From godwin at umail.ucsb.edu Thu Feb 2 18:57:39 2006 From: godwin at umail.ucsb.edu (Mike Godwin) Date: Thu Feb 2 18:56:50 2006 Subject: [Visinfo][dorkbotsocal-announce] DORKBOTSOCAL10 - Machine Project Feb 4th 2006, 1pm: Reas / Khan / Dockray] Message-ID: <43E2C6A3.6000000@umail.ucsb.edu> A couple expressed interest in this meeting, so I'm forwarding on the invite. Casey Reas is the co-founder of processing (processing.org) and will be introducing several people who've been working with hardware.processing... -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [dorkbotsocal-announce] DORKBOTSOCAL10 - Machine Project Feb 4th 2006, 1pm: Reas / Khan / Dockray Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2006 14:56:56 -0500 (EST) From: dorkbot-socal To: dorkbotsocal-announce@dorkbot.org DORKBOTSOCAL10 - Machine Project Feb 4th 2006, 1pm: Reas / Khan / Dockray [ S P E C S ] *** February 4th 2006 - 1pm (Saturday) *** Machine Project *** 1200 D North Alvarado Street *** Los Angeles, CA 90026 *** http://www.machineproject.com -- [ O V E R V I E W ] This event will focus on how Processing - an open source programming language and environment for people who want to work with images, animation, and sound - can be used to interact and control electronics and other physical devices. Two physical computing initiatives related to Processing will be presented: Osman Khan will explore the Arduino project and Sean Dockray will present the Wiring project . In addition, some recent Arduino/Wiring projects developed at UCLA will be demonstrated. ------ [ P R E S E N T E R S ] The event will begin with an introduction by Casey Reas , co-initiator of the Processing project . Casey will introduce the project that was co-developed with Ben Fry from ideas explored in the Aesthetics and Computation Group at the MIT Media Lab. Processing also recently won a Golden Nica award at Prix Ars Electronica 2005. -- Osman Khan on Arduino Osman Khan will be giving a presentation and lecture on Arduino . Arduino is an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple I/O board and a development environment that implements the Processing/Wiring language. Arduino can be used to develop stand-alone interactive objects or can be connected to software on your computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, MaxMSP). The Arduino board is inexpensive and easily assembled by hand. This provides a cheap and easy way to get started learning how to assemble circuits. Osman Khan is an artist interested in using technology to construct engines that help create artifacts for social criticism and aesthetic expression. His work explores certain themes to see how technology fabricates as well as subverts our understanding of identity, communication, and public space through interactive installations and site-specific interventions. His work has been shown at Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria, Beyond Media Festival, Florence, Italy; UC Santa Barbara, USA; LALALA Westweek, Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles, USA; nano, LACMALab, Los Angeles, USA; telic gallery, Los Angeles, USA; Dangerous Curve, Los Angeles, USA; bank, Los Angeles, USA. Osman received his MFA from UCLA's Department of Design | Media Arts. -- Sean Dockray on Wiring Sean Dockray will be giving an overview and demonstration of the Wiring platform . Wiring is a physical computing platform with a sophisticated I/O board and a development environment utilizing a Processing style language for programming microcontrollers. Sean Dockray is an artist whose practice follows from research into social systems and events. He is a founder of the Los Angeles chapter of the Institute for Advanced Architecture; a producer of Building Sound, an internet radio program about architecture; and has worked with the Center for Land Use Interpretation on their Land Use Database. Dockray received a BSE from Princeton University in Civil Engineering and Architecture in 1999 and completed coursework towards an MFA in Critical Studies from the California Institute of the Arts in 2002. His individual and collaborative work has been shown at the Telic Gallery (Los Angeles), the Turtle Bay Museum (Redding), Basekamp Gallery (Philadelphia), Oni Gallery (Boston), Marcuse Gallery (San Diego), Contemporary Artists Center (North Adams), LeRoy Neiman Gallery (New York), and the Storefront for Art and Architecture (New York). -- Arduino/Wiring Projects from UCLA This portion of the event will include quick presentations of some of the best projects built in a recent class by Sean Dockray and a workshop by Tom Igoe of NYU. These demos involve the creation of electronic instruments build for performance and small boxes imbued with behavior. All projects sense some aspect of its environment (e.g. light, distance, orientation, touch) and have a