DOM-E5058 Information Visualization and Design
Department of Media, Media Lab
Prof. Lily Díaz and guests
3 – 21 February, 2015
Miestentie 3, room
Course description: Based on the workshop taught in the Media Lab since 2002, this is a longer course that introduces the student to concepts in information visualization and design and their application in two major aspects of culture, namely those of time and space.
Learning outcomes: The students will learn about visualization and information design from a cultural historical perspective. In addition, they will learn about the basic properties of the graphic system, the representation of time and space, how to prepare data for visualization, as well as perform an augmented reality exercise.
WEEK ONE
Day 1: 03.02.2015
Here is the schedule for week one. The instructions for creating the narratives for the Personal Timeline exercise are in the same attachment as the schedule.
During the class today I presented a Brief History of Visualization. (Note that the slides are bit big and so I have placed them in a Dropbox folder where you can access them.) The work of Jacob Moreno as inventor of the Sociogram was included. “Sociograms are the charts or tools used to find the Sociometry of a social space.” [1] Here are some interesting examples of where some of his original ideas have led.
“Six degrees of separation,” A visualization of the idea that everyone is no more than six ‘steps’ away from each person on Earth. By Laurens van Lieshout, April 2007, Wikimedia Commons.
Small-World Networks: “Six-degrees of separation” – John D Barrow Gresham College maths lecture video (9:04 mins.) explains the experiment by Stanley Milgram.
Using the Internet Movie Database, this Android application, Oracle of Bacon, will return a simple visualization of the degrees of separation between actor Kevin Bacon and other actors in the movie industry.
Here are some interesting sites that you should visit:
• Milestones in the History of Thematic Cartography, Statistical Graphics, and Data Visualization by Michael Friendly and Daniel J. Denis. See the website here.
• InfoAesthetics website: Inspired by Lev Manovich’s definition of ‘information aesthetics’, this weblog explores the symbiotic relationship between creative design and the field of information visualization.
Below I list two fine papers by prof. Ian Spence about William Playfair and the “graphic method of statistical data.”
Similarity cluster (SC) map visualization of Alexader Reichstein’s Bestiarium Construendom by Systems of Representation
[1] Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociogram, Accessed 04.02.2015.
Day 2: 04.02.2015
Today we are going to being work on the personal timelines. The idea behind this exercise is to reflect about notions such as Embodiment, Research, Visualization & Design.
Day 3: 05.02.2015
Here are examples of the Retinal Variables. Also an interesting example of working with line and tension by artist A. Balasubramanian video from the 2010 exhibition ONLINE – Drawing through the Twentieth Century at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Also today we present and discuss initial concepts for the personal timelines being created.
WEEK TWO
Day 1: 10.02.2015
Today we are going to present and discuss the results from the Personal Timelines exercise. Also we will have a discussion on the question of What is Time?
During the afternoon/evening you are responsible for reading the following articles:
• Using Visualization to Understand Big Data
• The Eyes Have It: A Task by Data Type Taxonomy for Information Visualizations
• The Design of “X by Y”
(Note that the articles are in Dropbox)
Here is the schedule of activities for this week.
WEEK THREE
Day 1: 17.02.2015
Today we will go over the results of your work with Self-organizing Map (SOM).
Here is the schedule of activities for this week.