Week VIII: Forms of Expression/Forms of Content - What is Visualisation?

Considering the sheer number of information that people in our contemporary society consume, there has never been a better time to exercise our visual literacy. It would be almost impossible to fully process all of the data that we receive on our various mobile devices (phone, tablet, radio, laptop, etc.) in our everyday lives and this is causing publishers to constantly try to find new ways to disseminate information quickly and memorably. Thus visualisations have a prominent and practical role in the future.

Before beginning the readings for this week, I wasn’t aware of the many fields where visualisations could prove useful and the extent to which visualisations have filtered into several publishing platforms. As evidenced by Prismatic (2014), uses for visualisation range from accompanying journalistic stories by the New York Times and Wired to computer science to mapping public trends to psychology and neuroscience. Bonnie (2014) claims that understanding infographics will be a key skill for everyone in the workforce by 2020. I think some of these qualities are necessary and present today and will only become more pronounced as time passes.

Visualisations themselves come in many different shapes and forms. The use of line (Arnell, 2006) and colour seem to be the most popular way to represent data. Using these visual elements allows ideas to be communicated without fear of language barriers. Bick (2014) states that an individual’s interpretation of this data can be biased due to personal experiences and culture, yet that is the very nature of visualisation – absorbing information from data at an immediate, almost subconscious level.

I particularly enjoyed seeing the calorie equivalents (Wynn, 2007) because it helped me to realise that visualisations can showcase information in interesting and truthful ways. It would be interesting to see how infographics could be further applied to humanitarian issues or documenting changes in publishing (where is technology adoption booming? Which areas still prefer paperback novels?).

But what distinguishes visualisations from simple images or diagrams or models? I think the key lies in the visual metaphor and its abstract representation of data; what is being described is more specific than these other representations. Here are some examples of what I believe are visualisations:

Accompanying visuals to music played on Windows Media Player, thus creating visualisations of sound. Source: http://www.filewin.net/images/wmp24.jpg

Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics as an example of early visualisations of lanugage and historical events. In saying this, does this mean that written alphabets as symbols could be visualisations? Source: CJ Photo, https://www.flickr.com/photos/cjphoto/2833668951/sizes/l

Screenshot of a visualisation of bushfires in Australia from 1997 to 2008, allowing us to see which areas are more susceptible to bushfires, Source: Romsey Australia, http://home.iprimus.com.au/foo7/f1997-08.gif

References:

30 thought leaders in Data Visualisation 2014, Prismatic, accessed 13 September 2014, <http://getprismatic.com/story/1405797029064?utm_medium=email>.

Arnell, T. 2006, ‘the dashed line in use’, nearfield.org, accessed 12 September 2014, <http://www.nearfield.org/2006/09/the-dashed-line-in-use>.

Bick, E. 2014, ‘Emily Bick: Never mind the Quantitative’, The Wire, accessed 13 September 2014, <http://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/columns/emily-bick_never-mind-the-quantitative>.

Bonnie, E. 2014, ‘Top 10 Work Skills You’ll Need in 2020 (Infographic)’, Wrike, accessed 12 September 2014, <https://www.wrike.com/blog/08/08/2014/Top-10-Work-Skills-2020-Infographic>.

CJ Photo n.d., Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, photograph, Flickr, accessed 15 September 2014, <https://www.flickr.com/photos/cjphoto/2833668951/sizes/l>.

filewin n.d., Windows Media Player 11, screenshot image, filewin: download software, accessed 15 September 2014, <http://www.filewin.net/images/wmp24.jpg>.

Romsey Australia 2012, Australian bushfire history 1997 to 2008, graphic image, accessed 15 September 2014, <http://home.iprimus.com.au/foo7/f1997-08.gif>.

Wynn, L. S. 2007, ‘What Does 200 Calories Look Like?’, wiseGEEK, accessed 12 September 2014, <http://www.wisegeek.com/what-does-200-calories-look-like.htm>.