The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Chicago currently has an exhibit titled Massive Change: The Future of Global Design (Sep 16 to Dec 31, 2006), which talks about the use of resources, and shows efficient designs for cars, buildings that produce more energy than they consume, etc. The problem: it's not art. While the exhibit is certainly informative and important, it does not fit into an art museum.
While working on the ZIPScribble map, I started to wonder how to untangle the beautifully scribbly lines, and finding the shortest path through all ZIP codes. In computer science, this is called the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP), and so I decided to make this the Travelling Presidential Candidate Map.
Visualization people often talk about mapping. Mapping is the process that translates data into a visual representation, and the main challenge in the visualization of abstract data. A good mapping is one that leads to insights into the data, while a bad mapping does not. It is important, however, to keep in mind what the purpose of the depiction is, or one runs the risk of applying the wrong standards.
This was bought in the store of the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
At a panel discussion at Vis 2006, we were blasted for raising the question, Is there Science in Visualization? A senior visualization researcher said that he was embarrassed that this question was being discussed, and that we were trying to push our way of doing things on the community. The panel was still a success, but this proved just how far we still have to go.
Visual representations of time are particularly interesting, because they seem so logical. A point in time is a point in the visualization, an interval is a line. But things are not always that simple: planning and temporal uncertainty require more powerful visual tools. Sets of Possible Occurrences (SOPOs) are an example of a visual representation of time that is very flexible and powerful – and totally unintuitive.
Making visualization more aesthetically pleasing is certainly an important goal. Another one is to make visualization a part of our everyday lives. Ambient information displays are a way of doing both, and they are often inspired by pieces of art. But what if the viewers think they are just looking at a picture, and don't realize that it presents information to them?
Pie charts are a ubiquitous way of showing percentages. But while we can see differences in angles quite well, reading the meaning of the difference is another matter, so for precise data, we still need the numbers. A little known variant of pie charts is not round, but square, and can be read with an accuracy of one percent. We will look at data on women in information technology using this method.
The main means of communication in science is the (printed) journal article or conference paper, which only contains text and static images. This limits the way we can illustrate change, interaction, and dynamics. We do not have the appropriate language to effectively describe our work not only in terms of what it shows, but how and why it works. We also lack a means of talking about our own and others' work in ways that critically reflect on what has been done. We need to learn from art criticism, where this is all possible.
Commenting on a diagram showing the flow of electricity from its production to its use (and waste), the author of the Junk Charts blog writes: As it stands, this chart murmurs but does not opine. Which is exactly what it should do.
The winner of the 2006 Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge (organized by Science and the National Science Foundation, NSF) shows "five well-known mathematical surfaces, rendered as glass objects in a highly realistic 'Still Life.'" Using reflection, colored lighting, and otherwise unstructured sufaces makes for an image that does not convey the actual shapes particularly well. But it sure is pretty.
On February 23rd, 2006, Apple's iTunes Music Store (iTMS, now called the iTunes Store) sold its one billionth song. In the days leading up that event, Apple had a countdown on its webpages, which provided interesting information about the download habits of its customers. This page provides a visualization of the collected data, as well as of data that others collected leading up to the 100 millionth and 500 millionth downloads.
Visualization is the visual communication of information - at least the way the term is understood in computer science. But in many ways, visualization is today mostly technical, empirical, and there is practically no theoretical foundation for what we are doing. There are also obvious connections with psychology, design, art, aesthetics, etc. This website tries to pull them all together and start making connections to push visualization to the next level.
