The Conscious Gaze: Visuality as Practice in the Post-modern World.

Negotiating the increasing cross-cultural interactions in today's societies is a reality in today's global village. As diverse cultures interact, both one of the most volatile and the most potent tools for either cultural contact or culture clash is image. Visual culture is embedded in a socio-political context that informs the process of visuality; of seeing and being seen. Without critical awareness and creative engagement, exposure to visual diversity as a result of both increased human migration and the proliferation of images on the World Wide Web, tends to result in negative intercultural interactions and responses based on complex and unexamined associations. What is needed in order to envision strong and diverse communities is not so much a specific social or educational model for change, but an ongoing practice of 'conscious visuality'; embracing both criticality and creatively visual engagement in order to envision new ways of being in relationship to each other and to our visual environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]