Micro/Macro Readings & Layering and Separation

Tufte had a lot of valuable advice on how to organize information, from letting freestanding elements become grid patterns to ways of achieving contrast, but I felt his views on Micro/Macro Readings were a bit debatable. His statement of “Simplicity of reading derives from the context of detailed and complex information, properly arranged,” is beautifully put, but even after reading his justification, I disagree with “to clarify, add detail.” I think that statement can be taken too far, too fast, and should only be used in moderation. But I guess it is true that most things should only be experienced in moderation.

The amount of detail in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial works wonderfully because detail is not explained in mark making but how the marks are arranged. I think other information design like the Electrical Resistivity of Copper, Gold, Palladium, and Silver and The Japanese National Railroad had too many marks for one display. The Japanese National Railroad operation diagram made no sense to me, mainly because I am not part of the proper discourse community, but all those lines would give me a headache if I had to look at them all day long. Majority of the numbers blend in with the lines as well. Maybe it was because the map was shrunk for purposes of the publication, but is it really necessary for all those lines on one page? Maybe the grid could be split up on transparent pages so information could be seen separately or as a whole.

Whenever I think of a successful map, I immediately think of Harry Beck’s London Underground Railway map. Beck does not display any geographical elements on his map because popular vote declared while riding the railway people just want to get from one stop to the other and want to know how many stops are in between. Riders of the system did not care how many streets they passed or what rivers were nearby. Beck chooses to include the essential detail to make it easy to read at a glance for every rider. Even reading Tufte’s article was easy to read because text was only in blocks 4.5 inches wide and was divided by pictures to give your eyes a break. I am much more enthused to look at information with some breathing space then for example reading a page with eight inch wide text blocks, in type size six point and small kerning. This same idea applies to visual information as well.

Multiples In Space & Time

In relation to our project, Tufte brings up the point that when static images are used to display time, they loose their motion and rhythm. For us, with flash and ability to include video, this shouldn’t be as much of a challenge. On page 112 there is a discussion of “false temporal struggles.” In addition to the lack of new, interesting data being presented because the items are sorted by color, the discussion of groupings reminds me of the Gestalt theory and how placing items near each other physiologically makes them one object. Attention needs to be directed to objects placed near each other when discussing information graphics. This same idea is related to Tufte’s suggestion of when using low-resolution screens, images should be separated by multiple pages to achieve contrast. With computers today, I would disagree because even on a low-resolution Internet page, if items are spaced and arranged correctly with plenty of white space to breathe, contrast can be achieved.

As for the final sentence of the article, I love it. Today’s world bombards you with visual noise through advertisements, television, etc. If the image isn’t going to communicate something worthwhile it is just going to be annoying.

Data Art

People are constantly questioning whether or not technology is deteriorating human relationships. With new communication tools, one can look at numerous environments and definitely see a reliance on e-mail and online chat rooms instead of face-to-face dialog. I have taken Internet classes where I never met my teacher or any of my classmates before. People can work at home and even some who do work in the office may only know their boss as a name that signs e-mails. What I like about this article is that it reminds us to not forget about human subjectivity. People can already create data art by making something impersonal attractive, but “maybe the more important challenge is how to represent the personal subjective experience of a person living in a data society.” I think it is interesting to think about how art use to express the sublime, but now with cyberspace, something majority cannot comprehend, we want to simplify things. Maybe it is to make the unknown presentable to those who do not understand it fully so they do not feel intimidated or scared of the new media.

One of my favorite metaphors that the author uses is comparing media access and the manipulation of software to the remix of a DJ. I like this example because it references Adobe Acrobat Reader, a program I use almost everyday. I just thought the arrow buttons were arrow buttons, but they actually resemble a tool we are already familiar with, a VCR. Things are the way they are because of history, and I think a lot of people, including myself, forget that. We end up skimming over and taking for granted the things that took years to develop.