
While reading the article by Maria D. Avgerinou, I most especially found that a wide variety of the ideas put forward were coming from their general position as an artist - her interpretation of how we look at content and context, and how we interpret and conceptualize information, all comes from her position specifically. For an artist, visual literacy is a common concept, discussing the capacity for a person to understand (literal media literacy, if you will) what they're made visually aware of. I think that such interpretations of visual literacy are somewhat shortsighted, as in many cases of artistry, new interpretations of pieces and the messages they communicate often only build on the artist or writer's original intention, and better bolster the mechanism by which their message itself can be conveyed. Visual literacy doesn't feel like a cement-able, agreeable concept, due to how inherently personal of a thing it is. You are not lacking in visual literacy because you interpret an art piece a different way from the artist, nor are you lacking in visual literacy because you got a different message from a piece of writing, or an article, or anything of the sort. I don't believe that visual literacy is even a concrete thing that people can use to categorically define the understanding of certain things - it's not a do-or-don't system in any way.
I believe that the process by which we communicate intention and understanding is simply one of complicated interpersonal discussion, even through otherwise inanimate art pieces or bodies of text. Meaning is fluid, and never inherently concrete, and a lack of visual understanding aligning with a creator's intention doesn't mean there's any lacking literacy - it just means you understood the media or creation or text in a different way.
