The brief

The study of diverse and interrelated visual environments, or visual culture, is an integral part of the modern academic landscape. It represents one of the most  creative forms of theoretical understanding of the dynamic transformations that have taken place in culture and society over the past decades.

Such transformations include the changes in forms of information production, distribution, and consumption, all of which are connected with the proliferation of visual images.  How visual images are perceived is shown to have an increasing influence on modern society. Today’s production, character and distribution of knowledge, the forming of individual consciousness, and social communication are all determined by diverse visual environments. To live in an urban setting and, therefore, be subject to modern culture, means constant exposure to them

The author: KwangHo Shin

These diverse visual environments, or mediums, are characterized by specific semantic and communicative means. Visual images represent a specific productive environment that helps generate and distribute intersubjective content  but by using methods different from those typical for  language.  The connection between visuality and spatiality is one of the main motives of the visual, or iconic, turn which has taken place in the social and human sciences over the last few decades. In light of  this connection,  current  research on visual culture is concerned not just with visual contents and objects, but  also with diverse visual environments and their features, which influence the process of production, distribution, and reception of visual information. One of the key features of  modern  life is the inevitability of existence in diverse  environments – this requires a new language for description and new theoretical approaches, which overturn our former  notions of the uniformity of space and, accordingly, the uniformity of the process of perception. 

Thus, the research of visual environments in a contemporary urban setting  cannot limit itself simply to art and socalled ‘high culture’. Research of the visual culture phenomenon  needs to include a wide range of topics and themes, which  were not previously considered  to belong to culture theory, such as television, Internet, cinema, advertising, design, computers, software, transport, urban environment, the politics of representation, daily routine, the production and transmission of scientific knowledge, etc.A key feature of modern visual culture is the exponential growth in quantity and quality  of  the various visual technologies, which not only generate new aspects of visual culture, but also require significant update of  skills in the traditional culture spheres. For example, the museum industry   has had to take on the new digital technologies of processing and representation of visual contents. Digital visual technologies offer new  ways of representing and distributing visual contents not only in a museum setting, but also virtually, which  may lead to  major changes in the traditional ways that they are perceived . Today’s changing sphere of visual culture faces not only perceptional and anthropological problems, but also technological, economic, and legal ones.

The goal of this comprehensive study of the visual environments of modern culture can be divided into three categories: the contemporary theory of urban space, the theory of visuality and visual images, and contemporary interdisciplinary aesthetic theory.

Goals, tasks, and the research study's initial data:

The main theory of the research project proposes that each type of visual content creates its particular environment with its own inner logic, specific functions, and cognitive, communicative, suggestive possibilities.

The goal of the research is to clarify the connection between visuality and spatiality in the diverse visual environments of   modern culture in order to determine their specific social function, and the methods of interaction between them.

The research deals with the following visual environments: television, cinema, urban environment, visual images (from paintings to logos), and virtual space. The clarification of the connection between visuality and spatiality will help to correlate three elements: (1) type of the visual content, (2) ontology (material characteristics) and grammar (the type of connection among material or visual elements) of the spatiality typical for this type of content, and (3) its communicative, cognitive, emotional and suggestive effects.

The research is focused on implementing the following tasks:

1. Reconstruction (as envisaged in the project ) of modern performative concepts of space and urban environments (D. Harvey, E. Soja, B. Verlen);
2. Reconstruction and adaptation of modern concepts of visuality and visual experience, examined in works by the theorists of the ‘visual and iconic turn’. (T. Mitchell, K. Moxey, N. Mirzoev, B. Stafford, J. Elkins, G. Böhme, H. Bredekamp);
3. Reconstruction, criticism, and adaptation of contemporary aesthetic theory, which represents conceptual tools for implementing a differentiated approach to the problem of perception, which has helped to set a correlation between the types of visual environment and experience, including its cognitive, emotional and suggestive implications;
4. Implementation of specific studies aimed at verifying the basic theory of the project in relation to a series of particular visual environments (urban space, as well as commercial and political visual images), and based on the completed theoretical work (Points 1-3).  

Research object:

The object of the research is the spatial structure of basic visual environments in a  modern cultural setting, such as urban space, virtual space, visual images, goods and logos, and how they are connected to one another. In addition to these are the theoretical models and conceptual apparatus, reconstructed on the basis of modern theories of urban space, visuality and visual experience, and contemporary interdisciplinary aesthetic theory.

Expected results of the research:

• Reconstruction, critical analysis and adaptation of the relevant components of contemporary theories of spatiality, visuality and aesthetic experience are among the goals and tasks of the project.
• Detailed elaboration of the basic theory concerning the structural connection of visual contents in a corresponding visual environment, which has specific material characteristics, a specialized  grammar  combining material /visual  elements, and corresponding epistemological, communicative, emotional and suggestive possibilities . To analyse particular visual environments on the basis of the proposed theory using theoretical tools (research of visual specifics of urban spaces and commercial visual environments, especially logos).