tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3258082.post876705822495542609..comments2024-01-12T08:44:54.145+00:00Comments on While looking for something else...: On the spirit and the letter...Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3258082.post-64997522948163084792013-02-23T21:39:04.883+00:002013-02-23T21:39:04.883+00:00I know nothing about these lenses but I assume the...I know nothing about these lenses but I assume the idea is similar to de Bono's Thinking Hats or, no doubt, numerous other techniques for pulling one's thinking out of any ruts it may have inadvertently found itself in. <br />I did a related experiment yesterday with a small group of 1st Yr Fine Art students where I asked them to pick an image at random from I book I'd brought and to come up with as many questions as they could think of about the chosen image. The questions dried up pretty quickly so I suggested that they apply a different critical lens instead. I suggested that they apply all of the biggest and most vexing questions they could think of about art to the image. Suddenly they were asking a flood of incredibly probing questions even though the lens had hardly changed at all. My intention had been to shift them to a philosophical lens but it hardly seemed necessary and when I did they seemed perplexed. Having read your post above it now strikes me that they were probably, like your student, confused about how much they should understand about the lens itself rather than seeing it as a tool to shift their focus. Perhaps I'm overdoing the optical metaphors but it seems to me that in the case of these 1st years it wasn't so much a new lens that was needed as simply a shift in the focal length that allowed them to see the image in a new light. Anyway, who needs different lenses when we can just as easily use a zoom!?Jim Hamlynhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16488331333061422244noreply@blogger.com