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Welcome to the online syllabus for When Images Remain, the course formally known as Visual Communication Design (ID4230). This website will show more when the course starts in November 2024. For more info about our art work “When Images Remain - A Visual Polemic in 8 Acts” go here.

Course description

The course, titled ‘When Images Remain,’ acknowledges the contemporary visual-centric world. It recognizes the significance of images as carriers of extensive, often invisible, information and explores the evolving role of visuals in human-machine knowledge transfer. The course unfolds the histories of image-making on a local and global scale, considering images as windows to the past and future, reflecting societal changes, artificial intelligence, and evolving values.

This course delves into visual design through three distinct perspectives. First, it engages in theoretical analysis of existing image collections (see our archive), incorporating insights from art history, design, perception, and computer science. The critical examination considers both the creator’s (sender) and the audience’s (receiver) viewpoints, introducing the Vision and Depiction framework, which merges formal elements with contextual factors. Second, the course integrates empirical investigations. Students learn to conduct visual experiments, analyze data, and visually represent findings. The third perspective explores how computers interpret images, emphasizing the contribution of computational analysis to visual research and paying attention to ways in which visual research findings are shared and communicated.

Literature & study materials

• A framework connecting vision and depiction

Learning objectives

• LO1: Apply formal analysis based on the Vision and Depiction framework to gain in-depth experience into the expressive possibilities of visual interaction parameters.

• LO2: Evaluate visual research using visual paradigms and computational approaches.

• LO3: Reflect on the differences between human and computational interpretations of images, as well as the importance of developing an understanding of ‘what makes an image’

• LO4: Visually communicate the research results in a manner based on the Vision and Depiction framework.