Reflection on Visual Text session

The session on visual texts was very insightful and the fact that it was interactive meant that it was more fun and probably facilitated learning.

Whilst describing my collaboration of shapes to Jon I just kept thinking that it was an impossible task! Even though Jon was able to get all the shapes in the right place the sizes were completely wrong; it would take an immense amount of detail for the pictures to even come close to matching. It was especially difficult to convey the image when we were only allowed to respond to questions with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer.

When trying to reproduce Jon’s castle through his descriptions I found I had to ask a ridiculous amount of questions; features such as ‘spires’ and ‘grates’ could be depicted completely differently in two people’s imaginations. It was a really difficult task and I was conscious that my picture would look nothing like Jon’s. The end result was not too dissimilar so Jon’s descriptions were clearly very good!

At first glance I had no idea what the narrative may be to accompany the visual text containing the mouse. When describing the images to Jon I didn’t even realize initially that the mouse was chewing through the page of a book so the sequence of pictures just appeared completely random without any context.

Jon told me the story of the hungry mouse in a very imaginative way. Firstly naming the mouse ‘Rodney the Rodent’ immediately gave a sense of character and plot. Jon began by using the conventional opening ‘Once upon a time’, which set the scene. The intonation used helped in making the tale interesting and kept my attention.

The task emphasised the role of imagination in visual texts, the storyline is largely shaped by the reader. On the other hand illustrations in a text can sometimes have the reverse effect in that they can contradict the images that the reader has created in their heads, which is one of the best things about reading. The lesson helped in introducing us to visual texts as useful in their own right.