Metaphorical Portraits

Telling stories verbally and visually involves structuring the data toward different metaphorical representations of a person. Creating metaphors for a set of factors that make up a profile or a portrait will allow showing individual features of a portrayed person. This text encourages the readers to apply their visual literacy and exercise their cognitive processes related to imaging.

Challenges in Game Design

Electronic games and gaming can serve as the tools for visual solutions. It depends on the methods through which the games are delivered and the ways people think about electronic games. First, traditional and electronic gaming is described, and then, various goal-oriented game applications are discussed. Game features acting in favor of or against gaming complete this part of the book.

Educational Implications

An integrative art-science approach to teaching is described, involving imaging concepts about science, with three approaches to integration of art and science: 1) visual presentation of scientific concepts, 2) creating art by finding inspiration in a science-based topic, 3) learning visually for other courses taken concurrently by arranging data into a structured whole. The next part of the chapter is about several dimensions that seem important in blended and online learning regarding social networking and the collaborative virtual environments. Virtual education in a first life and a Second Life classroom environment is discussed next.

Poem Illustration for the Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters

This project makes a connection between visual arts and a literary analysis of the masterpiece collection of poems, Spoon River Anthology, by Edgar Lee Masters, his work, and his times. The aim of this project is to create an artistic expression of our understanding of Edgar Lee Masters’s work as a personal response to the spirit and the meaning of the verse, as well as to the author’s comments on the philosophical, social, and historical issues.

Acceleration

This part of the book provides an occasion to combine visual presentation of concepts related to speed, velocity, and acceleration with the real-life circumstances (such as car or horse races) and at the same time with artistic connotations about motion and artistic responses to it. The goal of this project is to show acceleration, speed, and velocity by producing an image that would look very dynamic. For example, dynamic changes of motion can be presented as a scene with racecars or horses. Connotations related to art may enhance both our knowledge about acceleration and a message it evokes.

Nano World

This part of the book provides information and projects for the readers about the omnipresence of nanoscale objects – soft matter, colloids, liquid crystals, carbon nanotubes, nanoshells, and the developments in nanoscale and molecular-scale technologies involving these small structures. Nanotechnology concerns structures measuring between 1 and 100 nanometers and allows manipulating individual atoms and molecules. Since Norio Taniguchi of Tokyo Science University first used the term nanotechnology in 1974, the governments, corporations, and venture capitalists invest every year billions of dollars in nanotechnology and more than a half of advanced technologies incorporate nanotechnology products in different ways. In addition, developments in nanotechnology demand hiring in millions of trained nanotechnology workforce (Nano.gov, 2012).

The Journey to the Center of the Earth

The “Journey to the Center of the Earth” project is a mental investigation about the interior of the Earth intended to encourage the reader to conduct an experiment in thinking and communicating with the use of visual language. Inspiration for this project comes from the theme of the interior of the Earth and some literary connotations. The challenge is to go on an imaginary trip in a transparent, pressure, and temperature resistant elevator descending to the center of the Earth, visualize its core, and make visual and verbal notes from the trip. Pictorial and verbal presentations are integrated with the physical geology-related concepts, events, processes, language arts, and connotations pertaining to cellular biology. The project is also about our awareness of the dynamics, forcefulness, and fragility of the matter under the ground we are living on.

Art and Design Criticism in Art Production and Instruction

This chapter examines some of the changes in views about art, criticism of art works, and art-related teaching objectives, as they evolve with the developments in the new media art, works created through the Web, social networking, art created on portable devices, as well as information technologies. First, this chapter examines the changing meaning of the aesthetics notion in mathematics, science, information art, and information technology, as well as changes in the views about instruction in art criticism. Examination of these approaches is then contrasted with the models adopted in education. The four-part model used in instructional design, based on audience, outcome, environment, and usability, is adapted to suit the needs of art criticism. Materials based on a literature review provide the rationale for a four-part model to facilitate art critique. The next part is about the changing dimensions of criticism in the new media art and product design in respect to the product semantics analysis.

Looking and Seeing

This chapter examines the artistic process and then encourages the readers to engage in visual and verbal projects. It contains a comparative inquiry about the ways of designing, conveying, and receiving images. The chapter comprises a comparative inquiry and a discussion about creating, conveying, and receiving art as three basic processes in communication in the arts: articulation of a visual message through creation of an electronic picture and its transitions; communication with a viewer; and reception of the artwork by a viewer. They appear to be decisive for both the traditional and digital artwork. Thus, the three levels in a creative process comprise an artist as a sender of a message (an idea), media of art (a process), and the viewer as the receiver (rethinking of an idea, interactive response by reshaping a work, new interpretation or a new idea).

Visual Music

Visual music projects involve visuals combined with music in various configurations. They may refer to the use of images, light, and sound, such as music and voice, including songs, and also haptic experiences, touch, and gesture. This chapter examines this century-old form of entertainment in terms of the technology options available in the successive decades.