Reading Visual Text: Critical Response Protocol
In "The Sticky Embrace of Beauty" from Writing New Media, Anne Frances Wysocki challenges traditional notions of formal beauty that have placed special emphasis on self, center, and universal meanings. She writes,
I don't know if finding correlations between teaching word-based literacy and visual literacy is an obstacle or an insight, but I feel as though Wysocki wants me to teach reader response criticism. I don't mean to oversimplify, but she does advocate the third space paradigm.
And what sort of self is at that center? In the telling of Arnheim and Bang, it is an almost character-less self, looking out from a body whose actions are constrained only by gravity. This is a body without culture, race, class, gender, or age. This is a body with ten fingers and toes, able legs and arms, good strong posture, no genitalia; this is a body born to a mother remembered as nothing but soft and warm curves, a body that simply opens its eyes to see with unmediated understanding. (157)
Over the past three years, I've been using a thinking routine called Critical Reponse Protocol. As a process of visual interpretation, it is similar to Visual Thinking Strategies, Discipline Based Arts Education, and others that don't even have capitalized names like "dialogic looking." CRP offers a way to mediate meaning, incorporating both formal and experiential interpretation. I was first introduced to CRP by Melissa Borgman from North High School and her student Alston.
Critical Response Protocol
1. What do you notice?
2. How does it make you feel?
3. What does it remind you of?
4. What questions do you have?
5. Speculate. Answer these questions.
Like most teachers, I'm a good thief. You can certainly learn more about CRP by visiting the Weisman Art Museum website and exploring the Weisman's Artful Writing curriculum or contacting the Education Director Judi Petkau. But perhaps the best illustration of CRP is Melissa leading Alston through the protocol on a class field trip to the Weisman.
