Visual Culture and Computational Thinking

Today’s visual culture is heavily dominated by digitalization and computation: Not only are the majority of images that we look at digitally created and/or presented, they are also circulated and modified digitally, and this influences how we handle and understand images. The course allows students to work on two overall and interrelated strands: How do we understand and analyse digital and computational images (from private Snapchats to CCTV in public space and satellite maps in the daily TV weather report)? And how do new technologies alter the way we understand and use images on a more general, cultural level? For instance: What are the cultural implications of fact that traditional maps are now split into Google street view imagery on the one hand and pure GPS-data on the other? Or, what do we consider to be a visually accurate portrait of person today – a selfie or a graph showing the person’s biometric data?