Luigi Cocchiarella - The Visual Language of Technique: Volume 3 - Heritage and Expectations in Education

Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

Luigi Cocchiarella 1

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The Nobel Laureate Herbert Alexander Simon, University Professor at the Carnegie Mellon University, declared: Learning results from what the student does and thinks and only from what the student does and thinks. The teacher can advance learning only by influencing what the students does to learn.

What can we infer from this sentence?

Perhaps it suggests that we should intend education in terms of interaction between teaching and learning, pointing out the relationships between the representational performances of the professors and the cognitive abilities of the students. That is particularly important in the field of Visual Education, either because of the hard training involved in developing and mastering spatial abilities, or because of the ambiguity often inherent to the Images. Since the 1940s, Benjamin Samuel Bloom has noticed that Graphic Education not only involves the pure cognitive but also the affective and the psychomotor domains, as clearly summarized in his well-known Blooms Taxonomy .

Therefore, educating requires disciplinary competences as well as appropriate pedagogic and psychological approaches, in other words, in order to be successful, a teacher has to consider not only what , but also how to teach, because both the aspects combine to make students self - directed learners. This becomes even more relevant in the case of individualized instruction and of students with different abilities. This means that, beside new programmes for students, appropriate Lifelong Learning Programs for teachers should also be provided in the future.

Another challenging task would be the balancing of tradition and innovation, namely analogue heritage and digital advancements. In fact, digital graphics have been considered a stray phenomenon for a long time. Consequently, we are still discussing on how to redesign our academic programs and our teaching strategies, as neither technology can replace the teachers, although it increases their effectiveness, nor can we think of a full replacement of learning with e - learning .

Maybe a new semantic approach to the matter should be promoted, taking advantage of the new syncretism enabled by the new media. In fact, while for centuries modern science and techniques have required specialization and, consequently, Visual Language from the times of Leonardo Da Vinci has been subdivided into specialized branches, on the other hand, nowadays, digital technologies provide interesting visual syntheses among specialized languages, so boosting the interdisciplinary communication.

In other words it is time for Architecture, Design and Engineering teachers to work side by side in redefining our Graphic Literacy and our Graphic Education curricula, aiming to investigate prospective unifications in the field of Visual Language in relation to the polytechnic disciplines.

During the previous seminars (see Volumes 1 and 2 in this series) we were often playing with etymology. At the end of the Cycle it could be interesting to point out that both the English verb to teach and the Italian verb insegnare share a common original meaning: either the latter, deriving from the Latin word insignare is related to the root signum and to the meaning to sign , or the former, deriving from thte , which means to show , to point out , goes back to the Old English term tacn , whose meaning is, once again, sign , mark , as if to recall a kind of visual essence affecting the whole teaching activity. Last but not least, the English and the Italian terms education and educazione , deriving from the Latin word educare , which means to drive , to lead out , seem to indicate our social, cultural and human responsibility. In conclusion, before, and together with, educating by the Image, we should be educated and educate about the Image.

Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

Luigi Cocchiarella 1

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Abstract

Among the fathers of Italian television, the Italian science journalist and writer, Piero Angela is also considered to be a public educator in the fields of science and technique, especially due to the popularity of Quark and Superquark, his most famous television programmes. In both of them the role of the image , intended as a system of figures , movies and animations , is always crucial and dominant, not only to explain physical phenomena, but also to draw ideas and abstract issues. The interview has been video recorded on June 24th, 2013 in his home, in Rome. According to the purposes of the seminar, the focus was on the role of visual language in education. The following pages include a transcript of this conversation.

Interviewed by Luigi Cocchiarella.

Video recording by Politecnico di Milano. Translated in English at the Politecnico di Milano.

Video interview available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL37G58n94U

LC : Good morning. For the third seminar of the cycle The visual language of technique between science and art, organized at the Politecnico di Milano for the 150th anniversary, today we are in Rome to meet Piero Angela, whom we thank for his time and his kind hospitality, to ask him some questions on the use of the Image and of the Visual Language in Education, with refer to the Technical Field. I would start with an introductory question: how important are the Image and the Visual Language in processing and transmitting knowledge?