physical output (e.g. light, sound, motion). Each project uses an Arduino or Wiring boards as a software control system for mapping the input to the output. A variety of sensors have been explored: orientation, tilt, acceleration, light, sound, IR and sonar distance, RFID, etc. A variety of different actuators have been used: solenoid, step, DC, and servo. ------ [ M O R E _ I N F O R M A T I O N ] Map to DORKBOTSOCAL10: http://maps.yahoo.com/maps_result?ed=eZDrvOp_0ToiS8la6vHBH5OFfQ3.LmII34nqpRTULQ--&csz=90026&country=us&new=1&name=&qty= Please contact Garnet Hertz if you are interested in giving a presentation at an upcoming DORKBOTSOCAL event. LOST? If you're completely lost, call nine-four-nine-291-5666 on the day of the event for directions. * PLEASE REDISTRIBUTE THIS ANNOUNCEMENT * ........................................................................ .........dorkbot: people doing strange things with electricity.......... ..........................http://dorkbot.org............................ ........................................................................ From stacy at geog.ucsb.edu Thu Feb 2 19:05:59 2006 From: stacy at geog.ucsb.edu (Stacy Rebich) Date: Thu Feb 2 19:03:57 2006 Subject: [Visinfo] an interesting image categorization approach Message-ID: <006d01c6286e$c2a47830$3c6a6f80@phoebe> http://people.csail.mit.edu/torralba/iccv2005/index.html Here's a link to a course that I found about image categorization. I came across it when I was looking for info about LDA (latent dirichlet allocation). Even though this info is about images rather than text processing, it's based on the same principles and offers the clearest non-technical explanation of the algorithm that I've found. I'm trying out LDA with my dataset, and I thought some of you who are doing stuff with images might find it interesting. Stacy ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Stacy Rebich Graduate Student Department of Geography University of California Santa Barbara, CA 93106 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://zydeco.mat.ucsb.edu/pipermail/visinfo/attachments/20060202/8c0a6a9b/attachment.html From angus.forbes at gmail.com Tue Feb 7 13:28:21 2006 From: angus.forbes at gmail.com (Angus Forbes) Date: Tue Feb 7 13:28:39 2006 Subject: [Visinfo] LSI using matlab tutorial Message-ID: Hi Stacy and whoever else is intersted, I found a promising tutorial on LSI using Matlab. Have you seen this it? It includes sample data to test with. http://www.joma.org/images/upload_library/4/vol5/search/JOMASEMatlab.html from this article: http://www.joma.org/mathDL/4/?pa=content&sa=viewDocument&nodeId=636&bodyId=1104 -A From godwin at umail.ucsb.edu Tue Feb 7 22:12:35 2006 From: godwin at umail.ucsb.edu (Mike Godwin) Date: Tue Feb 7 22:11:19 2006 Subject: [Visinfo] Neat-o visualization Message-ID: <43E98BD3.4030700@umail.ucsb.edu> Comprehensive visualization of 4 letter words in 3 dimensional space. Built in processing with source code on the site http://toxi.co.uk/p5/base26/ From corina1 at umail.ucsb.edu Sat Feb 11 21:57:14 2006 From: corina1 at umail.ucsb.edu (Corina S. Schweller) Date: Sat Feb 11 21:57:24 2006 Subject: [Visinfo] Week 3 Reading Message-ID: <20060211215714.tek2f9ttkw04o004@webaccess.umail.ucsb.edu> Corina Schweller Week 3 Reading Info Interaction Design - Shedroff Shedroff believes it is vital for us to have the skill to communicate data in a way that will allow others to experience that information in a comprehensive manner. This can be accomplished in any medium since the process is similar across various mediums. It is not enough to have data, there must be a way to share it with others in a way that they can understand. The Shedroff Data model shows the direct correlation of data to wisdom. Data turns into Information and then knowledge, with the final step being wisdom. I'm not sure about the term 'wisdom' since you can understand data that will not make you any wiser. Information and knowledge can also have a blurring boundary since I think they can be interchangeable depending on the purpose. Shedroff defines data as the "raw material we find or create that we use to build our communications." He does not think that data can inform. I think that data can inform those who know what it means, so defining it in this manner leaves out other options. The amount of 'wisdom' that is gained from the data depends on the consumer of the data as well. What happens to the Shedroff data model when we think that we understand the data while in actuality we do not comprehend it ? The data can be organized into distinct ways such as alphabet, locations, time, continuums, numbers, categories, and randomness. Alphabetical and numerical organizations are part of every-day life in our society. Schools run on the basis of alphabetical organizations of students, and grades. The