Martin Scorcese on Visual Literacy

To illustrate the similarities and differences between interpretations of Visual Literacy and how they relate to modes of communication (Kress, 2010) that are specific for a particular medium, you are invited to watch part of an interview with film director Martin Scorsese and a TEdx lecture by museum director Brian Kennedy.

In both clips you will recognize most of the themes that have been introduced in the various lessons. At the end of their talk they both make a plea for integrating Visual Literacy into any curriculum.

Martin Scorcese at Edutopia on thinking visually

In this interview conducted in 2012 for Edutopia (an American educational foundation), Scorsese describes his journey to becoming a visual thinker. Watch the first five minutes of this video where he explains how his working class background, and television and cinema as his main sources of education and inspiration, affected this process.

Brian Kennedy on the Importance of Visual Literacy

In the next clip, Brian Kennedy (at the time director of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College New Hampshire), gives a TEDx talk on Visual Literacy. He starts his talk with an anecdote on how he started his first collection at the age of thirteen, when his aunt sent him an art card for his birthday. Eventually, this collection would amount to 5.000 cards.

Brian Kennedy on the Importance of Visual Literacy

Exercise: Combining Knowledge Areas and Visual Literacies

Identify references in the two talks by Scorsese and Kennedy that directly relate to one of the five knowledge areas of Visual Literacy as defined by Avgerinou and Pettersson. These are:

1. Visual Communication;
2. Visual Language;
3. Visual learning;
4. Visual Perception;
5. Visual Thinking.