Signs and Docents in Zoo Visitor Education: Using Affinitive Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) Behaviors

The goals of zoos are providing an entertaining and educational experience for visitors, promoting environmental conservation, and promoting positive welfare for nonhuman residents. Education can unify these goals. In this study, data were collected on visitors to the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) exhibit at The Zoo Northwest Florida. Researchers implemented three conditions of education at the chimpanzee viewing platform: a graphic sign, a trained docent, and a control condition with no intervention. The sign and docent encouraged visitors to use affinitive chimpanzee behaviors. Visitors were significantly more active in the graphic sign condition and significantly less active in the docent condition, and their behavior did not vary from the expected value during the control condition. Visitors used the affinitive behaviors that were demonstrated in each experimental condition. These results suggest that both graphic signs and docent interaction affect visitor behavior and can be considered useful educational tools for fulfilling the goals of the zoos.

METHODOLOGICAL AND TECHNICAL ENVIRONMENT OF WATERCOLOR PAINTING FOR STUDENTS-ARCHITECTORS

The article considers that watercolor technique is the most advanced one for the transfer of living architectural forms of structures in the drawing. Drawings of architectural projects should give a full understanding of the correct purpose, about the cost-effectiveness, strength and beauty of the future building. Therefore, drawings must be clear, understandable, expressive, their graphic performance must be based on the high foundations of realistic art. Watercolor is a professional and traditional visual means of an architect. Watercolor is an amazing material that combines the ability to comprehend both the pictorial, color organization of the image and the graphic, sign-tonal one. The architect, referring to the picturesque development of the drawing, first of all, must determine its purpose and choose from all the numerous visual techniques of watercolor painting those that will better contribute to the expressiveness of this drawing. Then they will be correctly used: the perfect visual equipment, a large arsenal of tools, a wide range of techniques, a large palette of colors, various possibilities of tools and materials. These features allow you to cope with multitasking in a wide variety of visual arts. The main features of watercolor painting are high airiness and transparency. However, architectural watercolor has its own specific conventions, some generalization, laconicism, business simplicity, clarity, a certain limited palette of colors, but at the same time it successfully fulfills its task only when it proceeds from the position of realistic painting.Such watercolor techniques as: “wet”, “dry”, “glaze”, “ά la prima” are considered The technique of watercolor painting is a visual reflection of the main theoretical postulates of the composite space organization on the plane. Watercolor techniques solve these problems and clearly show the interaction of tonal and color characteristics of all elements of the composition.

Graphic design production as a sign

The article attempts to show that graphic design production works through a particular semiotic process. The performance of a new sign category, the Graphic Sign, makes possible the articulation of the iconic, the plastic, and the linguistic signs in case of a specific dialogue that exists between the letters and the images in some graphic design productions. Overhauling theories of Eco, Groupe μ and Klinkenberg, we will be able to understand that Graphic Design generates meaning in a formal dimension, yet it also generates particular cognitive structures. Therefore, understanding this new kind of sign, we can recognize its communicational dimension and the powerful cultural creation platform this Design is, beyond its ability to make things visible and in the best cases clear and beautiful.