Re: Practice Describing Pictures, anyone game?

Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
> 
> If you go to an Art Gallery exhibition you can look at pictures. At many
> galleries you can also get an audio "guided tour" (usually just a cassette
> tape, but sometimes a real and knowledgeable person). And many exhibitions
> also have a catalogue, which has pictures of the pictures, and an awful lot
> of words about the pictures.

Such audio tapes can provide an interesting perspective, but I am glad I
don't have to depend on someone else's "opinion" as my only source of
information. I don't know of a better alternative, but when I see the
high prices for "art" with cow dung spattered on the canvas - I rather
not have an audio description of the piece even if provided by the
"artist".

How often do you agree with the descriptions written by art aficionados
who claim to know what the artist was feeling or attempting to create?

Much of the modern and impressionist painting is not worth the cost of
the canvas and the paint it took to create the graphic images.

Realistic graphical images that convey exact "visual pictures" can be
described without dissenting opinions. For example, "how to change a
spark plug". 3-D engineering renderings would be another example of
"exact visual images" that would be superior to only a body of text.

Descriptions that require interpretations should only be written by the
person who creates the images. All other descriptions are OPINIONS and
may or may not convey the true meaning of the visual images.

That is my opinion and with three dollars you can buy a cup of coffee at
Starbucks.

Claude Sweet
Educational Technologist

Received on Thursday, 11 November 1999 22:24:35 UTC