My summary of Barnard readings for today:
First part: Understanding visual culture is hard.
Second part: Screw Positivism.
In the first part I like the four examples that are given, and then how they are said to represent different ways of understanding. It seems really similar to me to the four ways of examining that Jeff talked about on Tuesday. So in that vein, it seems pretty obvious to me that the last two were examinations of the characteristics of the works themselves, and the second one was a sociocultural examination of the work. On the first one, I am not so sure, and that is my question. The book says that in the passage the author is imagining himself as part of the painting; that didn’t really come across to me in the snippet but I’ll take their word for it. To me, I think that means it is an examination of the work’s affect on the viewer, but I’m really not confident in that. So, what kind of examination is the first example in chapter one of Barnard?
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January 10, 2013 at 4:23 pm
jeffreybardzell
Yayy! We have this year’s winners: Wishaya is the first student to do anything on the blog, while Matt is the first one to write an actual post! Woo-hoo!
A quick request: please categorize this post. (Go in to Edit it, and in the right-hand side of the window, check the appropriate boxes in the Category sectiion–in this case, you might choose Readings, Questions, and any others that strike your fancy. And please uncheck “Uncategorized.”
Everyone else–feel free to try to answer Matt’s question or pile on with more questions!
January 11, 2013 at 5:31 am
jordanbeck
I’d wager that the first passage is the second of the four perspectives: inquiry into the artifact itself (as described in Jeff’s paper on critical and cultural approaches to hci). Even though it’s fiction, the passage still describes and explains the content of the painting as well as the arrangement of that content: “…the stag, the royal peacock, and the fallow deer that can be seen through the window are as alive as the pair of lovers strolling arm in arm in the shade of the promenade lined with poplars.”