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Week 1
Introductions: Approaches to the study of visual culture
Prepratory Reading and Assignment for For Week 1
- Nicholas Mirzoeff, "What
is Visual Culture," from The Visual Culture Reader,
ed. Nicholas Mirzoeff.
- Irit Rogoff, "Studying
Visual Culture," from The Visual Culture Reader,
ed. Nicholas Mirzoeff.
- W.J.T. Mitchell, "Interdisciplinarity
and Visual Culture," Art Bulletin, 78/4, Dec.
1995.
- Definitions
of Visual Culture from the University of Wisconsin program on
Visual Culture
Assigment for Week 1 (bring to class meeting)
- Make an inventory of the kinds of visual information, visual
media, mass media, and visual art forms that you observe in a
day. It will be your personal catalogue of a day's visual culture
experience (street information, TV, movies, advertising, photography,
art [originals or reproductions], architecture and design, etc).
How many visual genres do we encounter in an ordinary day in a
city like Washington? Bring notes to class for discussion.
- Read more
on visual culture and everyday life.
Begin reading William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Cayce Pollard, the main character of the story, is a corporate
image maker and hired-gun "cool hunter," a visual identity and
logo guru, a street-smart semiotician--in short a contemporary
visual culture authority minus the academic baggage. The novel
is a romp through contemporary visuality, communications, and
information technology with incisive observations on media, software,
memory, history, identity, and the marketing-saturated visual
culture of today.
Cayce "knows too much about the processes responsible for the
way product is positioned in the world, and sometimes finds herself
doubting that there is much else going on."
Introduction:
Lecture Notes/Discussion Topics
Visual
Culture Theory Map
Visual
Culture and Everyday Life
Visual
Culture Slide Show: Case Studies for Discussion
Additional Visual Theory Reference Points:
Representational
Codes: Representing Representing, Depicting Depicting
Doing
Things with Images: Statement, Representation, Reference, Image,
Sign
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