visualizations and images as objects of knowledge in art and design prof. lily díaz school of arts,...
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Visualizations and images as objects of knowledge in art and design
Prof. Lily Díaz School of Arts, Design and ArchitectureAalto UniversityMedia Lab Helsinki05.02.2014
Lily Díaz-Kommonen
Knowledge in design
• Tacit and embedded in practice• Situated and dependent on context
Lily Díaz-Kommonen
Visualisation artifacts
• They operate at a meta-indexical level. • Meta-indexical: They are more than the sum of its
parts They serve as the holding ground where codified and uncodified knowledge can meet.
Lily Díaz-Kommonen
Visualisation artifacts and knowledge
• They can operate as a holding place for tacit knowledge. (Tacit knowledge cannot easily be verbalized.)
• They can operate as a holding place for experiential knowledge. (Experiential knowledge is knowledge acquired through practice.)
• Many times, they are also the product of a situated practice. (Situated practice: They are context specific. In order to have access to the meaning of a representation, one must also have access to the codes.)
Lily Díaz-Kommonen
Visualisation artifacts and tacit knowledge
• Transform other ways of knowing, such as verbal and mathematical modes, into a visual format.
• Index, frame, or re-frame unarticulated knowledge.
• Represent different ways of knowing (or practices) through their ability to merge diverse systems of representation such as verbal, mathematical, pictorial...
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Visualisation artifacts as boundary objects
• Boundary objects that facilitate the coordination of work because they can be interpreted in a tightly focused way by specialists, while being simultaneously readable by generalists. (Leigh Star S. 1999)
• They create an arena for social interaction: the design process can be shared, at different points in time, by different members of a community.
• Since they influence the design process, it can be argued that, to a large extent they also influence the production process.
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Boundary object
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Boundary object
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Not all images are created equal...
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Iconicity
• Said of a sign or image that is a naturalistic representation of the object it denotes. (Elkins, 1999)– Based on the fact that an image of a real object
is usually based on an artifact of the real world.– Based on the fact that images can display
diverse grades of similarity with that object.
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Iconicity
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Iconicity and visualization
Berenice Abbott, c. 1960.
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Schema
• Images with pictures, writing and notations, usually based in reference lines and other geometric configurations.
• Is an abstract and simplified representation of a phenomenon, a structure, or a process in the world.
• It is of a ”Gestalt nature” since it presents all the diverse relationships that exist between the elements of a given phenomenon, structure, or process in an almost simultaneous and synchronic manner. (Costa, 1998)
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Schematization
• Involves the construction of abstract schema with the objective of effecting a graphic transformation of non-visible phenomena.
• For the purpose of communication, it makes use of methods of:– Abstraction– Synthesis– Intelligibility
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Schematization taxonomy(Joan Costa, Abraham Moles) 1. Visualizations based on different degrees of iconicity.
Childrens booksDiverse didactic materials.
2. Visualization of information of a figurative nature
Maps, thematic cartography, road maps, urban maps, architectural plans.
3. Schematization and inclusion of simple pictographs
Functional graphics such as those found in help and instruction manuals. Weather graphics.
4.Use of statistics and figurative information.
Technical and industrial graphics.
5. Use of abstraction and presentation of non-visible phenomena.
Scientific illustrations, scientific iconography.
6. Use of abstract analogy; zero degree of iconicity
Schematics that presents ideas, phenomena, and invisible processes.
7. Schematization of textual, non-iconic information.
Schematics that presents algebraic equations and scientific formulas.
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Schematization of an object
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Iconicity and schematization(Case study on chocolate)
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Schematization level 1
• 1. Visualization based on different degrees of iconicity– Example: Children’s books, didactic
illustrations
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Schematization level 1
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Schematization level 2
• Visualization of information of a figurative nature.– Example: Maps, thematic cartography,
road maps, urban maps and plans, architectural maps.
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Schematization level 2
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Schematization level 3
• Visualization based on schematization, simplification, and inclusion of pictograms.– Example: Functional graphics found in
help manuals, weather graphics.– Objective is to explain different
dimension of phenomena.
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Schematization level 3
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Schematization level 4
• Visualization based on schematization that makes use of statistics and figurative information.– Technical and industrial graphics
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Schematization level 4
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Schematization level 5
• Visualization based on abstraction. Includes the presentation of non-visible reality, phenomena, and conditions.– Example: Scientific illustrations used in
didactic communications, quantitative graphics, scientific iconography.
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Schematization level 5
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Schematization level 6
• Visualization based on abstraction through analogy. Schematization with zero degree of iconicity.– Schematics that presents ideas,
phenomena, and invisible processes.
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Schematization level 6
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Schematization level 7
• Schematization of information that is of an entirely textual, non-iconic nature.
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Schematization level 7
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Visualizations and models in art and design
• Translation of information into graphical format.
• Makes use of both iconic and schematic representations.
• Narrative-like structure, rhetorics.
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Visualisations
• Provide an ability to comprehend huge amounts of data.
• Allows for the perception of emergent properties that were not anticipated.
• Facilitates hypothesis building.• Revelatory aspect.
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Mediators that use tacit knowledge?
• Committed• Interiorized• Projective
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“We keep expanding our body into the world,
by assimilating to it sets of particulars
which we integrate into reasonable entities.
Thus we form intellectually and practically
an interpreted universe populated by entities
the particulars of which we have interiorized
for the sake of comprehending their meaning
in the shape of coherent entities.” (Polanyi, 29)
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We cannot really tell
beforehand what people
are going to see in images
... so ...
...we must test...
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Partial List of Sources
• Bertin, Jacques, The Semiology of Graphics, Diagrams, Networks,Maps, The University of Wisconsin Press,1983.
• Bowker, Geoffrey and Susan Leigh Star,Classification and its Consequences, MIT Press, 1999.
• Costa, Joan, La Esquemática, Visualizar la Información, Paidós, Barcelona, 1998.
• Moles, Abraham, Grafismo Funcionl, Barcelona, Ceac, 1990.• Elkins, James, The Domain of Images, Cornell University
Press, 1999.• O’Neal, Hank, Berenice Abbott, American Photographer,
McGraw-Hill, 1982• Polanyi, Michael, The Tacit Dimension, Peter Smith, 1983.
