Visual Imagination is a class about metaphor and language. In it we discover looking and seeing to be acquired skills; we reveal that the relationships, ideas and perceptions which we take for granted can become consciously expressed in visual terms.
Visual Imagination encourages students to communicate precisely, convincingly and with force; to think critically; to be open-minded; to consider themselves in someone else’s shoes. Along the journey we follow side roads of discussion about insight, discipline, and self-awareness. We do many projects reminiscent of kindergarten: cutting, pasting, playing with visual building blocks. Our experience should help develop a selective, aesthetic sense, and an appreciation for the value of artistic expression.
As a designer for the theatre I am primarily concerned with translation: from text to image. I believe that this is an activity in which we all participate, but without really thinking about it, and without a specific or meaningful vocabulary. Consider how much information in our world is presented visually, i.e. on a screen. The screens we use everyday translate a three-dimensional world into a two-dimensional one (however good the graphics you are still looking at a flat surface). In fact, I feel that our processing of information has become so utterly visual that we have in fact forgotten how to read, either for enjoyment or with critical analysis. In the recitation section of this class we will address all of these issues at once by playing with the translation of text (novels) into some sort of visual form.
Required texts for the class are: Understanding Art, by Lois Fichner-Rathus; The Dramatic Imagination, by Robert Edmond Jones; The Art Spirit, by Robert Henri.
We will also read half a dozen “young adult” novels in our Friday recitation.
Catherine F. Norgren (Professor of Theatre & Associate Chair) graduated from Mount Holyoke College and Carnegie Mellon University. She has designed costumes at a number of professional theatres. She teaches a version of “Visual Imagination” to playwrights every summer at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. “Visual Imagination” is her favorite class.