Reading Visual Art Introduction

• It is an active and creative process.

• When reading the visual, we draw on our general and specific knowledge, tastes, and habits, our personal contexts to make what we see, and make sure of it.​

​​Three Main Points in SEEING as READING

1) We see things we are actively engaging with our environment rather than simply reproducing everything within our line of sight.

2) Every act of looking and seeing is also an act of not seeing-some things must remain invisible if we are to pay attention to other things in view.

3) The extent to which we see, focus on and pay attention to the world around us. (Three actions are inextricably linked, depends upon the specific context in which we find ourselves).

SEEING IN CONTEXT

• Cultural Literacy

  - understanding the context based on the cultural norms and models

  ​- high literacy of the culture

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• Cultural Trajectory

  - seeing something from a cultural perspective

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TECHNIQUES OF SEEING AS READING

• Selection and Omission- every act of looking and seeing is also an act of not seeing. Selection of details and omission of others helps to constitute and make the visual. By paying attention to and focusing on something, the viewer effectively constructs a frame around the scene.

• Productive in two ways

• 1) Suggests a set of relationships between, and stories about different aspects;

• 2) Establishes a hierarchy with regard to the potentially visible… and these lead to evaluation.

SELECTION AND OMISSION

• Number of elements contribute to or facilitate the process of suturing the world to make a text.

  a. Color

  b. Shape

  c. Movement

  d. Texture

  e. Distance

  f. Light

• Text - The name of a group of signs

  - a collection of signs which are organized in a particular way to make meaning

• Sign - is anything that is treated as a meaningful part of the unit that is the text.

• Intertextuality- the use of other texts to create new texts.