Visual culture studies recognizes that visual forms of media have become predominant in the postmodern world. It examines whether society has shifted more towards visuals and away from text in the last 50 years, accelerating in the last 10-20 years. The field merges the study of popular and high cultural forms, as visual content and codes now migrate across different media like print, television, film, the internet, and more. People learn the codes of different media and switch between them to navigate and make meaning from the visuals in everyday life.

2. "Visual Culture" studies
recognizes the predominance
of visual forms of
media, communication, and
information in the postmodern
world.

3. Has there been a social and cultural shift
to the visual, over against the verbal and
textual, in the past 50 years, and has it
been accelerating in the past 10 or 20
years?
Or are our written, textual, and visual
systems continuing an ongoing
reconfiguration in a new (recognizable)
phase?

4. Study of visual culture merges
popular and "low" cultural forms,
media and communications, and
the study of "high" cultural forms or
fine art, design, and architecture.

5. The "visual culture" approach
acknowledges the reality of living in a
world of cross-mediation--our
experience of culturally meaningful
visual content appears in multiple
forms, and visual content and codes
migrate from one form to another:

6.  print images and graphic design
 TV and cable TV
 film and video in all interfaces and playback/display
technologies
 computer interfaces and software design
 Internet/Web as a visual platform
 digital multimedia
 advertising in all media (a true cross-media institution)
 fine art and photography
 fashion
 architecture, design, and urban design

7. We learn the codes for each form and code
switch among the media and the "high" and
"low" culture forms. The experience of
everyday life can be described as codeswitching or hacking the visual codes
around us to navigate and negotiate meaning
(see William Gibson, Pattern Recognition).

8. WEEGEE (ARTHUR FELLIG), THEIR FIRST
MURDER, I1941

9. PIETER CLAESZ, STILL LIFE WITH
STONEWARE JUG, WINE GLASS,
HERRING, AND BREAD, 1642

10. RENÉ MAGRITTE, TREACHERY OF IMAGES, 1928-29

11. RENÉ MAGRITTE, THE HUMAN CONDITION, 1933