Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture

Rating:
Summary: Read This Book...and then...read more...
Review: The book Practices of Looking by Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright joins philosophy and the visual world by analyzing books and essays written by a variety of scholars. Sturken and Cartwright use their theories to analyze the basic concepts under the term "visual culture." In one chapter they look at how the spectator, the gaze, the subject and institution are the basic components in mass media. They present a distinction and relationship between address, the ideal viewer's reception, and the actual viewer's response. Sturken and Cartwright present spectatorship as a theory and provide clear and concise examples and evaluations of information that could take any person several years to get through. I have looked at a handful of these sources. Sturken and Cartwright do an adequate job combining and interpreting them, however if you are really interested in the concepts presented in the book, I would recommend reading the original sources; they are more in depth and engaging.

Rating:
Summary: Read This Book...and then...read more...
Review: The book Practices of Looking by Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright joins philosophy and the visual world by analyzing books and essays written by a variety of scholars. Sturken and Cartwright use their theories to analyze the basic concepts under the term "visual culture." In one chapter they look at how the spectator, the gaze, the subject and institution are the basic components in mass media. They present a distinction and relationship between address, the ideal viewer's reception, and the actual viewer's response. Sturken and Cartwright present spectatorship as a theory and provide clear and concise examples and evaluations of information that could take any person several years to get through. I have looked at a handful of these sources. Sturken and Cartwright do an adequate job combining and interpreting them, however if you are really interested in the concepts presented in the book, I would recommend reading the original sources; they are more in depth and engaging.

Rating:
Summary: Review of Chapter Nine: The Global Flow of Visual Culture
Review: The global flow of visual culture is an ever growing and changing topic of discussion. Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright have presented a lengthy and informed discussion surrounding the topic in Chapter Nine of their book. The sources they have chosen to include are indeed credible and trustworthy. I think that they had an abundance of sources in their bibliography, and I would have liked to see them include more direct quotes and references within the chapter. Overall, I feel they provided the reader with an interesting and knowledgeable look into the world of global communication and visual culture.

Rating:
Summary: Review of Chapter Nine: The Global Flow of Visual Culture
Review: The global flow of visual culture is an ever growing and changing topic of discussion. Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright have presented a lengthy and informed discussion surrounding the topic in Chapter Nine of their book. The sources they have chosen to include are indeed credible and trustworthy. I think that they had an abundance of sources in their bibliography, and I would have liked to see them include more direct quotes and references within the chapter. Overall, I feel they provided the reader with an interesting and knowledgeable look into the world of global communication and visual culture.

Rating:
Summary: Practices of Looking: Specificly Chapter One
Review: Visual Culture is a newly explored process of evaluating all things that are visual and how they work in culture. This process can be traced back to John Berger's groundbreaking book in 1972 called Ways of Seeing. Taking Berger's theories further, the book, Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture, written by Lisa Cartwright and Marita Sturken is a comprehensive introduction to visual culture and the means of which images are used and understood today. The well-organized text is a broad summary of critical approaches and methodologies for comprehending and investigating are photography, painting, film, and electronic media. Practices of looking covers a wide-range of topics that relate to the contemporary image-savvy culture and in order to detect the validness of the information presented by Cartwright and Sturken, it is necessary to research the sources they have provided and compare the information from the sources to the readings in Practices of Looking. After further investigation, I have concluded that the information that is present in Practice of Looking is a valid source for undergraduate comprehension of visual culture and the sources presented.

Rating:
Summary: Good introduction to visual culture, but with a few problems
Review: Visual culture is one of the most difficult subjects that I have taken in four years of college. Sturken and Cartwright attempt to combine the study of art, philosophy, and sociology into a single book. Still, I feel that Practices of Looking is overall well written and does a good job at simplifying the writings and ideas of some of the centuries most noteworthy theorists. Each chapter and subject is clearly laid out and described, while examples and images are effectively and abundantly used. Although I felt that the book is a good introduction for those who have no prior background with the subject, I found there to be several problems.

One problem was that Sturken and Cartwright occasionally either contradicts themselves, or poorly phrases their ideas. For example, on pages 160 and 161, they state that "As distance transmission was facilitated through cables ... long distance broadcasting networks became a reality." However, they later say that "the emergence of cable in the USA reintroduced the narrowcast model." In addition, they state that Black Entertainment Television (received throughout the USA), and Telemundo (more globally received), are two examples of narrowcast television, even though the glossary defines narrowcast media as having "a limited range through which to reach audiences". I would hardly consider a globally received television network to have "limited range."

