Session 5: Probing and Perceiving
Chair: Tracey Connolly

Visual Art Education and Multisensory Artistic Experiences: Turning ‘Visual Literacy’ into ‘Perceptual Literacy’
Primož Urbanč
Pianist and Researcher in the field of musical and visual art

Even the most precise description, enumerating all visible characteristics will not give us an inkling of what we feel is the essence of a thing itself. Just as we do not notice the individual letters in a word but receive a total impression of the idea it conveys, we generally are not aware of what it is that we perceive but only of the conception created in our minds when we perceive it.
Visual literacy from this perspective implicates a conception of perception that is influenced by other languages in the effort to communicate and “produce meanings”. The aim of our research was to analyze the influence of different kinds of expression through the production and reception of an art work that intended to develop a complex understanding of the “information” viewers were exposed to. This complex was formed by visual and auditory stimuli combined in specific modes pointing out the semiotic and the sensory level. We departed from the idea that to foster processes that encourage different constructions of significant meanings it is necessary to abandon vision/audible centric notions of object hood and offer a general definition of the perceptual object.
Taking this into account it would be possible to upgrade the approach turning “visual culture/literacy” into “perceptual culture/literacy” in order to contextualize visual or auditory artistic production stimulating sensitive experiences and producing a holistic perception of the world as far as different forms of manipulation are effective when its components address disconnected perceptual capacities.
An efficient critical attitude towards the world should encourage the education of critical »perceivers« of the environment as a whole enabling transformations in the responses to manipulating visual and other stimulus. These ideas become even more important if we consider the individuality of each viewer-consumer-student, his/her necessities, affinities, cultural background, gender etc.

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Film Choices for Screening Literacy: The ‘Pygmalion Template’ in Teacher Education
Ive Verdoodt
Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences Department of Educational Studies, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium

In our teaching about and research on ‘culture, literacy and education’ in the teacher education programme at Ghent University, we start from the idea that we construct meaning by representation (Hall, 1997). Movies in particular can be described in contemporary everyday life as a “form of public pedagogy - a visual technology that functions as a powerful teaching machine” (Giroux, 2002). During the last few years, we have been tackling the question of visual literacy together with preservice teachers through a teaching and research project on cinematic ‘literacy narratives’. Inviting our students to reflect on the concept of ‘literacy’, we created a curriculum as a contact zone (cf. Soetaert, Mottart & Verdoodt, 2004) in which film is used as a primary source of knowledge and insight.
In our project, the following research questions are highlighted: (1) which cinematic literacy narratives circulate in our visual culture? (2) how can (popular) movies function as ‘teaching machines’ to enhance both students’ visual literacy and deepen their understanding of the problematic nature of literacy and its visual representation?
A narrative and intertextual analysis of a large collection of movies, focusing on binary oppositions, revealed the existence of a ‘Pygmalion template’ in our visual culture. ‘Pygmalion movies’ − including blockbusters such as My Fair Lady and Educating Rita − offer fertile grounds for inquiring into the deeper ideological layers of literacy. Building on this model, students’ research papers provided us with surprising movie choices and analyses, indicating some confidence in visual literacy by students without a film studies background. Moreover, experiencing the matter vicariously, students seemed to really care about what was being taught, as was proven by their personal literacy narratives in on-line discussion groups.

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Visuality, Embodied Experience, and the Designed Environment
Lisa DeBenedittis
Parsons The New School for Design, New York, NY, USA

I maintain that contemporary Western cultures have over-privileged the visual in their engagement with the designed environment. I wish to explore the naturally corrective means currently being addressed across societies as a response, namely the emergent emphasis on full sensory environments, experiences and technological applications. Due to a trajectory of technological advances and the social practices that emerged as a result, our designed environment has been one that was increasingly designed to be seen (rather than smelled, tasted, touched or heard). In many ways, the recognition of those with dis/abilities, and their unique needs has encouraged people to begin designing a more universally accessible world. In addition, the acceptance of those with a variety of learning styles (cf. Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences) has similarly forced a more holistic approach to fully engaging all of the senses, in a variety of contexts: educational and otherwise. I pose the questions: how might we, as designers, educators, and / or citizens, more fully and visually engage with our world, rather than experience it as picturesque, and as the object of our gaze? How can we thoughtfully integrate the visual into the multi-sensorial, the visual so it becomes experiential?