Welcome to the CDM 535: Visual Criticism Course Weblog

Welcome to the CDM 535: Visual Criticism Course Weblog! This site will serve as a repository for course information, including course slides, assignments and resources.

Please send me an email if you have any suggestions regarding the weblog.

Po Mo in da Movies

Today in class we will be discussing Postmodernism in Film.

To this end I have compiled a number of resources which may be helpful in understanding Postmodernism as a whole, and Postmodernism in Film.

We will be working in our groups to post the assignment on your group weblogs. The details of your assignment can be found in VSpace.

Reproduced Images Project

For this project you will reproduce 4 images from the world wide web (or elsewhere) and present them on your group weblog.  You will need to find four separate images and reproduce them in some manner to illustrate a particular point of view or recreate the original in some way. Use the discussion of Reproduced Images in the Practices of Looking text as a guide for this project.

This project is worth 50 points in total. It can be approached as a group project, or each person in the group can reproduce an individual photo.

You may use PhotoShop, Word, InDesign, Illustrator or whatever program you are comfortable with to modify and recreate your images. Each image will need to be saved in a format compatible for the blog and uploaded and viewable on the Group Weblogs.

For each image that your group has chosen:

1.  Display both the original image and reproduced image.
2. Describe what your goal was in the reproduction of the image.
3. Explain why you choose the image.
4. Explain what you and your group were trying to convey or communicate in the reproduction of the chosen image.
5. Get feedback from other groups in class and discuss whether you think that the image reproduction successfully communicated its intended meaning.

Guidelines for submission on the weblog:

• Each image will need to be saved in a format compatible for the blog.
• Each image (and its original) and its corresponding discussion should be presented on a separate Page on the weblog.
• Images should be viewable on the blog with corresponding text posted around or under the image.
• If the group chooses to reproduce images individually, please credit the creator of each photo on the Image Page.

Submit the URL to the weblog page for each of your reproduced images in VSpace crediting group members accordingly by Monday, October 18, 2010.

Our Group Weblog Project

Today in class we will discuss our Group Weblog Project. Each group will get started by creating a blog in Blogger and add each member of the group to the weblog as a contributor.

We will also change the permissions for each member, granting them admin privileges and add titles to our blogs.

Please consider the address and the title of your blog carefully during the creation process. The address of your blog should make sense and be something that you will be able to remember.

To aid us in the process of getting started, the good folk from Blogger have put together this easy-to-follow video:


Blogger also has a detailed extensive help section to keep us moving in the right direction if you encounter any ambiguity in the process of creating and setting up your Group's Weblog.

Once our blogs have been created, we will move on to our second assignment of the evening and begin developing some materials to post on the group weblogs. You may also want to discuss a strategy for future contributions and postings to the blog in terms of how you will equitably distribute posting responsibilities throughout your group.

Intended Meanings

By now I am sure that you are seeing a reoccurring theme in our class - We can create something, but people will view it differently depending upon many different factors.

This week we will examine the intended meanings of the creator of a work and compare that with how the image may be viewed in different situations.

- To this end we will look for examples of images that successfully convey their producer's intended meanings, and we will also look for some that do not.

For this assignment we will get into our groups from the last class period and look for images to examine and discuss with the class.

Each group should look for:

• 5 images that successfully convey their producer's intended meaning.
• 5 images that do not successfully convey their producer's intended meaning.

We will post the images and the group's discussion of each of them on our class blog. - I will walk you through this in class today.