successfulness of data absorption depends on how engaging the representation was. If the visual, sound, or olfactory, or tactile sense are stimulated engagingly then the data is more likely to be absorbed. From corina1 at umail.ucsb.edu Sat Feb 11 22:22:16 2006 From: corina1 at umail.ucsb.edu (Corina S. Schweller) Date: Sat Feb 11 22:22:25 2006 Subject: [Visinfo] Week 4 IGERT seminar Message-ID: <20060211222216.3ahi37kxaio808g4@webaccess.umail.ucsb.edu> The seminar this week was about 'Capturing and Rendering Spatial Audio' by Ramani Duraiswami. The goal was to create a virtual environment that has the sound placed in proper spatial locations. By measuring the intensity and velocity of sound on a two ear model a formula can be derived that would allow for spatial placement of the sound. You can compute the response to a general source by convolution, knowing the Impulse Response. The Head Related Transfer Function takes into account the scattered sound off of the human form. The Room Model explores the scattering of sound in an environment. The problem faced with these sound placement functions is the differences in human bodies. There are differences in the shapes of our ears and bodies that cause the sound scattering to vary and would affect our perception of sound in virtual environments. From legrady at arts.ucsb.edu Tue Feb 14 01:39:06 2006 From: legrady at arts.ucsb.edu (glegrady) Date: Tue Feb 14 12:51:14 2006 Subject: [Visinfo] came in late tonight - lab tomorrow In-Reply-To: <43E2C6A3.6000000@umail.ucsb.edu> References: <43E2C6A3.6000000@umail.ucsb.edu> Message-ID: hi Everyone, My planes from Madird came in later then expeceted and I am somehow 2o hours out of sync. As I consequence I need to re-sync tomorrow morning, and will not attend class, so it shsould be lab time. I will do my lecture on Thursday, and meanwhile please forward emails if you have questions. Best, George Legrady George Legrady University of California, Santa Barbara MAT: http://www.mat.ucsb.edu ART: http://arts.ucsb.edu IGERT: http://media.igert.ucsb.edu STUDIO: http://www.georgelegrady.com tel. 1.805.637.6195 fax. 1.805.563.5752 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 648 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://zydeco.mat.ucsb.edu/pipermail/visinfo/attachments/20060214/dcd9266e/attachment.bin From legrady at arts.ucsb.edu Tue Feb 14 19:44:10 2006 From: legrady at arts.ucsb.edu (glegrady) Date: Tue Feb 14 19:44:00 2006 Subject: [Visinfo] THis week's REading: After the Storm Message-ID: <91f76e03ab4ffe1daaf4a9f6c74adb73@arts.ucsb.edu> Dear M259 group, Apologies for not being in class today. I am recovering as fast as possible. For Thursday's presentation please read and be ready to discuss the "After the Storm" article, and also look up Tufte's discussion of the design in his "Visual explanations". There seems to be a lot of references on line. I have yet to check them out. Also you should by now have completed the review of the Ben Fry thesis. See you in on Thursday. George Legrady University of California, Santa Barbara MAT: http://www.mat.ucsb.edu ART: http://arts.ucsb.edu IGERT: http://media.igert.ucsb.edu STUDIO: http://www.georgelegrady.com tel. 1.805.637.6195 fax. 1.805.563.5752 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 766 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://zydeco.mat.ucsb.edu/pipermail/visinfo/attachments/20060214/2e2e7232/attachment-0001.bin From jenn_bernstein at yahoo.com Wed Feb 15 18:36:47 2006 From: jenn_bernstein at yahoo.com (Jennifer Bernstein) Date: Wed Feb 15 18:36:57 2006 Subject: [Visinfo] responses to BenFry and Baker & Bushell Message-ID: <20060216023647.69762.qmail@web81811.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Hi all, Here they are. Have a great weekend. -jenn BEN FRY (dissertation) I appreciate the work of Ben Fry. I appreciate his philosophy of information design, I appreciate his writing style, and I appreciate what he has contributed to the formalization of the field. That said, his work seems to be very creator-centered. As I see it, information design differs from art in that that there is a right and wrong way to do it. The creation of good data graphics can be made inside a room based on a set of principles without ever needing to check whether the graphic resonates with the user. The principles of Information design seem straightforward once explained to a user, but the explanation is necessary nonetheless. This seems particularly relevant when the information visualized is abstract. I like all his examples in Ch7 of his dissertation, but I?m not sure what to say beyond ?wow, cool.? BAKER and BUSHELL The Baker and Bushell paper was interesting to read, as I had seen the before and after versions of the storm visualization. It took some guts to revise ones own design publicly. I find redesigning graphs