What is Visual Literacy?

Summary

The video script explores the concept of visual literacy, emphasizing the importance of understanding and interpreting images as a form of communication. It discusses how visual literacy involves learning the 'alphabet' and 'grammar' of seeing, much like learning a language. The script highlights the role of art museums in teaching visual literacy, the impact of media saturation on young people, and the need for education systems to include visual literacy alongside traditional textual literacy. It also delves into the historical context and evolution of visual communication, encouraging a deeper appreciation and critical analysis of visual elements in our daily lives.

Takeaways

• 🖼️ Visual literacy is understanding and interpreting visual information, similar to reading text.
• 👶 Children absorb vast amounts of information through all senses, especially visually, from birth to age five.
• 🌍 We live in an image-saturated age, necessitating the ability to read and understand visual content.
• 📉 While media consumption has increased, traditional reading has declined, highlighting the need for visual literacy.
• 💡 Visual literacy enables us to construct meaning from images and understand their social impact.
• 🏛️ Art museums play a crucial role in teaching visual literacy by making art accessible and engaging.
• 📚 The concept of visual literacy has a rich history, with various organizations and publications dedicated to its study.
• 🔍 Techniques like 'Learning to Look' help train people to see and interpret visual elements critically.
• 🎨 Key elements of art, such as line, shape, color, space, and texture, are essential in developing visual literacy.
• 🌐 Visual literacy is intertwined with the major communication revolutions in human history, emphasizing its evolving importance.

Q & A

What is visual literacy according to the transcript?

Visual literacy is the ability to construct meaning from images. It involves understanding the grammar of seeing, reading images, and interpreting their content and social impact.

Why is visual literacy important in today's media-saturated age?

In a media-saturated age where images are constantly consumed, visual literacy is important because it allows individuals to critically interpret and understand the multitude of images they encounter daily.

How does the transcript describe the difference between text and image?

The transcript suggests there is no real difference between text and image, as text is an image and an image is a text. Both need to be read and understood through the process of vision.

What does the transcript say about children's information intake before the age of five?

Children take in more information from birth to age five than at any other time in their lives, using all their human senses continuously.

How does socio-economic status affect a child's early exposure to reading, according to the transcript?

Children from lower-income families are read to for about 100 hours by age five, whereas children from middle or upper-income families are read to for over 1,000 hours, giving the latter a significant advantage when starting school.

What are the three major communications revolutions mentioned in the transcript?

The three major communications revolutions are the invention of Cuneiform writing in the Sumerian Empire 5,000 years ago, the Gutenberg printing revolution in the 15th century, and the Digital Revolution of our time.

What is the role of art museums in teaching visual literacy?

Art museums play a crucial role in teaching visual literacy by using techniques like 'Learning to Look,' which helps individuals take their time to see and analyze artworks in detail.

According to the transcript, what is the 'Learning to Look' technique?

The 'Learning to Look' technique involves taking time to observe an artwork, describing it accurately, and then asking analytical questions about it to construct meaning and become visually literate.

What are the five Elements of Art mentioned in the transcript?

The five Elements of Art are Line, Shape, Color, Space, and Texture. These elements are used to analyze and understand visual compositions.

What principles are applied to understand visual compositions as mentioned in the transcript?

The principles include Emphasis, Balance, Harmony, Variety, Movement, Proportion, Rhythm, and Unity. These help in analyzing the visual equilibrium and coherence of an artwork.

Outlines

00:00

📚 Understanding Visual Literacy

Visual literacy involves understanding the language of art, which includes knowing the alphabet, vocabulary, and grammar of seeing. It's essential to learn how to read images, as we live in an image-saturated age. Children absorb vast amounts of information through all senses, emphasizing the need for visual literacy. The text discusses the importance of reading images and the disparity in reading exposure between children from different socio-economic backgrounds.

05:01

👀 Importance of Visual Literacy in Education

The emphasis on textual literacy in education overlooks the importance of sensory literacy, especially visual literacy. Visual literacy helps in understanding and interpreting images, making it crucial for effective communication. The text underscores the necessity of integrating sensory literacy into the curriculum to enhance overall literacy and critical thinking skills.

10:03

🖼️ Elements and Principles of Art

Understanding visual literacy involves learning the elements and principles of art, such as line, shape, color, space, texture, emphasis, balance, harmony, variety, movement, proportion, rhythm, and unity. These elements help in analyzing and interpreting images, leading to a deeper understanding of visual compositions.

15:05

🔍 Techniques to Enhance Visual Literacy

Museums use techniques like 'Learning to Look' to train people on how to see and interpret images. This involves taking time to observe, describe, analyze, and construct meaning from what we see. Understanding visual elements and principles enhances visual literacy, helping individuals to see and interpret the world more effectively.

