Undergraduate Minor Visual Cultures – Department of Communications and New Media

Minor in Visual Cultures

The Minor in Visual Cultures is an interdisciplinary programme that equips students with skills to understand, critique, and ethically use visually-driven media and artefacts in contemporary society. Connecting the fields of design, digital technology, communications and new media, architecture, visual arts, aesthetics, and culture, the Minor in Visual Cultures offers a balanced STEM-Humanities curricula. It combines theoretical rigour and practice-based experience, and engages both core courses and resonant electives drawn from across the university.

What is Visual Cultures?

Visual Cultures is an interdisciplinary field focused on exploring relationships between visuality and culture through various media including: photographs, posters, films, advertisements, paintings, fashion items, comics, news media, monuments, videos, digital social media, and others. Visual Cultures engages with the visual to explore the motivations, histories, and implications of such artefacts and their meanings. In appraising ‘non-art’ images equally as forms of visual expressiveness, Visual Cultures moves beyond the traditions of art history. It stages conversations across disciplines to critically engage visual meaning-making in our visually saturated world.

The NUS Museum

As part of the Minor in Visual Cultures’ interdisciplinary proposition and commitment to innovative pedagogies, we are delighted to collaborate with the NUS Museum, who will jointly host and act as primary resource for the programme. The NUS Museum curators will provide hands-on curatorial and exhibitionary training by drawing on the Museum’s rich visual resources and archives. To strengthen the lines of inquiry between visual practice, academic learning outcomes and industry-based training, students enrolled in the Minor in the Visual Cultures will undertake a culminating capstone project conducted in conjunction with the NUS Museum.

Student Learning Outcomes

The Minor in Visual Cultures prepares students for a complex and rapidly changing world by providing a broader understanding of arts and culture. Graduates with a Minor in Visual Cultures will be critical thinkers and effective communicators. You will be able to traverse disciplinary boundaries with confidence. You will possess a high level of visual literacy and aesthetic appreciation across diverse visual media. You will demonstrate proficiency in digitally mediated cultural production. Distinctive and socially-conscious individuals with entrepreneurial potential, you will be adept at translating your ideas and skills towards meaningful engagement with your communities and the world at large.

You will be introduced to visual methodologies that allow you to forge new conceptual connections within your majors. Through such interdisciplinary methodologies, the Minor trains you to critically interpret visual material from objects and images, to stories, data and information, and any other everyday visual influences in your lives. It will attune you to visual culture practices of display, design, communication, spectatorship and identity-formation.

Career Prospects

The Minor in Visual Cultures supports students’ professional identity formation and effectively prepares you for a wide range of jobs including: design, communications, media, digital technology, arts and the humanities, and culturally-focused industries, where a broad understanding of visual practices across a range of media, categories, and objects is widely recognised as a strong asset. Graduates from the course can contribute in roles such as: policy formulation, public relations, corporate communication, media and design, research and information management, collections’ management and interpretation, community engagement, and curatorial practice. In particular, the comparative and relational visual competencies that are developed through this Minor are critical skillsets in a fiercely competitive job market.

Minor Requirements

To find out about how to graduate with the Minor in Visual Cultures, please click on the cohort that applies to you below. If you have any specific query regarding the minor, please write to cnm.undergraduate@nus.edu.sg.

Cohort 2021 onwards (including CHS Students)

List of Courses

The courses which constitute the Visual Cultures minor are listed below:

Core Courses

AR2225 Reading Visual Images (Pre-requisite for Capstone Course)
Offered by Department of Architecture

The course introduces students to ways of looking at and discussing works of art. The focus is chiefly on painting and sculpture; the emphasis is on analyzing the composition or design of art works and in constructing meanings for them. The study of this course enables students to acquire critical skills for interpreting and connecting with works of art. The course encourages students to read art works in relation to a range of interests, intentions and issues; the aim here is to suggest or propose contexts or environments in which art works are made and received. There are three sections. In the first, three (3) topics from Asian art traditions are discussed. They are: 1. Indian sculpture 2. Chinese landscape painting 3. Islamic calligraphy. In the second section, ideas and movements from the Renaissance in Italy to the end of the 20th century in Europe, are surveyed.