and charts a great process to go through to apply the principles of good information design. I liked the decision to include small multiples of the stages of the storm at the bottom. I find that viewers like to know where they are in a process, even if other (numerical) means of orientation oneself in time are offered. To be able to see the stages of the storm in static form while the animation plays is a good design strategy. I especially appreciated an issue raised during the discussion on color. The authors were struggling with the choosing between a color scheme whose meaning was familiar to the target audience and a color scheme that made sense from a design standpoint. For instance, the rainbow color scheme is familiar to many viewers, and according to the authors, holds significance in different disciplines. But from a design standpoint, it implied breaks in a continuous phenomena. How do you make this decision? Do you use good design that is less cognitively viable, or design that misrepresents the information although it isn?t perceived as such? Stacy? From godwin at umail.ucsb.edu Thu Feb 16 08:18:54 2006 From: godwin at umail.ucsb.edu (Mike Godwin) Date: Thu Feb 16 08:17:38 2006 Subject: [Visinfo] response to Baker & Bushell Message-ID: <43F4A5EE.9080403@umail.ucsb.edu> Baker and Bushell I very much enjoyed this article; it seems like a very telling exercise to come back to one's own visualization and rethink it. But from an arts perspective I can't help but see how much both visualizations are part of historical "style" in the moment that they were created. While it's wise for them to be considering physiological phenomena like simultaneous contrast - and theoretically those parameters shouldn't change over time - they didn't really consider the never-ending challenge of producing something new and "punchy" to get an audience's attention. We have the hindsight to look back and see that some of the conventions of their earlier graphics are bold at the expense of misrepresenting the information, but it must also be questioned: if the earlier graphic hadn't been so high-tec and bold in its design, would it still be the teapot of visualization? If they had released their tame monochromatic revision first, would it have had the impact it had on the community at large? I wonder if a visualizations's stylistic relation to its contemporaries is yet another axis to consider in information design. From stacy at geog.ucsb.edu Thu Feb 16 09:57:31 2006 From: stacy at geog.ucsb.edu (Stacy Rebich) Date: Thu Feb 16 09:55:27 2006 Subject: [Visinfo] comments on Fry thesis and storm article Message-ID: <000001c63322$78005470$3c6a6f80@phoebe> I think that Ben Fry's thesis (Masters, I didn't read his dissertation) proposes some interesting ideas about the use of organic metaphors for information visualization. It seems that the biological metaphor is a very popular one in all areas of research these days, from infovis to engineering to geography. I hesitate to jump on the bandwagon wholeheartedly, however, since I think this kind of metaphor can be useful in selected cases but I wonder if it is useful to try to apply very generally. I do think that Fry's valence and anemone visualizations are aesthetically pleasing and fascinating to watch, but I don't feel like they offer enough concrete specific information to be very useful in the area of information communication that I'm interested in. I must admit (I suppose) that the Tuftian way of thinking is appealing to me, and from that perspective, I feel that the data-ink ratio in the valence design is not very high. I also wonder how different the valence visualization for different texts would appear (aside from the words that appear to give some sense of content). Since I feel that this display appeals to the viewer mostly on an aesthetic/emotional level, I would hope that the form of the figure would be able to convey differences in the emotional tone of the text represented. I'm not saying that valence can't do this, but the examples provided don't seem to illustrate that it does. As for anemone, this one can be mesmerizing to watch, but I'm not sure how much I get out of it in terms of knowledge about traffic on the webpages represented. I think there are important outstanding questions on the value of animation for information communication at the cognitive level. Again, I think anemone has an aesthetic appeal (although it's 'jitteryness' makes it hard to watch for too long), but is it easy to extract information from it beyond a vague 'general sense' of what's happening? It is possible that adding more information could increase its value: for example, a more obvious graphic representation of time scale could help the viewer get a better idea of how much time is being represented. Interactivity could also provide significant improvements (and may be available in the non-"toy" version?) - for example, the ability to change the speed of the animation could possibly allow for a lot more information extraction. Patterns of interest may not be visible at the current speed, and I think it's very difficult to determine in advance which speed would be appropriate for any given task. Overall, I think Fry's work is a good source of inspiration for information visualization, and it will be interesting to see how far the biological metaphor can be taken in the realm of infovis. On the other hand, I feel that visualizations like Fry's are inadequate for communication of scientific information in my area of interest (science for the public) since I feel that it is important to communicate a specific set of ideas, in addition to a "feeling". ------------------------------------------------ I enjoyed reading the Baker and Bushell article for several reasons. First, the information content of this visualization is very similar to the type of thing I'm interested in visualizing. Furthermore, I like the narrative approach taken and the authors' willingness to reexamine a successful visualization they've created and detail their thought processes while doing so.I find this kind of example very useful when trying to improve my own designs. One can definitely see the Tuftian influence in the revisions they discuss here. Some of the additional information elements that they talk about in section 2 (such as inclusion of geographic features to give a sense of size or grad marks to illustrate computational resolution) are great candidates for interactivity. Giving the viewer the chance to 'turn on' or 'turn off' these graphic elements can allow for information communication that doesn't clutter the display and obscure other elements of interest. The discussion of color was interesting, and it illustrates all of the competing factors that must be weighed when choosing colors: the nature of the phenomena, how it appears to the naked eye, the conventions that the audience is familiar with, etc. I'm also interested in a couple of factors that weren't given too much attention here: the properties of the human perceptual and cognitive systems, and the means by which the data were collected/generated. I feel that either of these, as well, can and should have an influence on choice of color schemes. To illustrate what I mean by the way in which data are collected/generated, I'll use a controversy that continues in the field of remote sensing. Traditionally, vegetation is shaded red in color images based on satellite imagery. This is partly for historic reasons, since although these images were initially generated by scaling the sensitivity of regular photographic film to pick up infrared radiation, which would then show up as red in the image. Now that satellite images are computer generated, the choice of red for vegetation seems arbitrary (and counterintuitive for the general audience), but the tradition persists. Some have insisted on starting to color vegetation green, and do so against the general trend in the community. There are many good arguments for switching to green, but I'd like to suggest one reason for keeping the red color in some cases (depending on the nature of the desired communication). The red color is indicative of the process by which this information was generated, and I feel that in some respects this could be important for an eventual audience to be aware of. If vegetation is colored green as it would be in a photograph, this may keep the audience ignorant of ways in which the image they're looking at is different from a photograph. Anyway, I think that serious considerations of all of the factors that could influence appropriate color choice are important, and often overlooked by scientists visualizing geo-phenomena. For this reason, I'm happy that these authors are bringing the importance of these decisions to light in a context that may reach some members of their own community. There are many other things that I could discuss about this article (especially about the use of animation and an implicit assumption that it will facilitate understanding), but I'll finish with one final observation that was briefly mentioned in section 4. The two versions have very different emotional impacts - the original being dark and sinister, while the other is calm and beautiful, not jarring the senses at all. The question remains, for the general audience, which do we prefer? Should we be communicating that storms are scary, or that they are a beautiful part of the natural world? I'm not sure there's one right way to look at them, but it seems that choices between visualizations (let's say those shown on the weather channel) will be based on the emotional reaction that the presenter trying to provoke. It is an interesting question to consider: how should the scientific community make use of emotional reactions generated by visualizations? Should this be a major design factor, or should we try to rely on dispassionate presentation of 'facts' and data? