[iDC] Theories of Information Visualization

Wed Jan 13 18:00:13 UTC 2010

Great questions, Anna, and you are right to point out it's not a  
binary-- criticality is inside the 'how', in fact that's just the  
productive point from which an aesthetic project can proceed from a  
scientific data set.  Can you send your bibliography or course  
abstract our way?

As you wrote on -empyre- back in 2004 ,  (snip)

> I agree that alot of art has tended towards working at the user  
> interface level in terms of re-arranging representational  
> components. But this is also sometimes because the interface is  
> conceived not as encounters between nonhumans(data, machines etc)  
> and humans(bodies) but as some kind of middle ground where the two  
> can exchange communicationally through a mutually understood  
> language of visual representation ...what I liked so much about 1:1  
> was the way it frustrated the intelligibility of data to direct  
> translation through its gaps, lags, nonreturns of queries and hence  
> at the very point of contact, the interface, made the data in some  
> ways unmappable in conventional cartographic terms. I think there is  
> a whole history of new media art that challenges this interfaciality  
> of the interface from David Rokeby through to Simon Penny...and I  
> think this occurs because it refuses the representational status of  
> the interface. It's perhaps less obvious how this happens in GUI  
> environments but I'm sure there are instances of these and perhaps  
> c5's work is part of this,
>

In a new project observing alternative energy plants in remote parts  
of California I've indulged in a disappearing/opening iteration or  
'tile' effect ncluding layers from alien sound maps (Brian Mackern's  
Temporal de Santa Rosa)  http://vimeo.com/8716011
(Tesserae White Cloud Medanos Turbines, 2009-10)

In Slipstreamkonza (2002-4)  the whole project was about is there a  
way to 'show' atmospheric carbon absorption in an ecological  
'sink' (the tall grass prairie)  but it was so boring and banal to  
just assign one on one values (like,
a sound for a change in the spreadsheet),  I was much more into  
playing with an intermediary interface from John Cage (redeploying  
HPSCHD), with Henry Warwick --  and wrote about it in (slightly  
purple)prose. Motivated
by the notion of 'inscape' (GM Hopkins), and moving through a Fluxus  
tactic.  http://www.christinamcphee.net/slipstream_konza/index.html

Gaia is emitting 'speech' but it is unintelligible so we have to build  
these strange mechanisms of wonder to 'hear' it or pretend, as  
children do  (an impulse not unknown to the Museum of Jurassic  
Technology:-)

But this thought about poetics and 'speech of landscape' as  
sonification was picked up by the computer semiologists first at  
COSIGN 2004... 'day by day pours forth speech' (Psalms)

C. McPhee, "Slipstreamkonza Semiotics: Towards a Telemimetic Sublime  
in the Data Landscape".In: Proceedings of the 4th International  
Converence on Computational Semiotics in Games and New Media,  
University of Split, Croatia, 2004.
  http://www.cosignconference.org/downloads/papers/ 
mcphee_cosign_2004.pdf

and then later for Brett Stalbaum's very generous and enthusiastic   
effort to create the editorial compilation "BIG DATA 1 and 2" with  
essays by Lisa Jevbratt, Andrea Polli and me.  Originally published  
for YLEM (San Francisco) 2004. Big Data One online here http://www.christinamcphee.net/writings/pdfs/Big%20DataOne.pdf

more refs on inscape as it could apply to data fields and the  
'depiction'' of 'nature' http://www.toodoc.com/Inscape-and-landscape-The-human-perception-of-environment-pdf.html

But I expect you are probably the best authority on the critical space  
of info sonification and I 'd love to hear more from you about it  
(refs, comment).

xc

naxsmash
naxsmash at mac.com

christina mcphee

http://christinamcphee.net
http://naxsmash.net

On Jan 12, 2010, at 8:50 PM, Anna Munster wrote:

> The question is:
> do you want a straight course on 'how does data get visualized'?
> or do you want something that critically examines what it means to  
> visualize (or for that matter sonify), data?
>
> I would imagine probably a bit of both....
>
> This is a good overall text:
> Richard Wright 'Data Visualisation' in M. Fuller ed. Software  
> Studies: A lexicon (MIT Press, 2008)
> Also you'll find some sections within this:
> N. K. Hayles (1990) Chaos Bound, Ithaca: Cornell University Press  
> (around pp160ff)
> useful
>
> I would also recommend this website which talks about Mitchell  
> Whitelaw's (Sean's recommendation) recent work doing interactive  
> visualisations at the National Screen and Sound Archives in  
> Australia...
>
> I am in the process of writing a segment of my course on Digital  
> Theory and Aesthetics on information visualisation and  
> sonification...let's stay in touch! I'd be happy to send you a  
> course outline in about a month when it's finished
> cheers
> Anna
>
>
>
> A/Prof. Anna Munster
> Deputy Director Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics
> School of Art History and Art Education
> College of Fine Arts
> UNSW
> P.O. Box 259
> Paddington
> NSW 2021
> 612 9385 0741 (tel)
> 612 9385 0615(fax)
> a.munster at unsw.edu.au
> ________________________________________
> From: idc-bounces at mailman.thing.net [idc-bounces at mailman.thing.net]  
> On Behalf Of Alan Sondheim [sondheim at panix.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, 13 January 2010 9:01 AM
> To: idc at mailman.thing.net
> Subject: Re: [iDC] Theories of Information Visualization
>
> One excellent book is Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin, Atlas of  
> Cyberspace -
> 2001, but absolutely amazing. Dodge has charged the Net for years and
> years.
>
> - Alan
>
>
> ==
> email archive: http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
> webpage http://www.alansondheim.org sondheimat gmail.com, panix.com
> ==
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