VCU3101 Visual Cultures (Capstone Course)
Offered by Department of Communications and New Media

This capstone course encompasses the theory and practice of visual culture. It will be co-taught with the curators of the NUS Museum, who bring their invaluable industry knowledge to the curriculum. Students enrolled will examine the significance of the visual and the politics of visuality in the realms of heritage, environmental humanities, philosophy, spatial practices, design and architecture, visual art and performance. Consolidating the knowledge gleaned from the electives in the first six weeks of the course, students will subsequently be given an opportunity to apply these lessons within a guided ‘live’ curatorial project hosted by the NUS Museum.

Electives: Practical

AR2524 Spatial Computational Thinking
Offered by Department of Architecture

Spatial Computational Thinking is increasingly being recognised as a fundamental method for various spatial disciplines. It involves idea formulation, algorithm development, solution exploration, with a focus on the manipulation of geometric and semantic datasets. Students will use parametric modelling tools for generating and analysing building elements at varying scales. Such tools use visual programming interfaces to allow complex algorithms to be developed and tested. Students will learn how to structure their ideas as algorithmic procedures that integrate data-structures, functions, and control flow. Through this process, students will also become familiar with higher-level computational concepts, such as decomposition, encapsulation and abstraction.

CDE2212 AI for Design
Offered by Department of Architecture

This course introduces you to applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially with respect to the design of our environment. Application spaces may include buildings, public spaces, landscapes, dwellings, transportation nodes, and recreational areas. AI can support the designer in the design decision making process, through both analysis and synthesis. In this course you will be presented with an overview of different kinds of AI applications for design, with a partial focus on the application of an AI-based methodology for design exploration with respect to selected performance indicators, and another on the application of image-based AI techniques supporting design space interpretation.

NHT2207 Documentary Filmmaking: Reality, Perception and Truth
Offered by NUS College

This course is an introduction to documentary filmmaking and storytelling, based on the central question of whether documentary is purely an act of documenting, or deliberate and intentional selecting. How real is reality in documentary? How do the stories we choose to tell reflect who we are as filmmakers, and also as individuals? What are the choices and consequences that come with crafting narratives? Students will learn and discuss the theory and practice of documentary making, basic filmmaking techniques, and create their own short documentary film inspired by an issue, concern, or question that they are interested in exploring. This course is targeted at students with a broad diversity of background and disciplines. This is not a filmmaking course in that students are not expected to become professional filmmakers by the end of this course. No knowledge of camera techniques, editing skills etc. is required to take this course. Storytelling, the narrative craft, and the analysis of documentary filmmaking, take center stage above and beyond technical skills. Only basic filmmaking techniques will be taught to students for the purposes of fulfilling their group film projects.

NHT2208 The Power of Storytelling through Photography
Offered by NUS College

This multimedia course provides an introduction to visual literacy and storytelling with photography as the primary medium. Students will be equipped with skills - learning to use the DSLR, mobile phone photography and creating multimedias - to empathetically translate their everyday knowledge and ideas to still images and compelling photography essays. At the end of the course, students will also have a deeper appreciation of photography as a tool in critically engaging and interpreting the aesthetical and socio-cultural meanings in local and global issues.

TS2235 Marketing the Arts and Leisure Services
Offered by Department of English Language, Linguistics & Theatre Studies

This practical introduction to the comprehensive range of concepts, principles and practices in marketing focuses on arts and culture-related products, services and industries. Besides drawing attention to vital distinctions in the marketing of for-profit versus not-for-profit organisations, the latter of which characterizes the majority of arts agencies in Singapore, the political, sociological and economic factors which influence those working in the arts will also be examined. This course is targeted at students interested in arts administration or Theatre students wishing to hone their skills in the managerial aspects of the arts.

GE3252 Cartography and Geovisualisation
Offered by Department of Geography

This course covers the art, science, and ethics of mapmaking and map use. It aims to introduce students the design principles and techniques for creating maps with contemporary mapping tools. Topics covered include conceptualisation of geographic phenomena, projection and distortion, geospatial data manipulation and presentation, thematic map design, interactive geographic visualization, and emerging trends in cartography and geovisualisation. The course emphasises effective visual thinking and visual communication with Geographic Information Systems (GIS). It is mounted for students with interests in GIS and map design as a medium for communication.

