Media Arts and Technology Graduate Program UC Santa Barbara MAT 259 Visualizing Information Winter 2006George Legrady1 MAT 259 Visualizing Information  What is Visualization?  Rhetoric of the Image  Intersections of Computing & Data Organization January 17, 2006

Media Arts and Technology Graduate Program UC Santa Barbara MAT 259 Visualizing Information Winter 2006George Legrady2 Visualization  Any technique for creating images, diagrams, animations to communicate any message  Analogous: An image, or picture visually reproduces the likeness of some subject  Its form is usually 2 dimensional, sometimes simulating 3D space  Still images exist in the moment, require multiple images to show transition and change  Time-based images allow for transition & change  Interactive images allow for multilinear retrieval

Media Arts and Technology Graduate Program UC Santa Barbara MAT 259 Visualizing Information Winter 2006George Legrady3 Image as Communication  Usually, the image conveys meaning, but not necessarily  An image may also convey a secondary message: mood, a feeling, (emotional values)  Representation can be: a)literal or denotative: A precise description of a situation b)connotative: 2 nd level meaning, sub-text, inferred information c)metaphoric: symbolic representation where a thing is presented as something else d)specialized: image cannot tell us its meaning, outside information needed e)abstract: not coded to convey literal information, but may impact in other ways

Media Arts and Technology Graduate Program UC Santa Barbara MAT 259 Visualizing Information Winter 2006George Legrady4 What are the Elements of Visualization? 3 layers of Messages: 1)A coded iconic message: (cultural information)  A set of colors with specific references  Inventory, a complete system  Spatial referent, point of view  Stylistic: Connotes cultural identity 2)A non-coded iconic message:  If photographic: literal rather then symbolic 3)A linguistic Message:  Captions, labels, explanations, film dialogue, comic strip balloon: (Can images escape text?)

Media Arts and Technology Graduate Program UC Santa Barbara MAT 259 Visualizing Information Winter 2006George Legrady5

Media Arts and Technology Graduate Program UC Santa Barbara MAT 259 Visualizing Information Winter 2006George Legrady6 Linguistic Message: Anchorage  Anchorage: (Ideological)  The text guides not only identification but interpretation  Helps me to choose the correct level of perception (limits the projective power of the image)  Complementary:  Text provides meaning not found in the image  Image is easier to read Text & images are fragments. Unity of message realized at a higher order: that of the story

Media Arts and Technology Graduate Program UC Santa Barbara MAT 259 Visualizing Information Winter 2006George Legrady7

Media Arts and Technology Graduate Program UC Santa Barbara MAT 259 Visualizing Information Winter 2006George Legrady8 Images Created Through Technology  Chemical: silver based, mechanical photography  Electrical, Cathode ray tube  Xray: electro-magnetic radiation  Computational processes, mathematical based

Media Arts and Technology Graduate Program UC Santa Barbara MAT 259 Visualizing Information Winter 2006George Legrady9 Discipline Specific Visualizations  Each discipline has a particular implementation goal  LSIS: citation indexing, bibliographic indexing, etc.  Scientific Visualization: Map physical phenomena in 2D, or 3D  Information Visualization: Analyzing and transforming nonspatial data into visual form for cognition  Geographic Information Systems (GIS): Cartographic framework, a familiar way to map data  Art: Aesthetics, complexity, culturally meaningful results  Architecture: to convey information & affect

Media Arts and Technology Graduate Program UC Santa Barbara MAT 259 Visualizing Information Winter 2006George Legrady10 Goal Driven Methodologies  Information Visualization: visually map abstract, nonspatial info for cognition  Information retrieval research in vast data sets  Depicting the overall semantic structure of a set of documents  Identifying patterns through visualization (DNA)

Media Arts and Technology Graduate Program UC Santa Barbara MAT 259 Visualizing Information Winter 2006George Legrady11 References  “Rhetoric of the Image”, Roland Barthes  “Envisioning Information”, Edward Tufte