Visual Thinking

The workshop that Eleonore and Jennette organised last Friday on the Artlab approach gave us a good look at the actual workings of the exercise.  It facilitates more abstract thinking and, paradoxically, more direct communication.  Using modelling material to express our responses seemed to generate material that was more complex and revealing than the verbal information exchanges.  All good! from the researcher’s viewpoint. But as we discussed in our post-exercise review, this could need some sensitive management in groups where participants might feel uncomfortable about exposure. As well, though there’s a lot of good potential for layered, authentic information, as Knight observes in his review of face-to-face methods analysing it systematically could present challenges.

On another front; reading through the SSHRC proposal samples I’m struck by the issue of language use; it seems to be very difficult to avoid using specialised vocabulary.  Coming to a working understanding of many of the basic terms of contemporary information studies is one of my own challenges at the moment.  I am appreciating just how much of a gatekeeping function specialised vocabularies have, especially in the process that Innis’ Minerva’s Owl thesis critiqued -- the building of knowledge monopolies.  (At the same time as his writing itself demonstrated the sin, being almost unreadable in both content and form!)   The other side of this issue is expressing one’s ideas accurately and appropriately, which might demand technical terms – which, as the information age has and continues to evolve so rapidly, are already common usage within vanguard users in the community.  The Seiter article/interview – which was indeed troubling – also demonstrated some of the barriers that class-and-knowledge based language differences can present in just relating, never mind information-gathering.  It’s a problem with many dimensions and implications, I find.

Larissa