ID3129 Visual Systems: Signs, Symbols, Icons
Offered by Division of Industrial Design

This course examines how visual communication designers use icons, symbols, and signs to communicate meaning systematically and how they are interpreted by the public. Students will learn how these elements create distinct visual languages and apply them through a range of applications from brand experiences to wayfinding. Concepts will be reinforced with basic visual communication principles that include gestalt, form studies, and context.

ID3130 Branding and the Elements of Storytelling
Offered by Division of Industrial Design

In this course, students will learn how to perceive and conceive brand languages. This is done in the context of corporate or personal branding. The objective is to correlate this to storytelling, as effective brand communication does this through consistency and purposefulness. The course will place emphasis on the impact of a brand’s design language and how audiences perceive and experience through this language. As an introductory course, focus will be placed on the application of basic principles of visual design in brand building which includes a wide range of concepts, executed via the integration of graphics design tools commonly used in professional practice. The course will also teach students other ephemeral aspects of branding which includes sensorial design that are oftentimes neglected when creating a brand narrative.

NM3217 Principles of Visual Communication Design
Offered by Department of Communications and New Media

This course examines the principles of visual communication design. Students will tap into the various domains of visual communication theories and concepts of visual communication, and communication design and production processes. The course is designed to aid students in examining how visuals can come to influence our understanding and perspectives of communication. Students will explore how one can communication through visual media; experiment with techniques of visual communication expression and presentations; plan and manage the communication design process from initial development to the final product; and ideate, curate and critique independent and group projects to promote collaborative classroom learning.

NM3230 Digital Storytelling
Offered by Department of Communications and New Media

The most compelling media content makes use of evocative images, and sometimes an image itself is the story. Knowing how to make, edit, and communicate with images are key skills in the digital age. Students enrolled in this course will be introduced to the skills, theories and methods around communicating with both moving and still imagery. The course will focus on using digital tools to capture, edit and present images as data and for storytelling, communicating with visual imagery in the digital age, and the study and use of visual images for research and communication.

SC3213 Ethnographic Analysis of Visual Media
Offered by Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Explore how anthropologists and sociologists have used visual media such as photography, film and video to conduct ethnographic research and to produce and communicate knowledge about the lives and cultures of the other. We will study their works, both classic and contemporary, to see how they have experimented with the possibilities of visual media while trying to remain consistent with the intellectual demands of their disciplines. Armed with an understanding of the epistemological, methodological, ethical and practical issues involved, students are expected to try their hands at producing visual ethnographies.

Electives: Theory

LAD1003 Introduction to Landscape Architecture
Offered by Department of Architecture

This course introduces the profession of landscape architecture. It presents a survey of the development of the profession and how the profession responds to societal needs in providing services to various public and private clients. Emphasis is placed on understanding the significance of environmental, socio/cultural, physical/visual, and aesthetic factors in developing intervention strategies and designs. Contemporary landscape architectural issues, practitioners and work are presented. Beside lectures and in-class discussion, students will engage in active learning through field trips that involve a variety of exploratory activities including walking, observing, sketching, photographing, and writing.

AH2202 Modern Art: A Critical Introduction
Offered by Department of History

What is modern art? How has it been understood and interpreted by artists, critics and art historians? What is the relationship between modern art, modernism and modernity? Is the history of modern art “multiple”? The course will explore these questions through a chronological introduction to modern art, from the 19th century to the 1950s. Students will be encouraged to critically-analyse visual and textual primary-source material to develop a nuanced understanding of different developments in modern art. Case studies on modern art in Asia will also be included to encourage students to appreciate the multiplicity and global diffusion of modern art.

AR2227 History & Theory of Architecture I
Offered by Department of Architecture

This course is the first part of a two-part course introducing students to the history and theory of architecture and urban design. It is shaped around themes grouped by environmental features to emphasize the ways that societies have built in response to the landscapes, resources, and tools available to them. Covering almost two millennia of global architectural and urban history, the course begins in approximately 500 BCE, ending in approximately 1400 CE. The material is presented in such a way as to encourage comparative cross-readings of architectural history between geographies, societies, climates, cultures, religions, and socio-political registers.

