Session 2: The Mind and Meaning
Session 2: The Mind and Meaning
Chair: Stephen Snyder
Visual Intelligence: Bridging the Gap from Visual Literacy to Visual Reasoning
Jayme Jacobson and Gregory Turner-Rahman
Instructional Design Consultant, Washington State University and Department of Art andDesign, University of Idaho, USA
This paper outlines the urgent need for visual reasoning skills to conceptualize and engage with emergent ideas that are often highly complex, abstract, and multidimensional. We argue that passive analysis (visual literacy) provides insufficient training for visual-spatial reasoning, that visual production and image manipulation are critical for well-honed problem solving in an increasing number of domains. We suggest that projects requiring visual reasoning should be embedded across curricula.
Major roadblocks to improving visual problem solving through visual praxis are first, age-old prejudicial distinctions between “thinking” as intellectual and “doing” as vocational; second, fundamental misconceptions about the cognitive strategies required for visual production; and third, simplistic disciplinary boundaries erected and perpetuated by educational systems that have failed to recognize the similarities between critical thinking methodologies across disciplines.
The effort to improve visual reasoning through hands-on visual problem solving is not a new one but is receiving renewed attention in the academy. Unanticipated intersections between the arts and sciences are surfacing; inter-domain exchanges created by the combination of powerful new imaging technologies and the necessity, in many fields, to clarify complex, non-intuitive, cutting-edge concepts. If approached correctly, project-based cross-disciplinary collaboration has the potential to produce deep synthetical understanding among collaborators even when the disciplines involved initially appear to use very different problem solving strategies.
In this paper we review various strategies for improving visual reasoning, comparing the outcomes from activities in which little or no visual praxis was required to outcomes of projects that required visual ideation, image manipulation, synthetic reasoning, and conceptual re-visioning.
Dyslexia the Hidden Truth Revealed: Discovering Language and Meaning
Ian Marley
Subject Group Graphic Design, School of Communication, North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa
This paper takes a tongue in cheek look at the conventional positioning and understanding of dyslexia as disability or abnormality by discussing the methodology and philosophy that informed the production of the Dyslexic adc (a limited edition artist book that I created).1 In this book (Dyslexic adc) the complex wisdom of dyslexic people is revealed and made more accessible to those who suffer from language corrective disorder (LCD).
Reference will be made to concepts such as semiotics, deconstruction and the post-modern readings of texts as carefully orchestrated attempts by dyslectics to allow deeper understanding of meaning and prepare the LCD community for the revelations that are at hand. An attempt will be made to illustrate that understanding and acceptance is often determined by classification and that a change of model allows alternative interpretation and reading. The Dyslexic adc is thus positioned as a code driven cognitive device utilized to facilitate deeper understanding by the LCD community.
Tracking Creative Creatures: An Interdisciplinary Investigation into the Creative Process
Franci Greyling
Creative Writing, School of Languages, Potchefstroom Campus, North-West University,
Potchefstroom, South Africa
Tracking Creative Creatures is an interdisciplinary investigation, which aims to investigate the creative process across a broad spectrum, by involving various disciplines, art forms, genres, and divergent participants. Primary disciplines, which are involved, are the visual arts and literature (Creative Writing), and the investigation is carried out against the background of the age-old cross-pollination between literature and visual art.
Familiar research methods are not necessarily applicable or useful when dealing with the creative process, on account of its uniqueness. The spark of creativity often lies in unrelated concepts and disciplines, and subsequently the process is often an organic one, which gains its own momentum. The result is therefore not necessarily predictable or empirically determinable. With the aid of participatory action research and practitioner based enquiry, the dynamic interactions and crossings, and the products of the creative process are investigated.
The project revolves around the response of a diverse group of artists to the same set of visual stimuli. The illustrations, which have served as point of departure are fantasy creatures “narrated” by a five-year-old boy, and subsequently drawn by his artist father. A diverse group of participants (established artists, students, children, etc.) have been invited to use the images as a spark for their own creative process and have been encouraged to recreate, play, and explore. Participants have also been requested to provide a record of the entire process leading up to the final creative product. The creative culmination of the project as a whole will be a multi-media exhibition and catalogue at Aardklop National Arts Festival 2007, Potchefstroom, South Africa, which will also enable participants to reflect on their own work and creative process, and those of others.
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