Visual & Aural Literacy

In 1982, the international agency UNESCO declared, “We must prepare young people for living in a world of images, words and sounds.”

More than twenty years later, lots of resources are available for teaching about the power and impact of our image culture (that's media literacy -- see the rest of this website) and about how one can learn to better use visual images in comunication (that's visual literacy -- see links below).

But what about sounds? Very little can be found in traditional media education on the study of how sounds affect communication (aural literacy). What we hear -- especially music --plays a huge role in human interpretation of media messages. We are pleased to share some exciting books in this area of communication.

Visual Literacy

"People everyone need to learn how to express their ideas using pictures and graphics instead of text. That's because words undergo a strange transformation when they travel from the page or computer to the large screen -- they become incredibly boring." Tad Simons, former editor in chief of the (sadly) now out-of-print Presentations magazine.

Online Resources

Center for Media Literacy has a large selection of outstanding teaching resources on visual literacy.

Stanford University visiting scholar Robert E. Horn's website has many fantastic resources for learning to be a better visual communicator. Examples of Argumentation Maps, Info-Murals as public art, Visual Analytics for Public Policy, Social Mess Maps, and more. Highly recommended.

Maps and cartograms of the 2004 US presidential election results were created by University of Michigan students to show how normal geographical maps can skew people's perception of how many people voted for what (or whom). The cartograms, which skew the shapes of states to allow for population differences, show how non-standard visual representations can more accurately tell a story. Check out the FAQ, whose last answer provides links to other data maps, including this one which lists many links.

Media Literacy Clearinghouse Lots of good links here on visual literacy.

Presentations is no longer a print magazine, alas. Its online substitute is very business-oriented, but it does have some articles on how to communicate better by using effective visuals.

Visual Literacy and Picture Books has not been updated since 2001 but still has many excellent, active links. Not just resources about "picture books" -- has many general visual literacy resource links.

Visual-Literacy.org is a Swiss organization hosting an e-learning site for a university-level tutorial in visual literacy. The tutorial is accessible only to registered students, but this spectacular Periodic Table of Visualization Methods will thrill anyone who's interested in information presentation. It looks like the Periodic Table of Elements but instead each box represents a visual style of representing information -- from simple pie chart to amazing diagrams done in specific styles. Hover your mouse over any given box on the chart and a window will appear showing you a sample of what that visualization method looks like in real use.

Worth1000.com An ad-supported website running dozens of contests simultaneously to find the "best" in altered images, in many different themed categories (such as Visual Puns, and Stupid Protests) that change constantly. Viewers may post comments about any photo. Teachers: visit first before sending your students here, a fewimages and captions are for more mature audiences, but most are very mainstream and usually hysterically funny. Excellent visual literacy lessons here, not only in the power to alter what we think is "real" just by using Adobe Photoshop, but also great lessons in how to transmit an idea or concept through images rather than words (hence the site name, from the American idiom, "A picture is worth a thousand words.").

Aural Literacy

“Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast.” Sure, but corporate marketers also use music to seduce you to buy stuff, so a media literate person needs to know how it’s being used for those purposes. Sound effects and music make media products -- TV, film, videos, computer and video games, etc. -- larger than life, so aural literacy is vital to being an informed consumer of media in the 21st century.

Online Resources

The influence of in-store music on wine selections. Short synopsis of an academic study by Adrian North and D.J Hargreaves, published in Journal of Applied Psychology in 1999. Looks rather dry (like the wine, perhaps) but interesting nonetheless.

The effect of music on atmosphere and purchase intentions in a cafeteria. Another study by North and Hargreaves, showing “that classical music was associated with subjects being prepared to pay the most for food items on sale.”

Adrian North, whose particular research interests include music and consumer behaviour and music in adolescence, is a member of the Music Psychology Research Group at the University of Leicester, UK. His home page has a complete list of all published articles based on his research.

The Director in the Classroom has links to sites with free sound effects and free music, for use in producing media or other classwork. This outstanding site also lists good DVDs for understanding how films are made, including a citation for the Monsters, Inc. DVD which "features a Sound Effects Only Track which could be a great tool for exploring the use of sound effects."

Books

Ear and Brain: How We Make Sense of Sounds by Diana Deutsch. From the publisher's description: "Extended discussions of the historical relationships between music, science, and technology, and draws enlightening and thought-provoking parallels between how we hear and the ways in which we process visual information. Also included is a CD of sounds and samples that will help the reader understand the complex relationship between ear and brain."

Music and Emotion: Theory and Research by Patrik N. Juslin, John Sloboda, John A. Sloboda. Film students take note: "The second section addresses the role of our emotions in the composition of music, the ways that emotions can be communicated via musical structures, and the use of music to express emotions within the cinema."

Music, The Brain, And Ecstasy : How Music Captures Our Imagination by R Jourdain, Robert Jourdain. "What makes a distant oboe's wail beautiful? Why do some kinds of music lift us to ecstasy, but not others? Lyrically interweaving discoveries from science, psychology, music theory, paleontology, and philosophy, Robert Jourdian brilliantly examines why music speaks to us in ways that words cannot, and why we form such powerful connections to it. "

The Social Psychology of Music: Edited by David J. Hargreaves and Adrian North. Chapter titles include Gender and music, The role of music in society, and Music and consumer behavior.