Visual Philosophy: An approach towards interpreting and mediating philosophical ideas through visualization

The growing importance of research in Art and Design creates a need for new forms of didactics and teaching and, as many practice oriented fields, these disciplines face such challenges without having a firm theoretical fundament. Theoretical concepts can not be identified by the properties they have, or through a fixed reference framework but relate to subjective experiences with the theory they express. The proposed project aims at mediating between these experiences and philosophical understanding wit h help of film. Its approach is to perform philosophical reading and thought by means of visualization and to provide means to explore in which way visual philosophy is possible and how far it can contribute to teaching philosophy. The filmatized texts w ill be chosen from the compendium and lectures of the Examen philosophicum (EXPHIL), which has been introduced in 2009 as a mandatory course for the first time at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. To select texts central in EXPHIL curriculum mea ns also, that the didactic value of visual representations to transfer knowledge has to be considered. Reichl will work with the texts extract their main aspects for filmatization and design the films. How the visualizations contribute to the overall le arning experience in the course will be the focus of Keitschs work, who is the responsible teacher for EXPHIL. The outcome of the project shall contribute to meet the needs of students within artistic and design education and bring philosophical ideas cl oser to their way of comprehension. Visual philosophy is a new approach towards mediating abstract language and teaching philosophy with respect to the creative processes inherent in understanding abstract texts. It is a pioneering project on the interfa ce between humanities, arts and design and can provide a unique forum for students and researchers for cross-disciplinary inquiry about alternative media of and for philosophizing.