(1962)
I kind of feel like I need to go back to Kindergarten... or rather, like I am going back to Kindergarten via KvL. There's so much new education - learning how to count, which color is which, what a cow says, etc., - that I need to learn. Well, maybe not those things in particular, but KvL surely prove that I am a newbie to their particular branch of education. Like Sally got on her first day of Kindergarten, we too get some pictures via KvL, but what replaced the songs and the games was an extensive Vocab Lesson on how to describe these pictures. I knew we would be utilizing specific terminology, but Wowsers - I had not prepared myself for this much "New Stuff."
Using (a tiny bit of) the terminology provided by KvL, let's look at a press photo for the upcoming season of Survivor:
(CBS.com)
There are a number things going on here, but let's use KvL's language to unpack just a few:
1) There's a Covert Taxonomy (79) in that each person is posed in this "family photo" style, each shown as one of many contestants set against the typical tropical backdrop.
2) Each contestant is a Posessive Attribute (PA) of the Program's family photo Carrier (87). There are three black PAs, 17 white; 10 men, 10 women; etc. Each of these PAs shares the characteristic of physical fitness and lends a general notion of athleticism, aggression, and competition to the Program. One can look at these "parts" as carrying their own PAs, such as tattoos, descriptive hair styles, etc., that may say something about them as an individual (Carrier).
3) There appears to be a Symbolic Process in that the two PAs in the upper left corner appear "look out of place in the whole, in some way" (105) because of their posture toward one another. Their matching heights, her dress, and their shoulder-touching inward turn, make them resemble two in a couples-photo. This may be a nod toward the program's inevitable turn toward "alliances."
That is a tiny bit of what can be done with the 30 or so terms introduced so far by KvL (44-114). This post alone has taught me that like in Kindergarten, you often learn best by doing. Just in this little breakdown of a Survivor photo, I have already learned more about KvL's approach.
The question remains, though, as to what happens if we don't adopt this language perfectly. In math as a small child, if you don't get the basics of addition, subtraction, etc., it is quite difficult to progress successfully into the next stage of the subject. If I don't master the notion of Vectors, will I be able to really gain from KvL's further insights? Is the terminology essential? If it is, I hope I catch on quickly.
I love your question, and had a similar feeling. This is something I deal with in beginning design studio all the time. Some students just HAVE GOT TO KNOW WHAT IT IS THAT I WANT. I simply can't tell them exactly what I wan't because that is the point... to discover new and awesome ways to visually express concepts. For arch 251 (architectural foundations 1), there is never a "right" or "wrong," so we have to grade in three or more ways... Craft, Process (the development of the visuals over the course of at least a week), and Conceptual or meaning of the content/ problem tackled.
ReplyDeleteFurther, in this culture it seems to be getting harder and harder to publicly critique the students as was done in my undergraduate experience almost to the degree of humiliation and destruction. Models were thrown off of balconies if they were not "worth" our time.
Students these days may sue a professor for that, however this public display of what works and what doesn't seems to be so incredibly important. With visuals I think we need to learn through seeing how what we make impacts the viewer. It is a process of learning by doing/observing/doing/ .... etc. This is something I deal with in class every week, having to continually break the students need for "rules." They want them, they want to follow them, and they only want one set that has no contradictions. I fear that this simply isn't possible for visuals.