PA : Of course, since I cannot intrude upon your work being part of a different field, I speak through the experience of my work, even though I do think the image is essential for everyone. To begin with, I would say that the image, as far as science is concerned, is decisive, as for example it is for the DNA. How can we verbally explain DNA, without the use of hands as an illustration? This issue applies to many other things: as Napoleon said, a picture is worth a hundred speeches, and that is certainly true. However, I think there are two important things to mention concerning drawings or graphics. First and foremost, they allow great rapidity in understanding: as I mentioned, it is possible to rapidly explain the DNA structure only by using a picture, while it would be certainly hard to understand it verbally. The second most important issue is that this allows us to have a shared model, meaning that while all our mental models are always different, with the use of images, we share an object on which we can discuss, work, or modify. In addition to this, I should mention the fact that our mind works in a rather special way, and that the visual area, located in the rear of the brain, is more extended compared to the area devoted to hearing. As the aphorism says: if I hear I forget, but if I see I remember. Concerning this, the question is: what do I remember? The crucial issue in this is that we do not actually see the reality. We are often under the impression of being overwhelmed by things: we see people, objects, tables, chandeliers... However, this is actually not true; for instance, let us think about a camera, as the ones you are using now. A camera has a lens that captures the image, but what the camera sees does not reach the directory; in fact, cameras transform light signals into electrical impulses that pass through a cable inside of which there is no image, but just impulses which are then transformed in images. We work in the same way; if, for instance, we think of the human retina, we can say that humans have a biological camera too. We transform electromagnetic impulses into chemical electrical signals; that is to say that from the retina, which has a complicated system of little rods and cones, the impulses are sent to the optic nerve as signals, which are finally transformed in vertical, oblique or horizontal lines, with diversity of brightness at the edges. According to this, the different parts reaching the brain, are subsequently reconstructed in order to enable us to see. Therefore, we see what we reconstruct. Obviously, this system works so well so that, for us, that is the reality. However, when we have to reproduce something we have seen using our memory, there is where problems arise. Let me give you an example: imagine a situation in which, last month, you had a picnic in the mountains with some friends. So, if you try to mentally recreate this memorized scenario, you can picture it in your mind: you may see a small fire with some stones all around it, friends, one of them has a beard, another one plays the guitar, one with a squared shirt, you see trees here and there, and a valley in the horizon. Then imagine that you can project your mental image, the recollection of your experience, on a screen, and on a screen next to it, there is the projection of the real image taken by a photographic camera. You will see that they are completely different. As a whole, there is a valley, some trees and someone with a shirt, yet specifically, everything is different because you have reconstructed the scenario basing on parameters that your memory has scattered in your neural network. On the other hand, when we have shared visual models, all the memories, in this case graphics, drawings or illustrations, may be something more objective rather than personal. However, there is another important issue concerning the use of the image in knowledge, which is what we frequently do with graphics, as well as what teachers do. When a teacher needs to explain a system on the blackboard, he uses arrows, squares, circles, and connecting lines. In the television programmes, we do the same using graphics as well as cartoons. I, together with Bruno Bozzettothe well-known cartoonistdid many cartoons of 810 min, on things that cannot be seen. Let me give you an example: if we talk about Quantum Mechanics, no camera can ever shoot Quantum Mechanics, nor can it shoot Relativity, Genetic Engineering, or Entropy. They are all things that with the help of graphic images, in this case animated with some puppets, become not only visible but also add emotiveness due to fun, which, affecting the emotional system, allows us to memorize much better. This is another very important thing in the whole visual communication: the image must not only be clear, that is a priority anyway, but it should possibly be creative in order to involve the rational part of the brain as well as the deeply emotional one; namely that of the limbic system, which allows us to memorize, and to better maintain the image in the brain. Of course, this is true in any field, it is very worthy for Science or for the Technique in your work, but everyone handles it in a different way. However, it is also true when it comes to the Humanistic culture, for example how can we prepare an art book without illustrations?