Visual Culture

What is Visual Culture? It is a fairly new discipline of study that supports the point of view that understanding our world goes beyond words and text.

I'll be posting a bit on this topic, since I'm interested in figuring out how the concept of visual culture fits into my own theories about multimedia literacy and technology.

As I dig deeper into this field of study, I hope to gather and share what I find. One of my tasks will be to find a "short list" of visual culture scholars and see if there are is any cross-pollination between this group and people in the field of information/data visualization.

In searching for definitions of Visual Culture, I came across this description from the Visual Culture website from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

What is Visual Culture?

"(It) is concerned with everything we see, have seen, or may visualize-paintings, sculptures, movies, television, photographs, furniture, utensils, gardens, dance, buildings, artifacts, landscape, toys, advertising, jewelry, apparel, light, graphs, maps, websites, dreams-in short, all aspects of culture that communicate through visual means...."

Visuality and Textuality

"Visual Culture Studies presents a challenge to the textual model of the world that dominates so much thinking about culture. While analyzing cultural experiences, artistic practices, and even social interactions and history itself as so many texts to be read is an undeniably powerful approach, this textual bias ignores a vast realm of perception, experience and meaning in reducing culture to "reading." Visual Cultural Studies counters this bias by emphasizing the importance of the visual-even in textual objects, as when scholars consider the impact of design on the meaning of literature. In countering this earlier thinking, Visual Culture Studies does not set aside textuality, but draws it into dialogue with visuality, performativity, aurality, tactility, and so on. At the same time, Visual Culture scholars are beginning to question the broader dominance of visuality itself (what some have termed "ocularcentrism") and to look for ways to consider vision in the broadest cultural context without introducing new hierarchies of social practice."

What is Visual Culture? (University of Aberdeen)

"Visual culture has emerged as a constellation of various interests and numerous critical intersections in the visual and performing arts here at the University of Aberdeen. Because of its dynamic nature it constitutes less of discipline than a platform for exploring theoretical and creative collaborations between Film, Art History, Modern Thought, Museum Studies, Visual Anthropology, Scientific Imaging practices, new media, and computer engineering. The taught M.Litt reflects the diverse interests of faculty and students participating in visual studies. The M.Litt in Visual Culture is divided into two tracks: one designed to engage with critical thinking (the history of art and film criticism, theories of the visual, philosophies of perception and new media); and the other concentrating on creativity and media production (the internationally acclaimed filmmaker Raul Ruiz advises on avant-garde filmmaking, and courses are taught in film production)."

RELATED
(This list is not inclusive and will be updated.)

Visual Culture Website (University of Wisconsin, Madison)

Visual Culture Website (University of Aberdeen)

Georgtown University's Visual Culture Page (Martin Irvine)
Warning- it is ALL TEXT!

Aesthetics and Visual Culture (Bruce B. Janz, Director, Center for Humanities and Digital Research, University of Central Florida)
This site has an extensive number of links that cross numerous disciplines, last updated in 2006.

Journal of Visual Culture

Visual Culture at Middlesex University People Page

Visual Culture Blog (Oberholtzer-Creative)

The Visual Culture Awards - Info about awarded individuals

Infosthetics

Capella Web Capella Garcia Arquitectura- see picture below:




Via Visual Culture:

Pathway to a Sustainable Environment
"Heaven by Capella Garcia Arquitectura is an ephemeral space whose purpose is to show off the virtues of a constructional system using a plastic material, developed by the Resyrok Company, at the latest Casa Decor Fair in Barcelona, Spain, whose theme was “Pathway to a sustainable environment"

I came across the following video, created by Eirik Solheim, on the Visual Culture blog:

2008 in 40 Seconds

One year in 40 seconds from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.