introduction to indexical design conference 2016
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This document discusses the experience of data and materiality through indexical design. It explores how images and visualizations can help build knowledge by not just representing data symbolically, but also showing causal relationships and physical evidence through indexical traces. Examples are given of data visualizations that function indexically by framing phenomena, ambient displays that can be read like traces, and citizen science projects that establish physical evidence. The document examines how traces connect representational practices to the physical world and are discovered through the act of reading them, sitting at the intersection of meaning and materiality.
introduction to indexical design conference 2016
- 1. 25 JUN the experience of information and materiality of data Indexical Design Fenway Center Northeastern University 77 St. Stephen Street Boston, MA Organized by the MFA program in Information Design and Visualization Department of Art + Design
- 2. Peircean Semiology revisited iconic symbolic indexical Peirce, Charles Sanders. "What is a sign." (1894).
- 3. symbolic indexical 0 25 50 75 100 April May June July 0 25 50 75 100 April May June July 0 7.5 15 22.5 30 0 4 8 12 16 7% 8% 10% 11% 29% 35% iconic ?
- 4. Information design and visual analytics How can images, visualizations, visual languages, diagrams … help us build knowledge? What makes a good research question? Ursus Wehrli – Tidying up Art - http://www.kunstaufraeumen.ch/en is data visualization really all about symbolic operations? three reasons why we do not think so.
- 5. #1. The kinship between indexical phenomena and languages of visualization
- 6. we can read certain traces like data visualizations
- 9. The seismograph shows the dual role of the trace as symbol (linechart) and index
- 10. Kamel Makhloufi, “function”, 2010 indexical relationship in the digital domain - 1 pixel = 1 casualty (chart with defined resolution)
- 11. #2. Implicit causality: traces and visual evidence
- 12. “Seven” (1995), Dir. David Fincher
- 13. • Public Lab, Brooklyn NY. Balloon Mapping of the Gowanus Canal. Photo Josh Weinstein establishing physical evidence as a central concern also in citizen science
- 14. Galton, Francis. 1892. Finger Prints. Macmillan and Company. traces are the result of the method of measurement. they may be (literally) objective but are not necessarily neutral
- 15. to see tree rings, we have to cut a tree
- 16. #3 Experience: traces do not explain, they show
- 17. Adrian Pratt Router we can read symbolic representations like traces (router LEDs as ambient display)
- 18. Subvisual Subway, Craig Ward, 2016 problems of representation across scales - Biology / micro biome projects
- 19. Design principles of indexical design: framing, not mapping a phenomenon Offenhuber, Dietmar, and Orkan Telhan. 2015. “Indexical Visualization – the Data-Less Information Display.” In Ubiquitous Computing, Complexity and Culture, edited by Ulrik Ekman, Jay David Bolter, and Lily Diaz. New York: Crc Press.
- 20. Wilks, Kiesl, Moser, 2007, Garden of Eden, air quality display, Ars Electronica 2007
- 21. Lorenzo Scarpelli, Xiaxin Chen, Sound Identity 2015
- 22. "Is reading traces an ancient relic of “wild knowledge,” or is it present in all developed symbolic, epistemic, and interpretative practices? How can we differentiate reading traces from reading text, and from interpreting linguistic and visual signs? Are traces the seam where the meaningless becomes meaningful? Do they connect our representational practices with the tangibility, physicality, and materiality of the world? Are traces discovered or are they constructed in the act of reading?" translated from: Krämer, Sybille, Gernot Grube, and Werner Kogge. 2007. Spur: Spurenlesen Als Orientierungstechnik Und Wissenskunst. 1st ed. Suhrkamp.
- 23. Pedro Cruz & Tom Starr - conference program Cyanometer - Horace-Bénédict de Saussure and Alexander von Humboldt, 1789