Session Information
Session 9A, Imagination, Visual Representation and Spatial Conditions of Learning
Papers
Time:
2005-09-09
13:00-14:30
Room:
ENG
Chair:
Elaine Ricard-Fersing
Contribution
"Man only plays when he is in the fullest sense a human being, and he is only fully human when he plays" (Schiller, 1975/1967, p. 107). "It is the ultimate task of our existence to achieve as much substance as possible for the concept of humanity in our person, both during the span of our life and beyond it, through the traces we leave by means of our vital activity, This can be fulfilled only the linking of the self to the world to achieve the most general, most animated, and most unrestrained interplay" (von Humboldt, 2000, p. 58). In broad terms, every time we speak or write or talk, or otherwise express ourselves in, for example, thought, speech or song, we use representations. Utterances of all sorts are representations, as well as the thoughts we use to "represent" reality. At one time, representations were considered to correspond to reality (See Cassirer's analysis of the development of thought, i.e., through language, myth, religion and art.), in much the same way as maps, another form of representation, "were vested with power, based on the accuracy with which they corresponded to that which they represented" (Turnbull, 1996,p. 70). Hall ( 1997) maintains, "representation involves making meaning by forging links between three different orders of things: what we might broadly call the world of things, people, events and experiences; the conceptual world---the mental concepts we carry around in our heads; and the signs, arranged in language, which "stand for" or communicate these concepts". (Hall, 1997). The study of visual representation, or if you will images, has recently shifted toward focussing on the nature of "seeing" and "knowing" (Chaplin,1994). Jenks argues that "seeing" is culturally constructed, that "seeing and knowing have become perilously intertwined" and that images can be viewed as "a compounding of strategies for knowing, desiring and for the exercise of power". Lovlie contents that there are three aspects of the image that should be taken into consideration. Firstly, the image has "a formidable formative power". Secondly, it seems to "intensify the impact of the past in characteristic ways" and, thirdly, "the background dimension, the mimetic context, is as obvious in the case of the image as it is in the case of the text". Lovlie's concern is how to understand the image, or as he puts it, "Today's cultural practices are so deeply intertwined with the visual media that the image is inevitable in any reconstructed idea of Bildung" (Lovlie, 2003, p. 153). As early as 1922, Lippman argued, "We do not first see, then define, we define first and then see...We are told about the world before we experience it. We imagine most things before we experience them. And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception". In this paper the following questions will be addressed: Is Lippman's argument still valid? To what extent have the cultural practices to which Lovlie refers to above influenced perception? Preconceptions? Can the study of visual representations be used to perceive perceptions? Can images help us unravel "seeing" and "knowing" and lay bare the compounded strategies incumbent in visualisation? Finally, is Lippman correct, that it is the task of education to "make us acutely aware" ? If so, of what? And where do we start? Is it educationalists' task to understand, in order to promote understanding in others, how the links are forged between the world of things, people, events and experiences, the conceptual world and the signs? Is this task consistent with a reconstructed idea of Bildung?
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