Another problem that I found was that there are no in text citations (aside from when a source is directly quoted). This would have been very useful in several instances, especially when I was unsure of the validity or accuracy of the information, or simply wished to further examine the subject. For example, on page 163, they state that "in Germany television was at first more frequently viewed collectively in public spaces. Television emerged during the era of Nazism as a nationalized industry that was used to forge a strong collective ideology. As such, it was a tool of mass persuasion". However, to the best of my knowledge (I may be wrong here...), television was not used in Germany until after World War II, and was only occasionally used (mostly during experiments with the new technology) throughout the world prior to and during the war.

Still, I found Sturken and Cartwright's book to be a rather good overview and introduction to visual culture and worth reading if you are interested in the subject, but do not know where to begin.

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Summary: Chapter 7 Postmodernism and Popular Culture
Review: What exactly is postmodernism? Out of all the misused words in the English language, postmodernism is used to describe anything that is not modern. Many theorists and scholars have tried to define the broad and ever encompassing theory and term of postmodernism. The most recent explanation of postmodernism that I have received is from reading the book Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture by Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright. This is not the best book on postmodernist theory in art; the most complete book on the subject of postmodernism is Postmodernism by Eleanor Heartney.
I am not an authority on the subject of postmodernism or of the readings of scholarly papers or books. I am just a college art student, an untraditional college student who's been going to school for six years. There are some major problems with Sturken and Cartwright's book. At least they're problems that I have. The first problem I have is that the book is not an easy read, it reads more like stereo or VCR instructions. The theories involved are broken down, but still take a degree of understanding and knowledge. The second problem is the images placed in the book as visual aids are all in black and white, when most of the originals are in color. It seems that if the artist wanted the people to view their work in monochrome they would have done it that way in the first place. One needs to have another book with the artworks in color to grasp the full meaning as well as Sturken and Cartwright's message. Heartney's book is the complete opposite of this, it is an easy read, so it's easy to stay interested and all the reproduced artwork is in color which is the way they were when they were created. Heartney breaks down the hard language of theorist and critics that have contributed to postmodernism in words that are easy to read and understand.
After reading this book for a college class this is what I felt I do believe there is a better book out there and many will disagree but I think that the book uses the same hard language that the essays and other writing that were used to write the book came from instead of breaking them down into easy to read chunks. I gave this book a 3 because I read it and did not burn it but I would not recommend it to a friend.

Rating:
Summary: Chapter 7 Postmodernism and Popular Culture
Review: What exactly is postmodernism? Out of all the misused words in the English language, postmodernism is used to describe anything that is not modern. Many theorists and scholars have tried to define the broad and ever encompassing theory and term of postmodernism. The most recent explanation of postmodernism that I have received is from reading the book Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture by Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright. This is not the best book on postmodernist theory in art; the most complete book on the subject of postmodernism is Postmodernism by Eleanor Heartney.
I am not an authority on the subject of postmodernism or of the readings of scholarly papers or books. I am just a college art student, an untraditional college student who's been going to school for six years. There are some major problems with Sturken and Cartwright's book. At least they're problems that I have. The first problem I have is that the book is not an easy read, it reads more like stereo or VCR instructions. The theories involved are broken down, but still take a degree of understanding and knowledge. The second problem is the images placed in the book as visual aids are all in black and white, when most of the originals are in color. It seems that if the artist wanted the people to view their work in monochrome they would have done it that way in the first place. One needs to have another book with the artworks in color to grasp the full meaning as well as Sturken and Cartwright's message. Heartney's book is the complete opposite of this, it is an easy read, so it's easy to stay interested and all the reproduced artwork is in color which is the way they were when they were created. Heartney breaks down the hard language of theorist and critics that have contributed to postmodernism in words that are easy to read and understand.
After reading this book for a college class this is what I felt I do believe there is a better book out there and many will disagree but I think that the book uses the same hard language that the essays and other writing that were used to write the book came from instead of breaking them down into easy to read chunks. I gave this book a 3 because I read it and did not burn it but I would not recommend it to a friend.