Methodology of Visual Education

Language of instruction: Hungarian
Course requirements:
Colloquium at the end of the 8th semester, final exam after the absolutorium (pre-degree certificate stating that all course-units have been completed)
Method of assessing course work:
Checking notes taken during lecture, checking for completion and quality of assignments, partly written, partly oral exam
Marking method:
Mark is composed of the marks given for the written and oral portions of the exam.
Exam requirements: colloquium, which is composed of a written and an oral part
Teaching method: lecture, demonstrative practical exercises, independent elaboration of special topics ? as problem solving exercises, personal consultation.
Recommended study methods:
Participation in class lectures and practice, end-of-semester symposium, studying required and recommended reading, working out of independent topics: finding sources, preparation of topic outline.
Role of the course within the specialist training scheme:
In secondary school education with general curricula, studies dealing with the fast changes in communication have more emphasis. These usually appear in the framework of narrower disciplines. Sine the massive number of information procedures signify a change with wide-ranging effects, the situation must be approached with a all-embracing, comprehensive perspective. This means a range of knowledge
1) which refers to the entirety of the environment
2) in which the varied forms of communication and the mechanism of communication have a prominent role
3) which approaches social relations primarily from an overall cultural perspective
4) which can discuss the communicational aspects of philosophy and art theory in accord with scientific and technical innovations
5) which considers the unique aspects of seeing (as means of grasping) and verbal means as separate but nevertheless to be examined in the context of their relationship to each other
6) which perceives art in the context of this broad circle as a vital cultural feature
The objective of the course is to make possible such grouping of the already acquired knowledge within the framework of teacher training.

Course description, major areas of study (per semester):
General questions about the nature of visual education
(introduction in accordance with the above points)
Basic semiotic concepts
(categorisation according to disciplines, grouping of signs according to basic types, outlining basic communicational models)
Unique features of verbal and visual communication
(experiments on switching visual and verbal channels of communication, demonstration of special characteristics, outlining different communication models)
The relationship of verbal and visual communication in practice-oriented representations
(flowchart (ex.: assembly outlines) traffic signals, information systems of institutions, signposts, icons on the computer monitor, posters, tv commercials.
The questions of verbal and visual communication in fine art
Visual symbols and allegories
(interpretative experiments: Magritte?s " This is not a pipe,"
Joseph Kosuth: Chair
Conceptualism, as communicational enquiry)
Mass communication and parallel value systems
(the joined presence of high quality value system as hierarchic system and quantitative value system as a laid-out system)
The apparatus-functionary nature of mass communication systems
(Vilém Flusser?s thoughts on the relationship between tools and human beings)
Unique features of the visual capturing ? magical, written, technical
(Vilém Flusser?s thoughts on the various ways of capturing the world depending on the uniqueness of communication)

The effects of tools of mass communication on life style
(regularly returning programs as temporal structuring and ritualising factors ? means of handling information, appropriate filtering and searching as ability and technical condition.
The culture-conserving and innovational role of mass media
documenting, keeping in memory, the vertical (from generation to generation) and horizontal (simultaneous) methods of passing on information
memetics, scientific field dealing with memory
prosthesis as evolutionary possibility
Art inside and outside the world of technical media
(the role of non-mass media, the representation of these in other genre of mass technical media, the role of mass media in other contexts)

Assignment list
Planning exercises
Topic list
Syllabus