Data projector
Slide projector
Audio, VHS, DVD playback,
Room with blackout
Library
Slide library
Student word-processing facilities
Internet access.

Online resources
Supervised exercises oriented towards assignments within small group seminar workshops
Supervised assignment preparation within small group seminar workshops
Independent study to support work within seminary workshops
Sessions in studio where appropriate

This module will treat a wide variety of visual texts including: painting, photography, sculpture, installation, video and digital art. Students will be provided with various analytical tools including analysis at the level of signifier and signified, genre, metaphor, linear and nonlinear narrative.

The module is workshop-based as experience teaching visual semiotics over several years has shown that this is the most effective mode of offering for visual arts practitioners. Teaching follows a structured path beginning with the distinction between signifier and signified and the 'golden rule' of initiating verbal discussion of visual artefacts which is that if one begins with description one must move on to interpretation or vice versa--otherwise one has not decoded the sign. The next step is to examine genre by means of an exercise wherein students are instructed to collect five images by different practitioners that belong to a common genre. The object of the exercise is to reveal the existence of transpersonal generic rules thereby demonstrating that individual practitioners work within a discursive context that lies above and beyond the individual. The final step in the programme is to ask students to deliberately deconstruct genres by bending or breaking key rules and/or by intermixing genres.

The module will treat both still and moving images and will have direct relevance to students? practice by increasing awareness of importance of discursive frameworks and the inherent rhetorical characteristics of different media.

Assignment one: A written analysis of a visual text following methods taught in the seminar workshops. Length: equivalent to 500 words [Learning Outcomes 2,3,4]
Assignment two: Conceiving a deconstructive visual text following methods taught in the seminar workshops. The presentation of the visual text is accompanied by an analytical explanation. Length: equivalent to 500 words [Learning Outcomes 1,2,3,4]

Bal, Mieke. 2006. A Mieke Bal reader. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Berger, Arthur Asa. 1999. Signs in Contemporary Culture: An Introduction to Semiotics. 2nd ed. Salem, Wis.: Sheffield Pub. Co.
Crow, David. 2003. Visible signs: an introduction to semiotics. Crans-pres-Celigny, Switzerland; New York: AVA Pub. SA; Distributed by Sterling Pub. Co.
DeLong, Marilyn. 1998. The Way We Look: A Framework for Visual Analysis of Dress. 2nd ed. New York: Fairchild Publications
Howells, Richard. 2003 Visual Culture. Polity Press
Mitchell, W. J. T. 1980. The Language of Images. London: The University of Chicago Press.
Schirato, Tony, and Jen Webb. 2004. Reading the Visual. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.
Scott, Clive. 1999. The Spoken Image: Photography and Language. Reaktion Books.
Sebeok, Thomas A. 2001. Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics. 2nd ed, Toronto studies in semiotics and communication. Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press.
Van Leeuwen, Theo, and Carey Jewitt. 2001. Handbook of Visual Analysis. London; Thousand Oaks CA: SAGE.