Responce To Cardiff Interview

This interview helped me conceptualize our next project greatly. I didn’t even consider who our audience was before nor whether or I wanted this to be a group tour or a solo experience. Like any other project, research plays a large role and requires a lot of walking, listening, and observing all possibilities of the space and how they will be portrayed in audio. Another important point I took from the interview is providing various sounds and levels to achieve contrast and excitement. After reading the article, besides her pure talent, I admire how Cardiff can walk around a city holding a blue hairdresser’s head in front of her—I think I would be too embarrassed to do that.

Responce to Denis Cosgrove

Before reading this article, I always categorized a good map because of its design and if it is easy to use. I never thought about whether or not it communicated the actual atmosphere and mood of a place, which this article opened my mind to. I can definitely see how this kind of map is incredibly difficult today with expanding cities and transportation availabilities. It brings a huge challenge for designers. With original maps, pictures of monuments and carriages in the streets all gave a humanistic application. Maybe these things today would be too much to add to a map, but even line weight and color scheme can give some life to a two dimensional representation. Including several maps of one relatively small place in particular gives a traveler the opportunity to see what kind of environment they will be exploring, just like how Manhattan Island was represented by Bollmann. Maps of smaller spaces, like a mall, could much easier represent a mood then a one page map of the United States, but I have never seen an interesting map of a shopping center.

In regards to this project, if the class was to represent Urbana-Champaign, we should really focus on what makes this community so unique compared to all others. Maybe it is because we are home to one of the nation’s largest University’s or maybe because of our agriculture and home to Morrow Plots. I think we have many interesting opportunities to explore.

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.

The Bonaventure

To be honest, both articles were a bit troublesome to read. I felt like I spent more time deciphering the language then soaking up the main concepts. Jameson seemed to be “far out there” with his subjective viewpoints of postmodernist space as a war zone and I found a better understanding and agreement with Davis. The metaphors Davis used to define postmodernism along with his explanation of the history of development of Los Angeles and its relation to foreign investors all made clear sense. In general, the one point that stuck out to me in relation to our assignment is that even though we are studying one space we need to be conscious of the outside environment as well because the exterior effects it just as the interior does. The decision making behind the Bonaventure building makes more sense understanding that the outside is full of smog and mirrors, as Davis describes. Surrounding culture, people, actions, etc all contribute to make our space what it is and we should be aware of this to make accurate conclusions.

Hieroglyphs and Dreams

Both these articles were extremely entertaining to read, partially due to the visual elements presented. Deciphering the images was just as important as the words, creating unordinary interactions in comparison to other textbook readings. I think one of the most important points from both articles is cultural impact in visual language development and how pictograms must be learned. As Miller would say reacting to Lupton’s discussion of bathroom signs, the pictograms of men and women have “seeped into the pores of our culture.” The signs do not have the silhouetted people using toilets but we all still understand them as bathroom signs because of their rich conceptual and historical development. This same idea applies the understanding of language, especially homophones, and how the English spelling system will never become rational because society is already deeply accustomed to its irrationality. This brings us a challenge as designers of a visual language in our current assignment. Symbols that we already know, we know because they have been around for years, but we must somehow create new semiotics that are highly communicative without rewarding them the time to become familiarized in society.

To continue discussion of the male and female bathroom signs we have all become so familiar with, I am currently taking a Gender Women’s Studies course and on the first day of class we briefly discussed them. My professor took a poll to see exactly how many women were wearing skirts to initiate a discussion on gender role expectations and if these silhouetted females and males were still appropriate. Today’s society creates gender more so then genetics. There is no longer a clear distinction between male and female and who can wear skirts and who cannot, but that is for a different class discussion. The point I am trying to make is that even those these pictograms are no longer correct, are they editable or are they like the English language were they will never be rational because it is embedded in our culture. This could also bring up an interesting discussion on Chief Illiniwek and how the same symbol communicates a wide variety of meaning and if this is enough support to keep or retire him.