• KAVINKUMAR.R

Description

Digital Humanities and Literary Studies

R.KAVINKUMAR

M.Phil, Scholar

Abstract

Nowadays, you are likely to use on or both of two types of visual aid equipment: the data projector, operated from a computer (often a laptop) through the projector itself onto a screen, and the more old-fashioned over-head projector, with acetate slides that you can produce by photocopying from a printed source, or make by using PowerPoint or a similar package and printing onto special acetate.  Hand-drawn overhead slides are unlikely to be acceptable nowadays.  There are other forms of visual aid, such as handouts and demonstrations, which we’ll discuss later in the paper.  Before you spend time and effort preparing visual aid material, check with your tutor or lecturer to make sure that you know exactly what is appropriate.  Is the assignment assessed and, if so, is the visual content evaluated as part of that assessment? How many images based on a literature are you likely to show? If there are only one or two, it might be better to give handouts that to use complex technology.  Do you have to arrange your own equipment or will the lecturer provide it for you? If you book it yourself, how much notice should you give? Remember, too, that you need to have the equipment available for rehearsal as well as for the performance.

Nowadays literary audiences are used to seeing visual material during almost any sort of talk or presentation.  Listening is not easy and it helps a great deal if you have something to look at in any case human being tend to remember what they see more readily than what they hear, and so literary audiences are grateful for the reinforcement of a good visual aid.  Literary people also like looking  at pictures – it makes a pleasant alternative to listening – and a change in the way in which information is presented adds variety and interest to the occupation and so helps them to concentrate.

For all these reason literary audiences want visual aids and most literary speakers provide them.  They are not doubt, some highly experienced, witty and knowledgeable, literary people who can hold an literary audiences attention by themselves, but it’s probably unwise to assume that either we or you are of their number.

If literary audiences are helped by visual aids, so are literary speakers themselves.  Visual material is prepared in advance, and if it is well-designed and thoroughly checked, it becomes on area of the presentation that the literary speaker does not have to worry about, assuming, of course, that the equipment is available and functioning properly.  It also deflects attention from the literary speaker.  This can be bad as well as good.  It is possible to use so many visual aids that the audience feels that they are seeing a film or video rather than meeting and listening to a human being.  As films and videos can be transported easily from one place to another, they may also feel that it was rather a waste of their time bothering to come to the venue on a particulars day at a prescribed time, when they could have watched the whole thing at home at their leisure.  On the other hand many literary speakers like to feel that occasionally during the talk they are not the main focus of the literary audience’s attention; this is often true at the beining and is a good reason for having a visual aid containing the subject and the literary speaker’s name to show as the presentation starts.  It may also be helpful in allowing the literary audience to see how the literary speaker’s name is spelt.

There are other advantages, from the literary speaker’s point of view, in using visual aids.  More detail can be shown than could possibly be explained in words (Poem, Prose, fiction, Drama) photographs will clarify aspects of the subject which could not be shown in any other way, and if a data projector is used, movement and sound can be included.  The key literary message will be reinforced, and this is an advantage for the literary speaker just as much as for the literary audience.

During you work, you are likely to be using the two main forms of visual aid equipment, the overhead projector and the data projector  and some of the other forms of visual information that you might need to use, such as handouts and demonstrations.  Incidentally, you may hear literary people refer to a presentation using computer-generated visual material and a data projector as a ‘PowerPoint presentation’, even if the computer package they are using is not Microsoft and so is not PowerPoint.  It is just become the general term, in the same wasy as literary people call a vacuum cleaner a ‘hoover’ even if it is some other make.  However, before we fet into the details of the equipment you are going to use, we need to look at when and where you might use visual aids of any sort, and what you need to remember in preparing them.

