one that was originally painted by the artist. Many factors influence the meaning of the image to the subject and those factors are unique to the subject themselves. Seeing is not simply a mechanical function but an interactive one. Even the vocabulary is subject to specialized scrutiny by Berger; an image is a reproduction of an original product, while only the product itself may truly be a ‘painting’. Images are seen at an arbitrary location and circumstance – they are different for everyone – while the product, which is in one place, is experienced
What this course in visual literacy has taught me, is that the term “Visual Literacy” can be altered depending on the individual person’s sense of vision. James Elkins comes the closest to the best description of visual literacy, “Understanding how people perceive objects”. Interpret what they see and what they learn from them.” What happens when the artist or viewer has a different sense of vision? Looking at three different cases in Oliver Sacks An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales, “The Case of the Colorblind Painter”, “To See and Not See”, and “Prodigies”, our understanding of “Visual Literacy” is altered....
Literacy education must be conceptualized as more than reading and writing (Auerbach et al. 1996). According to Fingeret (1992), "our understanding of literacy has changed from [a] focus on individual skills, separated from meaningful content .
Literacy is being able to read and write, but is that all literacy is? From my understanding, yes it is being able to read and write, but it’s also the ability to understand what you’re reading and writing. Literacy is an important skill to have because you will be able to utilize what you learned through reading and writing to its full potential in understanding what you’re reading or writing. Not only will you be able to do those things, but you will also be able to apply it to your language. At times people will encounter good and bad experiences with literacy. Whether you had a good or bad experience with literacy at the end of the day you will learn and grow from it.