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Stacy Rebich Graduate Student Department of Geography University of California Santa Barbara, CA 93106 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://zydeco.mat.ucsb.edu/pipermail/visinfo/attachments/20060216/ac891704/attachment-0001.html From legrady at arts.ucsb.edu Thu Feb 16 20:54:03 2006 From: legrady at arts.ucsb.edu (glegrady) Date: Thu Feb 16 21:19:54 2006 Subject: [Visinfo] responses to BenFry and Baker & Bushell In-Reply-To: <20060216023647.69762.qmail@web81811.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20060216023647.69762.qmail@web81811.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > as I had seen the before and after versions of the > storm visualization. Hi Jennifer, Did you see both visualizations in animation, or stills? Today we looked at the old animation. George Legrady Studio http://www.georgelegrady.com respond to: gl@georgelegrady.com tel.+1.805.637.6195 From corina1 at umail.ucsb.edu Fri Feb 17 12:28:23 2006 From: corina1 at umail.ucsb.edu (Corina S. Schweller) Date: Fri Feb 17 12:28:32 2006 Subject: [Visinfo] Week 5 reading Message-ID: <20060217122823.trh3zmmnko4ws4gg@webaccess.umail.ucsb.edu> Ben Fry's thesis explores the problem of visualizing dynamic information. The thesis skips around a bit and is clearly written, however, it does not flow smoothly from one topic to the next. The thesis states that 'Organic Information Design' will provide a system to show dynamic data. Graphic representations allow a large amount of info to displayed and absorbed at once. Organic systems have parameters such as growth, metabolism, and responses to stimuli that allow it to represent dynamic info. The different types of Organic Info Visualization are Simulated Organic systems, Interactive Environments, Visual Refinement, Qualitative Facts from Large Bodies of Quantitative Data, and Dynamic Information Sources. The Star Logo environment sounds like it can be used for observing natural occurrences and behaviors. The interactive environments draw the viewer into the experience, however, it also could make the viewer miss integral aspects of the information since they might not be aware of how to navigate the scene. The Visual Thesaurus though is rather straightforward in its use and leaves little room for deviation. Important attributes of organisms are adaptation and movement. The guidelines of Organic information Design are structure, appearance and movement. From corina1 at umail.ucsb.edu Fri Feb 17 12:48:18 2006 From: corina1 at umail.ucsb.edu (Corina S. Schweller) Date: Fri Feb 17 12:48:27 2006 Subject: [Visinfo] week 6 reading Message-ID: <20060217124818.8knwvgb8kk0ocgc8@webaccess.umail.ucsb.edu> " After the Storm" by Baker & Bushell This article discusses what changes could be made to the animation of the 'Study of a Numerically Modeled Severe Storm', which is widely known among the scientific community. The original data came from a 1964 storm in Texas and the data was produced by a supercomputer. A grid provides the visual grounding for the animation and indicates direction and speed. Baker & Bushell propose to have a grid that is lighter in color and a set of coordinate axis to reveal the actual size of the storm. The details of an inner slice of the storm will also be altered in color gradient and a bar graph will be added. A timeline will show the elapse in time and a row of images of various stages of the storm allows the viewer to see the changes in static form. I think the new visualization is more current in the color scheme, but it clutters the image with too much information. The timeline is reminiscent of today's history shows on television, but the small images of the storm along the bottom are redundant and take away the element of surprise you may experience when first watching the storm take form in the animation. From zmd at umail.ucsb.edu Mon Feb 20 19:24:06 2006 From: zmd at umail.ucsb.edu (Zachary M. Davis) Date: Mon Feb 20 19:24:16 2006 Subject: [Visinfo] Reaction to Shedroff Message-ID: <20060220192406.iehdo51xws4g0800@webaccess.umail.ucsb.edu> Shedroff's article did not wow me in any sense, nor did I find it overly useful. However, I think it is an important article nonetheless. It seems to me that what Shedroff has set out to do, and more or less accomplished, is to essentially state the obvious. He has taken on the (unenviable) job of sifting through the common sense of information and interaction design to draw out specific guidelines and principles. It is for this reason that I didn't find the article particularly engaging--most of what Shedroff said