The Making of a Pedagogical Tool for Picture Analysis and Picture Construction

Abstract

This chapter presents a project that was initiated in 1996 as an attempt to investigate the possible use of the computer as a pedagogical tool for a production-oriented approach to academic picture analysis. The 1996 version of the project was a purely theoretical plan that was implemented to so me extent during the following years. It was based on the rather frustrating realisation that university students may be good at making semiotic analysis of pictures, but they do not have the sense of pictures as production processes, whereas students of photo-journalism have this sense but are not concerned about the meaning of the pictures or about how the viewer constructs meaning of newspaper photos. It should be stressed that this text is only concerned about communicative pictures: the production of visual meaning, the transmission of visual meaning and the reception of visual meaning. These communicative pictures may or may not be art.

Sørenren Kolstrup has a background as a media researcher. He has especially studied visual communication using 2D pictures.