Are there any times when visual aids are not a good idea?  We have mentioned the problem of too many, so that the literary speaker and the literary message are over whelmed by the visual material.  Poor quality visuals are distracting and let down  the whole occasion: people are used to high-quality – broadcast quality – visual materials and are disappointed if they are offered anything less.  The especially true of visual aids which are so unclear that they fail to convey any literary message at all.  If photographs are under or overexposed colours look indistinct or the print is too small, the visual aid will fail to make the right impact and will leave the literary audience wishing that the literary speaker had been more aware of their needs.  Irrelevant visuals are even worse.  Occasionally literary speakers feel that they can ‘cheer up’ a difficult or potentially boring subject by showing pictures which are pleasant to look at but not in any way relevant to the message.  At worst, these can even be cartoons (This is also a one of the literary art). This is clearly unprofessional and profoundly irritating to an literary audience that has   taken time and trouble to come to hear a serious subject discussed.

As visual aids are so important, there’s some times a feeling amongst inexperienced presenters that every point made has to shown on the screen.  This can result not only in too many, but also in unnecessary and rather patronizing visual aids; a real-life examples is of a group of English literature students who discussed the results of a questionnaire they’d carried out.  ‘About a quarter of people said yes’ they explained, and about three-quarters said no’  This was clear enough but on the screen appeared a pie chart, with two segments, showing one-quarter and three-quarters in different colours, with a key underneath.  The intention was a good one, but there’s no need for a visual aid if the point has already been made and understood.

The decision about if and when to use a visual aid depends to a certain extent on the occasion and the constraints imposed by the situation.  If you are reading a seminar paper, for instance, you are likely to be sitting at a table surrounded by the group, and it may be quite difficult to leave your place and move to an overhead projector; there is also a probability that everyone would not be able to see the screen easily.  Literary people to your right and left will have to move their chairs back and round in order to see.  You need to decided whether all this movement is worthwhile.  You may feel that it is, in which case you should make sure in advance that the equipment is set up and the chairs are placed so that there is the minimum disruption.  If you have several visual aids to show, you might want to group them, if possible, so that the interruption happens only once.  You may decide that a handout, with a copy for each persons, is much easier to use than a more formal visual aid.

On the other hand, a literary seminar presentation, when the presentation techniques themselves are being assessed as well as the treatment of the subject, might well be an occasion for using a number of visual aids.  If you are studying English Literature you will almost certainly rely heavily on visual aids, and you will be assessed on these as well as on other aspects of your work.  A poster presentation, for instance the author of literary work will involve you in the design and use of high-quality posters while a project presentation will require you to illustrate your work regularly throughout your talk.

However, there are some points in most presentations at which a visual aid is appropriate.  Some of these occasions are more common in arts based and others in in fine arts based subjects but the division is not absolute, of course, and this list certainly is not exhaustive.

An introductory slide, showing your name(s), the title of your talk and the date.  This makes a useful introduction and gives the audience something to look at as you start. You may wish to repeat this introductory slide at the end of your session.  An outline of your talk.  This s likely to be a list of points either numbered or bulleted, which the audience can noted in order to have an overview of what you are going to say. A general view before you look at the detail.  this would apply to a slide of a painting, a literary hierarchy chat, a book author site or an the characters of the novel. Details which you’re going to discuss, and which the audience needs to see in order to be able to follow what you say.  This could, for instance, be a line of poetry, a bar of music, a small part of a painting, a line drawing of a component or the seed of a plant under a microscope .  Sometimes, such details may be too small to seen in the normal way by the naked eye. Movement which you need to describe.  This might be the growth pattern of a tree or the possible spread of fire through a building.  the data projector is particularly good at showing such development.  Relationship which you need to discuss.  This might involved a family tree, a floes chart or a map of a country showsing population distribution or climate change. Simple literary material such as a table figure or a graph for the characters and the relationship.  However, if such material becomes complex it cases to be useful as a visual aid.

There are not doubt hundreds of other examples, but we have suggested wide range of possible visual aids and also some of the limitations to their use.

The overall advice that comes out of a discussion of backgrounds is that on the whole, a p lain colour is safest, and the more technical or scientific the content of you literary image the more important it is that nothing should distract from it or distort its literary message.