COMS 3410 Study Guide - Fall 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Art Museum, Wax, Visual System
12 Oct 2018
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COMS 3410
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
Lecture 1 (September 7th, 2018)
Introduction
“Face to Face” (1990 image)
• Misidentification
o Believed to be a Mohawk warrior, but was a professor with no affiliation
• Different groups read in different ways
“In 2014, we took 1tn photos: welcome to our new visual culture” (Article by Mirzeoff, 2015)
• Moments in history of moving images, lightshows – A new sense of what images can do
for society
• Image sharing – “The selfie”
• Visual Activism – images are way in which people are promoting social change
(recording police violence)
• Acknowledging images due to their importance
How do you define and understand visual culture?
• Circulation → Printed in a news source, taken on a cellphone and posted on social media
• Stewart Hall → Meanings from images as a process, how images share and how meaning
can be dependent on community affiliation
Occularcentrism
• The visual is central to Western life (Martin Jay 1993)
• Nicholas Mirzoeff has discussed this in relation to the contemporary era, noting work and
leisure are strongly tied to the visual (internet, television, film)
• There is a tendency to visualize our existence
• Visual Technology (Mirzeoff) → To refer to “any form of apparatus designed either to be
looked at or to enhance natural vision, from oil painting to television and the Internet”
Vison, Visuality, Virtual Visuality
• Vision → The capacity of the human eye to see (physiological)
• Visuality → what is seen and how it is seen re culturally constructed, also referred to as
scopic regime
• Virtual Visuality → Internal visualizations (imagination, memory, fantasy, interior
vision, dreaming, remembering)
Disciplinary Debates
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
• Late 1990s, early 2000s
o Focused on objects, this idea that they were constraints on the objects that they
studied (rethinking what’s important, why are we studying these Western
painters?)
• Cultural studies
o Rise of Cultural studies in 1980s (categorizing of art)
o Visual and material culture
• More democratic way of studying (rethinking hierarchies of value in relations to fine art
and objects)
Gillian Rose, “Towards a Critical Visual Methodology”
• Sites
o Production – How the image is made (Photography)
o Image -
o Circulation – How is this image moving? (Social media, online, art gallery)
o Audience – Focusing on study and image through how people engage and react
• Modalities
o Technological – What kind of technology was involved
o Compositional – Material quality of an image
o Social – Who was this made for, when and why?
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Face to face (1990 image: misidentification, believed to be a mohawk warrior, but was a professor with no affiliation, different groups read in different ways. In 2014, we took 1tn photos: welcome to our new visual culture (article by mirzeoff, 2015: moments in history of moving images, lightshows a new sense of what images can do for society. Image sharing the selfie : visual activism images are way in which people are promoting social change (recording police violence, acknowledging images due to their importance. 1970s: different types of gaze (sex, gender, race, class, addresses the relationship of subjects within a network of power (foucault), vision can negotiate and convey power relationships, institutions also produce a gaze (inspecting, normalizing), a means of discipline. Visual culture as communication: william ivins jr. is a foundational early scholar in visual communication. *ivins explores impact of printmaking on what can and cannot be known (construction of knowledge)
