Se på språk - Ett perceptionsteoretiskt perspektiv på bildkommunikation och grundskoleämnet Bild

Abstract

This paper can be regarded as a dip into the epistemology of pictures and images: how knowledge can be extracted and conveyed through images. In Sweden the elementary school subject which is associated with the Arts is called Bild, whose meaning encompass both ‘pictures’ and ‘images’ and points to a wider field of knowledge than the artistic. This is also apparent at a first glance at the curriculum concerning the subject where the term Bildspråk (picture/image language) is recurring yet not explicitly explained. Still, it is clear that this ‘language’ is not structured in the same sense as other languages and must be understood on it’s own terms.

Images are perceived, or imagined, which in both cases points to the cognitive processes of visual perception. The first step, however, is to determine how perceptual data gained through the senses can be understood to interact with the wider sphere of knowledge and thinking. The epistemological perspective applied here falls under the term reciprocity, which in this context refers to how knowledge is acquired through the continuous interaction between organism and environment through the senses. The perspective applied extends to how the senses are an integral part of mind and thinking. This reasoning develops through a presentation of a cognitive theory of how ‘meaning’ is attained through visual perception and steers it’s way towards representation of this ‘meaning’ in images. An analysis of the theories presented culminates towards an answer to the question: how can Bildspråk (picture/image language) be understood?

The paper concludes with application of the presented theory, and the accompanying terminology, on the curriculum of the school subject Bild. Purpose, goals and grade criteria of the subject which is deemed particurarly ambiguous are presented and analysed where the ambition is to understand the subject ‘from the ground up’.

Through the perspective developed it follows that the overall purpose of the subject Bild is to educate the student’s competence regarding image language. On the one hand this widens the subjects stuff (subject-matter) to something like everything which can be learned from images through visual perception, which follows from the wider definition of images. On the other hand the perspective supplies a base terminology from which any image can be understood through a set of informative and potentially meaningful aspects, be they in a painting, in a movie, in a computer game or in an image of the mind. This terminology, and the theory which it rests upon, can be said to stabilize the subjects all-inclusive stuff and give it a common ground. This, at least, is the ambition of this paper.