Week 9: Critical Visualisation

European Airspace Rebooted, created by by ITO World, based on the data retrieved from Flight Radar 24.

CRITICAL VISUALIZATION

CRITICAL VISUALIZATION

Below is a screen capture of the Bing Maps Twitter application, filtering tweets by the term 'ash'. Twitter users are, of course, referring to the ash from the Iceland volcano eruption. [ As illustrated on 17 April 2010 by Matthew Hurst: http://datamining.typepad.com/data_mining/]

CRITICAL VISUALIZATION

CRITICAL VISUALIZATION

What is “visualization”?

Visualization is the process of presenting data in a form that allows rapid understanding of relationships and findings that are not readily evident from raw data.

Ray and Charles Eames, Powers of Ten, 1977

Eventually, everything connects.Charles Eames

Paleolithic cave paintings in Lascaux, France

Mappae Mundi, 15th century

Data Visualization Research Lab

Five Principle Advantages of Visualization*

1) It helps us comprehend large amounts of data.2) It helps us perceive emergent properties we might not

have otherwise anticipated.3) It can reveal problems within the data itself.4) It facilitates our understanding of large-scale and small-

scale elements.5) It assists us in forming hypotheses.

*Colin Ware, Director, Data Visualization Research Lab

the information landscape

Sheppard Fairey posterUSA presidential campaign, 2008

“I feel that he is more a statesman than a politician.”

-Sheppard Fairey

“Art” of visualization should be understood as “a creative process concerned with not just the finished artifact but the framing, gathering, connecting, and arraying of data.”

In approaching visualization this way “we can also imagine it as a critical practice: sizing up and reformulating a terrain of knowledge as well as experimenting with new and alternative forms.”

VVisualisation of the blogsphere by Matthew Hurst:http://datamining.typepad.com/gallery/blog-map-gallery.html

Justice Mapping Center, “Architecture and Justice”

Data itself is never neutral; it is collected for a reason, and processed and presented for specific purposes…There is no such thing as raw data.

Peter Hall, Critical Visualization

The Laws of Simplicity

By John Maeda

Law 1: Reduce

The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.

Law 2: Organize

Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.

Law 3: Time

Savings in time feel like simplicity.

Law 4: Learn

Knowledge makes everything simpler.

Law 5: Differences

Simplicity and complexity need each other.

Law 6: Context

What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.

Law 7: Emotion

More emotions are better than less.

Law 8: Trust

In simplicity we trust.

Law 9: Failure

Some things can never be made simple.

Law 10: The One

Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.

“Always make maps; always question maps.”Denis Cosgrove, cartography historian