Keywords

💡Visual Literacy

Visual literacy is the ability to construct meaning from images. It is a form of critical thinking that enhances intellectual capacity by interpreting the content and meaning of images. The script emphasizes its importance in the modern, image-saturated world and the need to teach it alongside textual literacy.

💡Media Saturated Age

The media saturated age refers to the contemporary era characterized by the pervasive presence of media, particularly visual media. The script highlights that young people today are exposed to images more than ever before, making visual literacy essential for understanding and navigating this environment.

💡Critical Thinking

Critical thinking involves analyzing and evaluating information to form a reasoned judgment. In the context of visual literacy, it means understanding the purpose, context, and impact of images. The script discusses how visual literacy helps enhance critical thinking by enabling individuals to interpret and construct meaning from visual content.

💡Elements of Art

The elements of art are the fundamental components used to create visual works, including line, shape, color, space, and texture. The script describes these elements as tools to analyze and understand images, enhancing one's visual literacy.

💡Principles of Design

The principles of design refer to the guidelines for arranging elements in art, such as emphasis, balance, harmony, variety, movement, proportion, rhythm, and unity. The script explains how understanding these principles can help individuals read and interpret visual compositions more effectively.

💡Digital Revolution

The digital revolution refers to the shift from traditional to digital technologies, profoundly impacting how we communicate and consume information. The script places it as the third major communication revolution in history, emphasizing its role in shaping modern visual literacy.

💡Cognitive Neuroscience

Cognitive neuroscience studies the brain mechanisms underlying cognitive processes. The script mentions its contributions to understanding how we process visual information, highlighting the significance of visual literacy in the context of brain science.

💡21st Century Students

21st century students are those growing up in the current era, characterized by extensive exposure to digital and visual media. The script notes that these students consume images at unprecedented rates, underlining the need for education systems to focus on visual literacy.

💡International Visual Literacy Association

The International Visual Literacy Association is an organization dedicated to promoting visual literacy. Founded in the late 1960s, it publishes research and hosts annual conferences. The script references this association to underscore the established importance of visual literacy as a field of study.

💡Sumerian Empire

The Sumerian Empire, known for inventing cuneiform writing, marks the first major communication revolution. The script mentions this historical context to trace the evolution of literacy, from textual to visual, and to highlight the ongoing impact of communication revolutions.

Highlights

Art is a language; it's a form of communication. To be visually literate, you need to know the alphabet, vocabulary, and grammar of seeing.

Little children from birth to age five take in more information than at any other time in their lives, using all their senses constantly.

There isn't a difference between text and image; a text is an image, and an image is a text. We need to learn to read images through vision.

We live in a media-saturated, image-saturated age. Literacy now includes reading images as well as text.

Young people today are consuming images at an extraordinary rate, looking at them for 7 hours and 38 minutes daily on average.

There is a socio-economic disparity in early childhood reading experiences, with lower-income children being read to far less than those from higher-income families.

Visual literacy is essential for constructing meaning and making sense of what we see. It helps understand why certain artworks are placed in specific contexts.

The International Visual Literacy Association, established in the late 1960s, promotes visual literacy through journals and annual conferences.

Visual literacy is the ability to read and write visual language. It involves sending and receiving images to construct meaning.

It is crucial to teach visual literacy in schools as it is a form of critical thinking that enhances intellectual capacity.

Visual literacy enables people to interpret content, examine social impact, and understand the purpose and ownership of images.

Our education system emphasizes textual literacy but neglects sensory literacy. Visual literacy should be part of the core curriculum.

There have been three major communications revolutions: cuneiform writing, the printed book revolution, and the digital revolution.

Up to 90% of the information we take in from the world is through our eyes. The optic nerve has a million nerve fibers, involving 30% of the brain cortex.

Museums use techniques like 'Learning to Look' to train people to see accurately and describe what they observe, leading to visual literacy.

Transcripts

So, what is visual literacy? Well, art museums can teach a lot about it because

art is a language; it's a form of communication. So to be visually literate,

you've got to know the alphabet and the vocabulary and the grammar of seeing.

Little children, were told, from the first day they have on the planet up to the

age of five, take in more information than at any other time in their lives. They're

truly sentient beings, taking in information with all their human senses

all the time. Everything we see is an image. There

really isn't a difference between text and image because a text is an image and

an image is a text. So we have to learn how to read images through the process

of vision. Now, we know that today we live in a

media saturated age — an image saturated age. We're taking in images all the

time and we need to broaden what it means to be literate to read images

rather than text as image. So it's more than reading and writing, it's reading

the visual world. 21st century students studies tell us

young people today are consuming images at an extraordinary rate. In the last

four years, we're told, young people are actually

looking at images throughout the day one hour and 17 minutes more than they used

to. So that's actually 7 hours and 38 minutes every day. Extraordinary but how

many young children have actually been taught how to read images? How many

teachers have done a course in not just the process of vision but how to read

images, whether at college or university? The use of every type of media has

increased over the last decade except reading. We need to learn how to read and

to read images.

