class: title, top, fullbleed, color-white, no-footer background-image: url(nathan-anderson-99542-unsplash.jpg) # Welcome to VMS 202D --- class: title, smokescreen, shelf, no-footer background-image: url(nathan-anderson-99542-unsplash.jpg) # VMS 202D ### What is Visual Culture?<br />August 29, 2022 --- class: title ## Welcome and Introductions --- class: img-right  # Textbook _Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture_ (3rd Edition, 2017) Authors: Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright --- class: img-right-full  # Course Mechanics --- class: img-left-full  # Course Website https://mjvo.github.io/vms202d --- class: roomy # What does it mean to study visual culture? > "Visual culture is concerned with visual events in which **information**, **meaning** or **pleasure** is sought by the **consumer** in an **interface with visual technology**. By visual technology I mean any form of **apparatus** designed to be looked at or to enhance natural vision, from oil painting to television and the internet." > — Nicholas Mirzoeff, *[An Introduction to Visual Culture](https://www.google.com/books/edition/An_Introduction_to_Visual_Culture/hhajBE0mUfwC?hl=en)*, p. 3 ??? Difference between information and meaning? Value? --- ## Culture -- * Culture as Distinction (Hierarchies & Power)<br />"the best that has been thought and said"| High culture vs pop culture vs low culture, etc -- * Anthropological View of Culture<br />"the shared practices of a group, community, or society, through which meaning is made out of the visual, aural, and textual world of representations." --- background-image: url(visual_culture.png) --- class: title, fogscreen, top # The study of visual culture centers the visual (visual objects, ways of looking, visuality) as a way of understanding history & practices of meaning-making. --- class: compact, fit-h1, center # *Mood 4 Eva* (2021), Beyoncé, JAY-Z, Childish Gambino, Oumou Sangaré <iframe width="90%" height="90%" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/MMuUFjxLQJU" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> --- class: img-caption  # Disney+ --- class: col-2, compact ## Black is King (2020)  ## The Lion King: The Gift (2019)  --- class: col-2, center # *Coming to America* (1988)     --- class: col-2 # *Belly* (1998) <br /><br />  <br /><br />  --- class: compact # Esher Williams, *Bathing Beauty* (1944) <iframe width="68%" height="51%" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/BNlyz1eBRB4" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>      ??? And 2020 olympic synchro swim team from Jamaica --- ## For Wednesday Post: * Introduce yourself on our Sakai sites' [Conversation](https://sakai.duke.edu/x/Y0pfVU) within the "Introduce Yourself!" discussion, and share an artifact of visual culture of recent interest. Read: * *Practices of Looking*, Intro & Chapter 1 (pp. 1 - 29) [[PDF on Sakai](https://sakai.duke.edu/access/content/group/VMS-202D-001-F22/Readings/POL-intro_chapter1_1-29.pdf) if you've not yet purchased the book]