Visual Literacy July 2015 What is visual?

Physical (optical) or mental? [glasses]

Perceptive or cultural? [optical illusions]

All of the above? What is literacy?

Traditional view:

Skill or knowledge acquired through formal instruction [flag ]

Autonomous model [1] 1. Street, . . (..). Autonomous and ideological models of literacy: Approaches from New Literacy Studies. Retrieved from http:// www.philbu.net/media-anthropology/street_newliteracy.pdf What is literacy?

New Literacies:

Skill or knowledge acquired through observation and experience [grey cloud = rain]

Ideological model [1] 1. Street, B. V. (n.d.). Autonomous and ideological models of literacy: Approaches from New Literacy Studies. Retrieved from http:// www.philbu.net/media-anthropology/street_newliteracy.pdf What is visual literacy?

3 perspectives (or literacies):

Literacy of the visual [film language, v. syntax]

Literacy from the visual [assisted literacy]

Literacy about the visual [critical visual literacy] *Reality as genre | Persuasion What is visual literacy?

“The world is awash with images. Cameras are easy use[…] Why waste time in an elementary course devoted to a popular medium? The answer is: Most scholars —textually proficient— are visually illiterate. Basic visual literacy can be acquired by reading and looking, but the visual language of photography, like any other language, is best learned by "speaking" it.”

Lesy, . (2007). Visual Literacy. The Journal of American History, 94(1), 143–153. http://doi.org/10.2307/25094783 What is visual literacy?

“A visually literate individual is both a critical consumer of visual media and a competent contributor to a body of shared knowledge and culture.”

ACRL Board of Directors. (2011, October). ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. Retrieved November 23, 2013, from http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/visualliteracy What is visual literacy?

Considering all this: Is it even possible to be visually illiterate? What is visual literacy?

“[…]in sharp contrast to verbal language, the ability to understand visual images does not require much prior experience. Making sense of words requires extensive literacy. Making sense of images does not. Precisely because of the fact that visual conventions are modelled on real-world perceptual processes, the persuasive or manipulative uses of images may be less easy to detect than verbal persuasion or manipulation.”

Messaris, P. (2012). Visual “Literacy” in the Digital Age. Review of Communication, 12(2), 101–117. http://doi.org/10.1080/15358593.2011.653508 A semiotic model (..Peirce)

A possible reason: Adapted linguistics A possible solution: Visual semiotics A semiotic model (C.S.Peirce)

Object [rain]

Representamen Interpretant [grey cloud] [experience] What is visual literacy?

Nominalization Deviation Abstraction Derivation

V. perception ⟶ V. semiotics ⟶ V. rhetoric [Vygotsky] [C.S.Peirce] [Aristotle]

Thank you [email protected]