New Precedents & Research

This week I focused on two aspects of last week’s feedback because I wanted to be more thoroughly focused on the aesthetic background of the next prototype. I focused on the Precedents and Research areas which are explained below. Precedents could influence a visualization of free form poetry or a pictographic data visualization.

P R E C E D E N T S: Concrete Poetry, Visual Poetry, & Typographics:

Muriel Cooper

• one of the first graphic designers to apply her skills to the computer screen
• make the images on our computers as clear and appealing as the best-designed printed graphics
• saw typography as a prime element for visual experimentation
• saw typography as a prime element for visual experimentation
• experiments with documents and her own texts

The Virtual Shakespeare Project was created to explore the design of a large body of textual information being the complete plays of William Shakespeare. The amount of text is on the order of one million words and the work itself has many structures that can be made visible: speeches, scenes, acts, and so forth. A rendering model was developed that is optimized for rapid navigation and changes in scale. If your viewpoint is close to the text it will be fully rendered. If it is farther away, and therefore smaller on the display, a simplified texture is used in place of each line of text. This technique, called greeking, maintains the overall shape of each line, although individual words are lost. As distance increases to the point where each line of text blurs into the next, each block of text is drawn as a simple rectangle of the same size and overall density. Breaks between the dialog of different characters are used as the delineator for the larger text blocks. Even at a great distance, the reader can still follow who was speaking and how much was said. The final stage comes when the dialogs become so small as to merge together. At this point each scene is rendered as a simple rectangle. As we move back to include ever larger amounts of information in our view, the display of the information becomes more abstract while maintaining visual continuity.

www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/mit/sectiond/small.html

Feedback from Prototype 1 Cycle

OVERALL: Strengthen the concept evidence and process
> more understanding prototypes aesthetic background to make a more precise and uniquely constructed project with better validity and sustenance

* show a revised diagram of the structural system and model of the communication space.

* try to find another word besides “lyrical” to describe the thesis: sarcastic approach, something else, or non-verbal graphic
______________________________________________________________________________
1. research what is happening in the model of the communication space
A) better grasp on the big picture of the manmade process:
human response in telecommunications is the human feedback > the human feedback causes chaos which leads to a type of physical/tangible global entropy

B) where is the communication coming from?

C) Massive change is being transparently controlled by the mass of people, such as the many to many communication patterns that are cultivating it’s public response. Therefore, is there a filter between the actual, scientifically proven massive change and the media hype? Through my project, am I becoming the filter between these two sources of information?

D) domains as a linear venn diagram of the input to filter, and filter to output structure of how the system works

Fall Prototype 1 Presentation – Part 1 Feedback

fall prototype 1 presentation

I should experiment with data visualization in general, and separate the visual development from the data development. I should gain a fluency in the possibilities with visualization because I could get unpredictable results depending on the dataset. It was suggested that I should do more iterations and experiments with data visualization because I’m not fluid enough in what I’m after in order to get into the system first, and understand what I’m aiming for. I should be non-literal in what I’m portraying, and to portray the emotion to the viewer and not the specifics – as in, maybe don’t use text as data but get more abstract – to get a result that people would want to look at.  I should look at all things and decide visually and conceptually if its interesting enough to be visualized as a lyrical narrative.

Other feedback…

Week 3 Prototyping

Here is what I tried to flush out and apply to my thesis for this week:

A) jump into a dataset or datasets: visualize an existing data stream, transforming it into something meaningful and provocative

B) the prototype could be a lyrical experiment, parallel and organic, or take a human centric, abstract, or a humorous approach with the selected dataset

C) contextualize where the interest in the Mass Change issue is

D) one idea would be to make something happen with the key terms surrounding the Mass Change concept (specifically, from the notes I gathered from 11th Hour movie)

E) possibly look into a dataset that explores what isn’t true about the green movement

G) it was suggested to make something that could propose a different ideology about mass change and the green transition by experimenting with the metaphysics of this issue

F) visualize the concept of entropy with real content while making a model of it with a real data set

Progressive thesis “thoughts” journal

So…this may sound sorta lame, but I decided to keep a week-to-week journal of the snippets of thoughts I’m starting to have about my thesis topic. Because I’m focusing on a current heated social issue, I wanted to keep a log of the “heated” thoughts I’ve been having on the situation as I delve into my research.

Week 1:

“content and at the same time nervous to be embarking on such a HUGE topic – why do I always do things the hard way? Oh well, there is, indeed, plenty to work with, to say the least. Keeping my mind way, way opened at this point.”

