Week 5: Information as Ideology

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CRITICAL VISUALISATION [information as ideology]


CRITICAL VISUALISATION [information as ideology]

Created by students of American African-American activist W.E.Dubois in 1902 from http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/


CRITICAL VISUALISATION [information as ideology]

The Path of Protest Designed by Garry Blight and Sheila Pulham for the guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 22 March 2011




CRITICAL VISUALISATION


What is “visualisation�? Visualisation is the process of presenting data in a form that allows rapid understanding of relationships and findings that are not readily evident from raw data.


Ray and Charles Eames, Powers of Ten, 1977









Eventually, everything connects. Charles Eames


Paleolithic cave paintings in Lascaux, France


Mappae Mundi, 15th century




Data Visualization Research Lab


Five Principle Advantages of Visualization* 1) It helps us comprehend large amounts of data. 2) It helps us perceive emergent properties we might not have otherwise anticipated. 3) It can reveal problems within the data itself. 4) It facilitates our understanding of large-scale and small-scale elements. 5) It assists us in forming hypotheses.

*Colin Ware, Director, Data Visualization Research Lab


the information landscape


“I feel that he is more a statesman than a politician.� -Sheppard Fairey

Sheppard Fairey poster USA presidential campaign, 2008




“Art” of visualization should be understood as “a creative process concerned with not just the finished artifact but the framing, gathering, connecting, and arraying of data.” In approaching visualization this way “we can also imagine it as a critical practice: sizing up and reformulating a terrain of knowledge as well as experimenting with new and alternative forms.”

V Visualisation of the blogsphere by Matthew Hurst: http://datamining.typepad.com/gallery/blog-map-gallery.html


We have allowed the criminal justice system to replace and displace a whole host of other public institutions and civic infrastructures. Laura Kurgan

Justice Mapping Center, “Architecture and Justice�


Data itself is never neutral; it is collected for a reason, and processed and presented for specific purposes‌There is no such thing as raw data. Peter Hall, Critical Visualization


“Always make maps; always question maps.” Denis Cosgrove, cartography historian


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