I first came across the work of Hungarian philosopher Kristóf Nyíri in 2003 when I was researching information related to a paper I was writing - "Thinking, learning, and communicating with multimedia". I had the honor of meeting Kristof Nyiri when I presented my paper at a conference in 2004 at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, where Kristóf Nyiri worked at the time. The conference, "The Global and the Local in Mobile Communications: Places, Images, People, Connections" was co-sponsored by T-Mobile and was part of the Communications in the 21st Century: The Mobile Information Society series of interdisciplinary conferences.
I recently learned that Dr. Nyiri was involved in putting together an upcoming international conference hosted by the Visual Learning Lab at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. This important conference is coming up very soon, on December 1st!
Visual and interactive media technologies have come a long way since 2004. In my opinion, these technologies have the potential to create new, efficient, engaging, and meaningful ways for people to learn, remember, communicate, and share knowledge. I'm not alone in my thoughts regarding this matter, as you'll see from the topics that will be discussed at the VLL conference.
For your convenience, I've shared some information from the Visual Learning Lab (VLL) website in this post. I encourage you to take the time to read the VLL mission statement, selected publications of some of the members of the VLL, and the abstracts of the presentations for the upcoming conference. The abstracts include short bios of the presenters.
Be prepared to do some deep thinking when you read Kristóf Nyiri's publications!
Mission Statement of the Visual Learning Lab
"Although we naturally think in both words and images, educational theory has focused overwhelmingly on the verbal dimensions of teaching and learning. This is in part a reflection of the rise of book printing: pictures receded into the background, even in spite of efforts by Comenius and others to integrate them into texts created for educational purposes. In today's networked digital environment, however, images are easy to access, and can be handled just as smoothly as words. In response to the new challenges hereby created, the Department of Technical Education in the Budapest University of Technology and Economics has established the Visual Learning Lab (VLL), with the goal of furthering the use of visual technologies -- including film, video, and interactive digital media -- in the teaching and learning process, and of engaging in high-level research on all aspects of visual education."
VLL Publications (PDF)
- Anna Győrfi, Ian Smythe, "Re-engaging the SEN Child into Learning through Social Networking", (2009)
- Kristóf Nyíri, "The Picture Theory of Reason", (2000)
- Kristóf Nyíri, "Pictorial Meaning and Mobile Communication" (2003)
- Kristóf Nyíri, "From Texts to Pictures: The New Unity of Science", (2003)
- Kristóf Nyíri, "Visualization and the Limits of Scientific Realism", (2008)
- Kristóf Nyíri, "Gombrich on Image and Time", (2009)
| Visual Learning Bibilography A working bibliography compiled by VLL Budapest participants (Stand Jan. 31, 2010,  )Program for the December 1st VLL Conference Written by Horváth Cz. János |
| Monday, 08 November 2010 12:34 |
Visual Learning (1st VLL Budapest Conference, 2010)Registration09:30 – 09:50, Opening addresses Plenary Session10:00 – 10:20: Roger Murphy, The Visual Enrichment of Higher Education ( )10:20 – 10:40: Christoph Wagner, Visual Experiences in Art History ( )10:40 – 11:00: Petra Aczél, Enchanting Bewilderment: Concerns of Visual Rhetoric ( )Section A11:10 – 11:30: Gabriella Németh, The Visual Rhetorical Figures of the Giant Billboard „ARC” (Face) Exhibition ( )11:30 – 11:50: Ágnes Veszelszki, Image and Self-representation ( )11:50 – 12:10: Anna Szlávi, The Image of Women: A Conceptual Analysis of Commercial Posters ( )12:10 – 12:30: Zsuzsanna Kemenesi, Selection by Personalization ( )Section B11:10 – 11:30: György Molnár, Images, Charts, and the Flow of Knowledge ( )11:30 – 11:50: János Cz. Horváth, Pictorial Skills in the Service of Knowledge-Digging ( )11:50 – 12:10: Franz Dotter – Marlene Hilzensauer, "SignOnOne" – Visual learning for the Deaf ( )12:10 – 12:30: Jean-Rémi Lapaire, Visuo-kinetic Explorations of Grammar ( )12:30 – 14:00: Lunch 14:00 – 14:20: John Mullarkey, Cinema: The Animals that Therefore We Are (On Temple Grandin's Picture Theory, in Pictures) ( )14:20 – 14:40: Zoltán Kövecses, Contextual Images As Metaphors ( )Section A14:50 – 15:10: Kristóf Nyíri, Metaphor and Visual Thinking ( )15:10 – 15:30: Mikkel R. Haaheim, Metaphor is a Constellation ( )15:30 – 15:50: Biljana Radić-Bojanić, Mental Images as a Metaphorical Vocabulary Learning Strategy ( )15:50 – 16:10: Barbara Reiter, Visualizing Human Rights (movie) ( )Section B14:50 – 15:10: Gábor Bencsik, The Image-Anthropological Approach to Historiography: Gypsies in 19th-Century Hungary ( )15:10 – 15:30: Zsuzsanna Kondor, "World Picture" and Beyond – Representation Revisited ( )15:30 – 15:50: Daniela G. Camhy, Visuality and the Acquisition of the Concept of Time () 15:50 – 16:10: Anna Somfai, Visual Thinking and the Creation and Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Philosophical and Scientific Manuscripts ( )Plenary Session16:20 – 16:40: Dieter Mersch, On Visual Epistemology: The Logic of "Showing" ( |