Week 2:

“experiencing an eye opening, but stimulating sense of gloom. i’m starting to have a change of heart on everything i previously accepted as part of everyday life like material wants/needs, grabbing a cup of coffee on-the-go, the ease of disposable behaviors that we all do just because they’re easy and a big point of human living is to make everything we do easier on ourselves. ugh…we are so wasteful. “

Week 3:

“starting to hit a point of confusion…making progress, but questioning my intentions…

Week 4:

“I need to dive in deeper and get messier, opening up too many cans of worms. “

Week 3 Research

The Human Use of Human Beings – Norbert Weiner

• society can only be understood through a study of the messages and the communication facilities which belong to it; and that in the future development of these messages and communication facilities, messages between man and machines, between machines and man, and between machine and machine, are destined to play an ever increasing part
• the commands through which we exercise our control over our environment are a kind of information which we impart to it
• we are always fighting nature’s tendency to degrade the organized and to destroy the meaningful; the tendency…for entropy to increase
• the lucky accident which permits the continuation of life in any form on this earth even without restricting life to something like human life, is bound to come to a complete and disastrous end because  the chemical reactions necessary to life as we know it are extremely limited range of physical conditions
• In a very real sense we are shipwrecked passengers on a doomed planet. Yet even in a shipwreck, human decencies and human values do not necessarily vanish, and we must make the most of them.
• limited consideration of the future is foreign to the emotional euphoria of the average man, and particularly to that of the average American

Mass Change – text data from 11th Hour movie

• disharmony
• superior lifeform
• selfishness
• waste
• irreputable damage
• greed factor in human civilization
• not in tune with nature
• why aren’t we responding?
• what are the forces that are blocking change?
• progress means nature was an eternally abundant resource
• oil & agriculture caused population growth
• ancient sunlight created fossil fuels
• find harmony between people and nature
• non-renewable energy sources must be the anchor of the system now
• global disturbance
• magnified human race inside ecology
• more caution
• human actions lead to chemical imbalance in atmosphere
• approaching climate tipping point; the loss of control
• environmental refugees
• figure out how to change human ways
• convergence of crises all of which are concern for life
• every living system in biosphere is at a rate of decline, not stable or improving
• planet is seamless
• no “away” from pollution

Data Visualization Process

Click to see larger image

Generative Definitions, Concepts, & Key-Words

Generative Art is:

• “a term given to work which stems from concentrating on the processes involved in producing an artwork, usually (although not strictly) automated by the use of a machine or computer, or by using mathematic or pragmatic instructions to define the rules by which such artworks are executed.” ~ Adrian Ward
• “any art practice where the artist creates a process, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other procedural invention, which is then set into motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a completed work of art.” ~ Philip Galanter

Terms & Short Descriptors:

• Natural language Rules => code behind the artwork that remains relatively hidden
• Algorithm => often mathematical to automatically or semi-automatically generate expressions in more conventional artistic forms
• Process-Based => functions as a dynamic complex systems able to generate endless variations
• Rules / Instructions-Based => external to the artist that either produces works of art or is itself
  a work of art
• Determinants => programmed to define the space/environment and, thus, what data is collected
• Autonomous System => system is set into motion with some degree of self-activation or incorporates inputs from a user or environment
• Dynamic Complex Systems => generates endless variations complex relations of production
• Mirror of Nature => maintains a naturalness of the industrial object
• Synthesis => between art and science
• Visual Representation => of  complex processes
• Random Factors => produces organic behavior
• Evolutionary Process => main technique of development and main message of
• Output => system that produces the series of resources
• Input => data or environmental factors retrieved from the system
• Balanced Output => trying to achieve this while capturing decisions as logical structures

Systems Thinking | Entropy and Homeostasis

SYSTEMS THINKING:

[ KEY WORDS & PHRASES: overall system | component parts | context of relationships | the part in relation to the whole | distance | time | organizational communication ]

• A unique approach to problem solving in that it views certain “problems” as parts of an overall system, rather than focusing on individual outcomes and contributing to further development of the undesired element or problem.
• It is a framework that is based on the belief that the component parts of a system can best be understood in the context of relationships with each other and with other systems, rather than in isolation.
• The only way to fully understand why a problem or element occurs and persists is to understand the part in relation to the whole.
• It illustrates that events are separated by distance and time and that small catalytic events can cause large changes in complex systems.
• Acknowledging that an improvement in one area of a system can adversely affect another area of the system, it promotes organizational communication at all levels in order to avoid the silo effect.