eye culture

n.

A culture in which images are dominant.

Example Citations:

Schafer’s starting point was to note the incredible dominance of the visual modality in society — "eye culture," as it has been termed else-where — and to reveal that children’s ability to listen was, in his experience, deteriorating.

— Kendall, Wrightson, "An Introduction to Acoustic Ecology," The Journal of Acoustic Ecology, " April 1, 2000

Although one might imagine that one would have to travel to a very remote place to observe evidence of the differences between the use of speech in an ear culture and an eye culture, this is not necessarily true.

— Eric Somers, "Simultaneity and Polyphony in Speech Based Audio Art," Proceedings of the 2002 International Conference on Auditory Display, July 2, 2002

Earliest Citation:

In a 1980 essay on Elias Canetti, Sontag distinguished between "ear culture" and "eye culture" — Hebrew versus Greek, as she put it, moral versus aesthetic. "The ear," she wrote, "is the attentive sense, humbler, more passive, more immediate, less discriminating than the eye which . . . affirms the pleasures and the wisdom of . . . surfaces."

— Larissa MacFarquhar, "Susan Sontag: Mind as Passion," The Nation, October 16, 1995

Related Words:

acoustic ecology

casino culture

culture of confession

metaculture

thumb culture

Category:

Culture (General)