GE2231 Living Space: Introducing Social and Cultural Geography
Offered by Department of Geography

Living Space introduces students to the idea that space is lived and experienced as part social and cultural life. Drawing from the arts, food, sports and film, and/or other related topics, the course delves into critical developments in social and cultural geography, providing students with the foundational knowledge and required grounding to read advanced courses in the sub-discipline. It introduces methodological approaches which include ‘ways of seeing’ and ‘landscape as text’. These are critical to understanding the human/culture and environment/space relationship.

NM2209 Social Psychology of New Media
Offered by Department of Communications and New Media

Theories of social psychology can be applied to our understanding of how new media is produced, marketed, resisted, adopted and consumed. This course highlights these key stages in the developmental trajectory of new media and introduces relevant theories, while considering issues such as why some technologies succeed where others fail, how marketers should promote new technology, which services are likely to become tomorrow's killer applications and what goes through the minds of new media adopters.

NM2225 Communication and Culture
Offered by Department of Communications and New Media

Effective communication requires cultural understanding based in shared systems of meaning. This course focuses on how shared meanings are produced, circulated, and consumed via contemporary cultural sites such as photography, advertising, social media, digital storytelling, pop music, and urban spaces. This course introduces students to cultural and critical communication studies by examining theories of popular media and culture, representation and power. Students completing the course will acquire skills in: semiotic and narrative analysis; audience reception studies; critical approaches to everyday life, and identity formation; as well as, ritual communication studies.

PH2224 Philosophy and Film
Offered by Department of Philosophy

Philosophy of film is a sub-branch of aesthetics; many questions and puzzles about the nature and value of art have filmic analogues. (Plato's parable of the cave is, in effect, the world's first philosophy of film.) Philosophy in film concerns films that may be said to express abstract ideas, even arguments. (Certain films may even be thought- experiments, in effect.) Questions: are philosophical films good films? Are they good philosophy? The course is intended for majors but - film being a popular medium - will predictably appeal to non-majors as well.

AN3206 Visual Culture
Offered by Department of Sociology and Anthropology

This course provides an introductory take on the importance of visual images and some of the key theoretical debates that concern making, seeing, and sharing images. It engages historical and contemporary practices of image making and image consumption, and covers a variety of visual media and application domains. This class also provides an opportunity to engage with visual media through experiential learning. At the end of the course, students will have gained familiarity with key repertoires for the study of visual culture, and increased their “visual literacy” as image producers and consumers.

EN3249 Introduction to Visual Culture: Art, Film and Media
Offered by Department of English, Linguistics and Theatre Studies

This course offers an introduction to the study of art, film and media culture. It explores the changing role of visual media across the centuries, from pre-modern societies through to today’s digital, networked cultures. How have technological and economic changes generated new visual media? How have these media in turn shaped social and economic life? A range of case studies will be drawn from art history, film, popular culture and online media. What are the differences between art, film and other visual culture, and are these differences still relevant in the ‘convergent’ world of digital media culture?

NM3205 Digital Media Cultures
Offered by Department of Communications and New Media

Digital media is dominating and transforming twenty-first century culture and society. This course introduces students to the origins and impact of these changes, and explores the nexus between media, culture and society in the digital age. It examines the developments in digital transformation and its implications on everyday life, with emphasis on media/cultural industries, connective media, new media art and design, civil society and public cultures. It gives students an understanding of how digital media and culture are being transformed by networks, convergence and algorithms, and the training to approach and make use of digital media critically, creatively and productively.

PC3247 Modern Optics
Offered by Department of Physics

The objective of this course is to establish the interconnectedness of knowledge between principles of optics and modern sciences/technologies and identify the applications in our daily life. It covers wave properties, refraction and dispersion, interference, Michelson interferometer, Fabry-Perot cavity and optical resonator, interference filter, Fraunhofer and Fresnel diffraction, resolution limit, Fourier transformation, holography; polarisation, birefringence and wave plates, light absorption and emission, lasers. This course is targeted at physics and non-physics students, who are interested in principles of modern optics.

