COMM 4140U – Ways of Seeing: Visual Communication Arts and New Media

From photographic images to crypto art, streaming movies to art galleries, meme banks to the metaverse, ways of seeing and experiencing our culture and society are mediated by all kinds of technologies. This course is a primer on visual communication and cultural studies. It probes continuity and changes in ways of seeing the world via photography, cinema and TV, simulation games, interactive websites, virtual reality (VR) headsets and augmented reality (AR) apps. In this course, students learn about relevant theories, topics and research in the field of visual communication and cultural studies, hone their visual literacies, and communicate about the transformation of visual media-cultures in the digital age.