It's considerably a question that is socio-economic. If you're a child from a

lower-income family, you've been read to an average about a hundred hours by the

age of five. But, if you're from an upper income or middle income family you've

been read to over a thousand hours by the age of five so you're ten times more

advantaged going to school. Visual literacy is essential because we

need to be able to construct meaning, to make sense of everything that we see.

What does this mean? Why did the Toledo Museum of Art put this strange red thing

in front of this building, this very formal classic building with all its

straight lines? This curvaceous underbody of this spiky angular creature? Well, we

wanted to have fun. We wanted to make sure that young people would feel it's

fun to go into the museum. It's not austere; it's a welcoming place.

Visual literacy has been around for a long time but it's difficult because

there are so many different definitions of it and we have to make it

understandable so it becomes part of the curriculum. The International Visual

Literacy Association started in the late 1960s. They have a journal and they have

an annual conference. The first real primer on visual literacy was published

in 1973 and there been many books since. So what does this mean? Looking at this

image, you see these young people all dressed in red and white striped outfits.

Some of you will know "Where's Waldo" or "Where's Wally," a game where you search

for the Wally that's different from all the others.

So what does this mean? Well, if you're a focal point learner if you're somebody

who's been trained on "ABC" "123." With focal point perspective you'll probably train

your eye to look all around this image. You'll move your eyes all around and you

find the Wally or the Waldo that's different. But, if

you're somebody who's actually challenged with reading and writing or

you grow up in a culture that doesn't emphasize textual learning, you'll

probably scan or scope this image. That's how most people were until 500 years

ago when we had the printed book revolution.

A visually literate person is, simply put, able to read and write visual language.

Visual literacy is a process of sending and receiving images. They make messages.

We can construct meaning from them and then we can combine all the different

literacies that we have to read our multimedia world.

visual literacy is the ability to construct meaning from images so it's

not actually a skill; it uses skills as a toolbox. It's a form of critical thinking

that enhances your intellectual capacity.

It helps you to interpret the content and the meaning of images. To examine

their social impact. To think about them from the point of view of, well: what was

intended, what was their purpose, who owns them, who are they being sent to, and

helping you to visualize the process of visualization and human imagination.

Visual literacy helps you to communicate visually to read and write images. To

read and understand them. To make sense of them. To become aware of judgments

about them, whether they're accurate are they're valid. What are they worth? What

value do they have? So what does this mean? people from

Toledo, Ohio will know this is the Peristyle Theater of the Toledo Museum

of Art but it's certainly grande. It's made to impress. It's powerful. It's got lots

of seats. It's very grand.

It's a place that inspires awe and imagination in every young person that

sees it because we know to read it; is to feel special and to feel inspired.

Today our education system emphasizes textual literacy — those ABCs, one two

three's, the digits and letters. And of course, rightly so, also digital

communication, the tools of our digital revolution. But we neglect sensory

literacy, those human senses as core curriculum.

so textual literacy and computer literacy are the core of the STEM system,

as we call it. Some people want to put the A and STEM – the Arts in STEM – the

science, technology, engineering, and math but it's much more than that. We need to

put the entire human senses into textual and computer literacy. And the dominant

sense, the prominent sense, is the visual sense.

Visual literacy is the key sensory literacy. We have to teach it because

since we became erect human beings – standing up – we moved away from when we

were closer to primates, nearer to the ground and using taste and smell. And now

we dominantly use hearing but mainly we use our sight

and we need to train ourselves how to see.

There been only three communications revolutions of grand scale in human

history so to be living one is indeed confusing. It's very exciting time to be

alive but we're trying to absorb a revolution.

The first communications revolution was 5,000 years ago in the Sumerian Empire

when they invented Cuneiform writing. And it took a whole 4,500 years to get

to the next great revolution – the printed book revolution, the Gutenberg Revolution

as it's called, of the 15th century in Europe. And so we learned our ABC's and

our 123's and we moved forward only 500 years, this time to the third great

revolution which is the Digital Revolution of our time. All students who

graduated in 2013 have had the Internet since the day they were born. It went

live on Christmas Day in 1991. So we need to continue to teach the

human senses, to understand that little child before the age of five is the

adult that they will become. And the human senses being so important we need

to understand vision. That up to 90% of all the information we

take in from the world we take in with our eyes. It becomes that great memory

bank of images that informs the way that we see the world.

Now the optic nerve has a million nerve fibers. Tt has 30% of the entire brain

cortex and that's so much more than any other human sense.

But we understand so much more about it now because of brain science. And all

that cognitive neuroscience has taught us through the digital revolution.