struck me as obvious--but also the key to its usefulness. The concepts that did grab my attention were amplified by the fact that I felt like Shedroff was telling me something I already knew, but had never really taken the time to think about. One such example is his strict separation between information design and interaction design. Because the projects I am working on for this class are both informational and interactive, I wasn't taking the time to look at them as two separate concepts, but as a single entity. I think that taking a step back and looking at the two separately will help to improve my final outcomes. Another example is the idea that designing for one medium does not imply that your only "competition" is within that medium--rather your competition will come from all media, but will be similar in scope and content. Again, this is something that is "common sense", but I usually don't consider my new media projects as directly competing in any way with traditional media. I had a few problems with the article, and most of them are admittedly nitpicky. But for me, I simply couldn't believe that an article about effectively communicating information and context could be so confusing and ineffective. The cube? No idea where anything lies on those continuums. The figure on Passive vs. Interactive? There's only one piece of information on the whole left side of the diagram. And in the final figure, I have no idea why an upside down briefcase (or is it one of those floaty things lifeguards carry?) is touching the keyboard. I feel like he included diagrams just for the sake of having them, which, as Shedroff should be able to tell himself, is not an effective method for storytelling. -- Zachary Davis zmd@umail.ucsb.edu From godwin at umail.ucsb.edu Wed Feb 22 08:00:46 2006 From: godwin at umail.ucsb.edu (Mike Godwin) Date: Wed Feb 22 07:59:14 2006 Subject: [Visinfo] Link to document visualization example Message-ID: <43FC8AAE.10000@umail.ucsb.edu> A recent entry on infosthetics.com reminded me of Stacy's project. http://web.media.mit.edu/~amber/cogmac/cogmac1.html From legrady at arts.ucsb.edu Sun Feb 26 01:02:25 2006 From: legrady at arts.ucsb.edu (glegrady) Date: Sun Feb 26 01:02:33 2006 Subject: [Visinfo] Tues 2/28-Thurs 3/2- Presentation and Meetings Message-ID: Dear MAT259 Info Vis class, The plan for the week is as follows: Tues, Feb 28 10am: Presentations of 3 Visual Complexity of relevance to your project Please describe and present the 3 projects, and pointing out how it is relevant to your research interests Things we are interested in being addressed: . Concepts/themes . Methodologies . Data organization choices . Visualization choices . Design issues Presentation Sequence: . Stacy . Mike . Corrine . Jennifer . Sofia . Zach Thurs, March 2: Individual Consulting Meetings (20 minutes each): . Corrine . Jennifer . Zach . Stacy . Sofia . Mike Please be prepared to present to me: . your data . your method of organizing the data . the software tools used . where you hope to end up with the final version George Legrady University of California, Santa Barbara MAT: http://www.mat.ucsb.edu ART: http://arts.ucsb.edu IGERT: http://media.igert.ucsb.edu STUDIO: http://www.georgelegrady.com tel. 1.805.637.6195 fax. 1.805.563.5752 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 1112 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://zydeco.mat.ucsb.edu/pipermail/visinfo/attachments/20060226/c9e61212/attachment.bin From angus.forbes at gmail.com Tue Feb 28 00:02:33 2006 From: angus.forbes at gmail.com (Angus Forbes) Date: Tue Feb 28 00:02:39 2006 Subject: [Visinfo] interesting Flickr mashups Message-ID: http://www.hotwired.com/webmonkey/06/08/index4a_page2.html?tw=commentary -Angus From legrady at arts.ucsb.edu Tue Feb 28 15:38:12 2006 From: legrady at arts.ucsb.edu (glegrady) Date: Tue Feb 28 17:22:26 2006 Subject: [Visinfo] Skupin Thursday afternoon talk: 3:30pm Message-ID: <09cb5187d82dd4ab481a31531d3f3164@arts.ucsb.edu> Anyone interested in Andre Skupin's talk on Thursday at 3:30pm will focus on knowledge domain visualization: Anyone engaged in scientific work knows how difficult it has become to stay abreast of the latest scientific advances. This is largely due to the overwhelming volume of scientific literature, related to the growing number of peer-reviewed print outlets and Internet-based sources, combined with the increasingly interdisciplinary character of cutting-edge science. Scientists, educators, students, policy-makers, and funding agencies alike need new methods to gain understanding of the structure and development of scholarly knowledge. Knowledge domain visualization has emerged as a promising approach, drawing on the expertise of multiple fields, including information science, computer science, and geography. This presentation discusses some approaches