Seminar 12 Graphesis, PowerPoint, and Visual Literacy

Introduction to the Digital Liberal ArtsMDST 3703 / 7703

Fall 2010

Business

• Most quizzes graded—definitely by studio• Apologies for the response questions …

Review

• Timeline pops out in the category view in Carrington theme

• If you are still having problems, share your spreadsheet with me (Gmail name = ontoligent)

• If you have events, you could use one!

Overview

• From visualization to visual literacy– To “establish a critical frame for understanding

visualization as a primary mode of knowledge production” (Drucker)

• PowerPoint as an entrée into this topic– We know PowerPoint is a problem; we want to know

why• Key Question– What do we need to know about visual media to be

effective digital scholars?

graphesis

graphesisvisual knowledge production; image work

graphesisOpposite of mathesis –Science, math as universal language

graphesisthe basis of mathesis

Media are always embedded in culture. Science was made possible by exact copy printing, a visual language (Ivins 1953)

http://21st.century.phil-inst.hu/2002_konf/Nyiri/web_ivins.JPG

A language of science was created in the 19th century that was linked to the rise of nation states and bureaucracy

William Playfair

http://www.visionlearning.com/library/large_images/image_4108.png

William Playfair (1786) The Commercial and Political Atlas: Representing, by Means of Stained Copper-Plate Charts, the Progress of the Commerce, Revenues, Expenditure and Debts of England during the Whole of the Eighteenth Century.

http://dougmccune.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/playfair_north_america_trade2.jpg

http://www.economist.com/images/20071222/5107CR1B.jpg

http://www.math.yorku.ca/SCS/Gallery/images/priestley.gif

Joseph Priestley's life-time graph of the lifespans of famous people. One of the first graphical time lines. Joseph Priestly, A Chart of Biography, 1765.

http://cartographia.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/minard_napoleon.png

Minard’s map

http://cartographia.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/minard-full.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Minard-carte-viande-1858.png

These images are both beautiful and effective

As digital scholars, our job is to learn how to read, review, and produce them

The theory of graphesis teaches us that images have an epistemology, or “cognitive style”

http:///Gettysburg/sld001.htm

Why PowerPoint is Evil

• Monotony of slides homogenizes argument– “Death by PowerPoint”

• Bullet points break up and distort thoughts• Cheesy graphics

Non-rational logic

“The pieces became like short films”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P6Pi1JaIm8

Technology is not neutral

“Technology has properties--affordances--that make it easier to do some activities, harder to do others: The easier ones get done, the harder ones neglected.”

“Each technology poses a mind-set, a way of thinking about it and the activities to which it is relevant..The more successful and widespread the technology, the greater its impact upon the thought patterns of those who use it, and consequently, the greater its impact upon all of society. Technology is not neutral, it dominates.”

Norman, Donald A., Things that Make Us Smart, Perseus Books, 1993, p. 243See http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001yB

paradoxes

• Computers are based on mathesis, or logico-mathematical thinking

• And visualization is based on computing• Ergo, mathesis precedes graphesis• But, mathesis rests on graphesis– The iconography of mathematical symbols– The products of mathesis must always be

visualized with forms that have a rhetoric

http://oneparticularwave.files.wordpress.com/2006/11/escher.gif

Lawrence Lessig http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/10/the_lessig_meth.html Dick Hardt http://identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/Michael Wesch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ_-q2sD-Co http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cd7v1tOloI&feature=related

Performative PowerPoint