Chiselled Horizons: A Multi-Cultural Approach to Visual Literacy

Book excerpt: This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2016. Shaping visual literacy has been at the forefront of contemporary discourse, as images have increasingly surpassed words in becoming the primary vehicles to persuade our emotions. Visually encoded domains of symbols and signs inform the educational, public and entertainment industries increasingly as an undifferentiated whole, aided by globalizing media forces in various forms. Whether top-down, peer-peer, one-to-may, or many-to-many, this volume attempts to derive sets of rules used to visually decode patterns present in certain media formats – press, cinema, television and maps, among others – and the place of the spectator in their respective dynamics. The topics discussed transition through various approaches to deconstruct mass media influences to engage critical thinking skills, and ending with a collection of chapters dedicated to exploring their effects upon children, and the capacity to be implemented to foster collaboration-based creative learning environments.