PS3256 Politics on Film
Offered by Department of Political Science

This is a political theory course which aims to introduce lower-level students to political ideas by showing them possible illustrations or applications of relevant concepts and getting them to explore the strengths and weakness of showing political ideas in action rather than writing about them. The emphasis is thus partly on the use of political ideas on screen; how, for example, is an abstract concept such as the idea of a political office articulated in films about the American presidency? Or how do we transfer to the screen the idea of a revolution in films about countries like Algeria or Cuba? However, students will also be asked to read in the considerable scholarly literature on politics and film which is more explicitly theoretical and argumentative, and will be exposed to the idea that a film can itself be a form of argument, something that is most obvious in the case of a documentary but which can hold true more generally. Finally, they will be given some understanding of how the technical elements of a film (the use of rapid cuts; voice-overs, etc.) contribute to its political meaning. The course is a break-out from PS3260. The film lecture for that course has always been one of the most popular parts of the course , but it was impossible to deal adequately with the topic in the course of a single lecture, and it was clear that there was demand on the part of students for a course devoted entirely to politics and film. While the course is expected to enrol well, the content is not therefore ‘popular’; for example, it includes documentaries and dramas that make for some very uncomfortable if enlightening viewing. The department still has PS4214 Politics Art and Popular Culture on the books but this is a legacy course taught by a member of faculty who has now left. It does not concentrate on film or television specifically. Other departments in the Faculty including History, English, and Philosophy all offer film courses which will in some cases overlap with this one (eg HY2243; EN3242; PH2880A) but none of them concentrate specifically on politics as their subject. Moreover, none of them deal with television, despite the large amount of political content available. The Department of English Language and Literature has agreed to recognize this course towards fulfilling the requirements for the Minor in Film Studies for all cohorts.

PS3260 Politics and the Visual
Offered by Department of Political Science

This course explores the many forms of relationship between politics and visual culture. From the ancient world to the present, politics, whether formal or popular, has had a visual dimension. Politicians have been concerned to control their appearance; various media (from painting to theatre to television to the internet) have been used to both serve and defeat this goal. The course surveys the relationship between politics and visual culture and allows students to engage with contemporary issues surrounding politics, film, and digital culture.

Frequently Asked Questions

Enrolment Queries

When can I declare the minor?

I have passed my 5th semester in NUS, can I still declare the minor?

You may be able to make a late declaration in your academic plan. Please check with the administrative team of your home faculty for the protocol involved with late declarations of minors in your academic study plan.

Do note late declarations of the VCU minor does not excuse extensions of candidature beyond students’ original graduation date. Additional school fees may be incurred for tuitions beyond normal candidature. Please check here for more information.

Will I have time to complete the minor as a Y3/Y4/Y5 if I have not taken any of the courses prior?

If I’ve previously done some of the electives listed before declaring the minor, can I count those electives towards the minor?

If I am a graduate/non-graduating student, how can I get involved in the course? 

Syllabus Queries

Do students only need to pass the 2 core courses and the 3 electives to be certified for the Minor? 

Is this a restricted or open minor?

Is this Minor conducted by CNM in collaboration with NUS Museum? 

Is NUS Museum only involved in the Capstone Course?

Is the Capstone Course focused on teaching students about museum curation?

No, the lessons from the Visual Cultures Minor Capstone are not specific to museum curation.

The first 6-week block of the Capstone Course is a mini/compact foundational course in Visual Cultures. It will bring together knowledge gleaned from the theoretical electives. A consolidation of different types of visual categories in different disciplines (e.g. objects and paintings, buildings, maps, moving images, photographs, social media etc), this block gathers key visual theories from different disciplines (film studies, architecture, art history, communications and media, geography, history, philosophy etc) to discuss, examine, and reflect on their relationships.

The second 6-week block is skill-based. It involves practical implementation of theoretical principles through project-based making and learning. Students will work on group proposals which will demonstrate critical visual cultural thinking and skills through project-based installations. These installations will use and respond to the museum’s existing exhibitions. The group proposals will test theoretical application through a situated practice. Such project-based and problem-based learning will include opportunities to launch a media campaign, pitch an idea for funding, strategise the gathering of resources and their allocation, learn how to use social media ethically, and how to market your content through visual media.