Seminar in Media and Visual Culture
媒介與視覺文化

How do we develop a media theory that’s adequate to account for all the forms of media and cross-mediation that we experience today? This seminar will provide an overview of contemporary theories of media, communication, semiotics, and visual culture to allow for an integrative viewpoint. Our themes will include the cultural encoding of the material forms media, mediation and cultural transmission, the rhetoric of communication and information technologies, and the institutional and social contexts of media and the visual arts. Readings will include seminal works in semiotics and discourse analysis, rhetoric, cultural theory, the sociology of media and technology, post-postmodern cultural theory, and contemporary theory in the visual arts. We will look closely at the work of Regis Debray and the model of mediology, which has attempted to describe a metatheory of communication and media. We will expand the application of mediology to contemporary media and visual culture. Students will be expected to create the seminar in real time through readings, discussion, proposal of cases and examples for study. Specific weekly topics for discussion and examples for applied theory will depend on seminar participants. Grading and weekly seminar assignments will be based on student presentations, short applied theory essays, and a final project involving the application of a theoretical mode to a contemporary case.

隨著科技的演進，承載視覺符號的媒介形式，由早先的洞穴圖像、繪畫、攝影，到影音動態的電影、電視、動畫，再到近期數位技術驅動的電腦多媒體、虛擬互動網路等等，其次躍進式的突變，再再地衝擊了人類的認知體驗，也顛覆了訊息傳達製碼與解碼的格律。針對這個轉變，歷時性的檢視近代社會學、經濟學、藝術美學、人類學、與文化研究領域等有關視覺構成與媒介形式的經典論著來思辯各種視覺媒介構成的美學特質、其訊息傳達的法則，以及它們在訊息傳達過程中，涉及的真實、虛擬真實、超真實，還有集體價值意識的模塑、文化體驗建構等方面的議題，目的在於，讓學生在從事視覺經驗批評論辯，或創意實作時，能具備多面向的、哲思性的省思，並產生顛覆性的透視。