VRA 2021 virtualChicago

Michalle Gould, "Teaching Visual Literacy in the Context of Social Media" The Association of College and Research Libraries' Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education defines visual literacy as a set of abilities that enables an individual to effectively find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media." Individuals in fields that rely heavily on visual resources are more accustomed to analyzing and interpreting visual imagery; however, precisely because they are trained to value visual information, they may be more vulnerable to the mis-use of images on social media to provoke an emotional response.  In classes on Visual Rhetoric and Aesthetic, I have presented lessons on visual literacy as it applies to social media, discussing some of the ways that images can be misleading and presenting techniques for applying critical thinking to images presented as support for arguments related to social/political issues.  In this paper, I will discuss the importance of more widespread implementation of visual literacy instruction at the college level, and propose suggestions for how to integrate a greater focus on visual literacy into existing frameworks for information literacy instruction.

Dijia Chen, "the Unintended "Afterlife": The Presentation, Reproduction and Circulation of Exhibitionary Representations in Architectural Production" This paper traces the production, the presentation and the “afterlife” of an exhibited image in the 2001 exhibition “TUMU: Young Architecture of China.” While the photo was not included in the exhibition catalogue and occupied an inconspicuous spot on site, its wide circulation, repetitive reproduction and multiple interpretations in news reports, online discussions, and professional critiques have won quick reputation for the architect, resulting in domestic and international awards, exhibitions and new projects. The stunning representation of the façade reached out far beyond its maker’s intention and in turn shape the professional career of the architect in unexpected ways, even though the building itself was more immature than satisfactory as an early project, featuring a mundane floor plan and many practical problems in use. This research problematizes the process in which the complex body of architecture is negotiated in the displaced photographic representations by analyzing the texts and narratives from different cultural, language, geographic and temporal backgrounds that facilitated the unintended popularization of the image. While acknowledging the flattening of programmatic complexity, I see the image as an autonomous assemblage of meaning independent to architecture. Tracing the image’s impact on the career development of the architect, I argue that the project was not only recognized as an image, but also, consciously or unconsciously, designed as an exhibitionist building. The paper, therefore, further informs of the state of design specific to the early experimentations of contemporary Chinese architects, characterized by image-based media practices and transcultural communications.

Charlotte India Eagle, "Digital Legacy Building": Since the establishment of the first presidential library under Franklin D. Roosevelt, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has put forth 13 subsequent presidential libraries each more idolatrous than the previous. This paper begins by analyzing the creation of the Presidential Library System and how it (and NARA) became a method of legacy building for past presidents. In looking at the historical policies, the paper goes on to suggest how implications of the current shift to a digital library chosen by President Barack Hussein Obama, is starting to breakdown previously established issues of access, digitization, and legacy building.