The key message is that we have to be more visually literate and we need to

train people how to see. To do that, first of all, you need to take your time.

You need to pay attention. Museums use lots of techniques to train

people how to see. One is a technique like this, Learning to Look. When we look

at something, we often make assumptions about it. We've already decided what it

is because we've seen it before but if we really look at it, we take our time

and we start to see it. When we can really see it, we can begin to describe it

very accurately. And after describing it, we can ask analytical questions about it

like "what's it made of." And when we've gone through this four stage process we

then begin to construct meaning. We begin to make sense of what we see. We begin to

become visually literate. Look at this image. It's an image of a

painting by Thomas Cole in the Toledo Museum of Art collection called "The

Architect's Dream." You can pause here if you like.

Now imagine what you've seen and place it on this black background.

Can you fill in the big picture and all the details? Did you go to the details

first and then to the big picture? Pause and try and paint the picture for

yourself. Here it is again. What did you see?

Now in terms of learning the grammar of how to look, a good approach is to study the

visual Elements of Art. You can use these to look at any image and to think about

it in terms of its LINE, those continuous marks with height and width that have no

depth. Or its SHAPE – the enclosed area that defines the other elements in a

composition such as LINE. Or COLOR which is the full light spectrum and the black

and white – all the possible combinations that you can make in terms of hue, which

is the name that we give to the colors, or the intensity which is the purity we

give to them, or the value of them which is the degree of lightness or darkness

that they have. And then we can think about SPACE, those areas around or

within objects and the arrangement of them on the surface. Or TEXTURE, the

tactile quality of an object. Then you can apply these five Elements

back to the Thomas Cole image. Now you're seeing it differently. You can see it

through these five different possibilities and some more: form, the

time that you see, values different kinds of values.

And then you can think about it in terms of the Principles of Art: emphasis and

balance and harmony and variety and movement and proportion and rhythm and

unity. Let's look at the image again.

The EMPHASIS, the point or points of focus that you see in the composition.

Or the BALANCE, the sense of visual equilibrium. What about HARMONY, the

balanced use of similar Elements? Or VARIETY, the use of different or often

contrasting Elements that create visual interest? Or MOVEMENT, the way the shapes

and the lines and the colors and the forms all direct your eye around the

composition, suggesting motion. Or PROPORTION, the relative scale of objects

and shapes in an image. Or RHYTHM, the path your eye follows, a regular or

repeating arrangement of shapes or colors or whatever. And its sense of

UNITY, its overall coherence. When you learn these Elements and

Principles, you walk back out into the world. If you walk outside the Toledo

Museum of Art, you go next door and see Frank Gehry's very remarkable Center

for the Visual Arts. You start to see it, to see it with the visuals of its lines

and its shape and its color, its space, its texture, and all those principal Elements,

whether its harmonious are proportional, whether it's a unified composition.

Or you go back in to the Toledo Museum of Art and you see Jacque-Louie David's "The Oath of

the Horaci" and you read these arched areas in the background as a space that

encompasses these figures. These dramatic gestures, the triangles, the various

volumes - you start to read it much more easily.

Now there are lots of ways we can do this. Some of you may love birding, looking at the

differences and the similarities between birds. Some of you may collect postage

stamps, play golf, play baseball, do lots of things that cause you to look very very

carefully. Study the differences between roses, the differences between colors. And

you learn how to spot the difference.

Publications these days have crosswords and Sudoku but not many have Spot the

Difference and it's a great game. Look at this image. The one on the right

is different from the one on the left. But you're already looking at it in

terms of the Elements and Principles. Now pause it and look very carefully for the

differences. Did you spot them all? It's difficult but

the more we train our eyes to see, the easier it becomes.

Some people walking into the Toledo Museum of Art see the Cloister in the

Museum and maybe don't notice that those arches – those round shapes in the

background – are different from the pointed ones in the foreground. This

Cloister with its sides all came from different places. Those of you who had known

art history would know that the round shaped arches are earlier from the

Romanesque Period and the near ones are Gothic, later.

There are lots of different approaches we can have to being visually literate. In art museums,

we can study art history. We can analyze works of art over time. We can also use

the formal approaches that we've talked about in terms of the Elements of Art

and the Principles of Design. But we can also study ICONOLOGY, symbols and what

they mean. Or IDEOLOGY, when images give you different aspects of beliefs, values

or of ideas.Or SEMIOTICS, one of the great subjects of the 20th century for

us, the differences between signs and a signifier and what's signified. Or

HERMENEUTICS, which is the literal and intended meaning. And all this will help

us to become more visually literate, to become more sensorially aware.

Looking at this image, some of you will see quickly the object in the center and

some of you will see the white shaped faces looking at each other. And then

you'll say to each other, "I see what you mean."