currently pursued, with particular recognition of geographic contributions. (http://vw.indiana.edu/places&spaces/dev/big_thumb.php?map_id=30). George Legrady University of California, Santa Barbara MAT: http://www.mat.ucsb.edu ART: http://arts.ucsb.edu IGERT: http://media.igert.ucsb.edu STUDIO: http://www.georgelegrady.com tel. 1.805.637.6195 fax. 1.805.563.5752 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 1331 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://zydeco.mat.ucsb.edu/pipermail/visinfo/attachments/20060228/798f2dee/attachment-0001.bin From zmd at umail.ucsb.edu Tue Feb 28 23:09:00 2006 From: zmd at umail.ucsb.edu (Zachary M. Davis) Date: Tue Feb 28 23:09:09 2006 Subject: [Visinfo] Reaction to Baker and Bushell Message-ID: <20060228230900.iil8if4t6o4kcs48@webaccess.umail.ucsb.edu> I would agree with the seemingly unanimous opinion that, on the surface, the content of this article was an interesting and worthwhile exercise in reevaluating design. However, I agree very strongly with Mike about the idea of the two videos representing two very distinct moments in time. Some of the changes are clear improvements over the original design, but several of the changes are, as the authors admit, arbitrary (for example the "light" almost monochromatic color scheme). Which I guess makes me wonder about the motives of the authors in the redesign of the visualization. I mean, who hasn't looked at something they created years and years ago and thought, "if only I could do it over again..." Well Bushell got the chance, and she admittedly updated and improved the original design, but I should hope six years in the field and vastly improved technology would result in a more optimized version. Note that Bushell was one of seven designers working on the original, "inferior" visualization, while two people were able to bang out the sleek "improved" version. To me this is a tell-tale sign that things changed dramatically in the field between 1989 and 1995. Not that I'm saying that this wasn't an interesting or useful article. I think it was. I just think that it could be repeated every year for the next however many years, and each year the design could be "improved" and "updated". To me, this article is more just a show of how the field of information visualization evolved over the early 90's. -- Zachary Davis zmd@umail.ucsb.edu From godwin at umail.ucsb.edu Thu Feb 2 18:57:39 2006 From: godwin at umail.ucsb.edu (Mike Godwin) Date: Thu, 02 Feb 2006 18:57:39 -0800 Subject: [Visinfo][dorkbotsocal-announce] DORKBOTSOCAL10 - Machine Project Feb 4th 2006, 1pm: Reas / Khan / Dockray] Message-ID: <43E2C6A3.6000000@umail.ucsb.edu> A couple expressed interest in this meeting, so I'm forwarding on the invite. Casey Reas is the co-founder of processing (processing.org) and will be introducing several people who've been working with hardware.processing... -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [dorkbotsocal-announce] DORKBOTSOCAL10 - Machine Project Feb 4th 2006, 1pm: Reas / Khan / Dockray Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2006 14:56:56 -0500 (EST) From: dorkbot-socal To: dorkbotsocal-announce at dorkbot.org DORKBOTSOCAL10 - Machine Project Feb 4th 2006, 1pm: Reas / Khan / Dockray [ S P E C S ] *** February 4th 2006 - 1pm (Saturday) *** Machine Project *** 1200 D North Alvarado Street *** Los Angeles, CA 90026 *** http://www.machineproject.com -- [ O V E R V I E W ] This event will focus on how Processing - an open source programming language and environment for people who want to work with images, animation, and sound - can be used to interact and control electronics and other physical devices. Two physical computing initiatives related to Processing will be presented: Osman Khan will explore the Arduino project and Sean Dockray will present the Wiring project . In addition, some recent Arduino/Wiring projects developed at UCLA will be demonstrated. ------ [ P R E S E N T E R S ] The event will begin with an introduction by Casey Reas , co-initiator of the Processing project . Casey will introduce the project that was co-developed with Ben Fry from ideas explored in the Aesthetics and Computation Group at the MIT Media Lab. Processing also recently won a Golden Nica award at Prix Ars Electronica 2005. -- Osman Khan on Arduino Osman Khan will be giving a presentation and lecture on Arduino . Arduino is an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple I/O board and a development environment that implements the Processing/Wiring language. Arduino can be used to develop stand-alone interactive objects or can be connected to software on your computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, MaxMSP). The Arduino board is inexpensive and easily assembled by hand. This provides a cheap and easy way to get started learning how to assemble circuits. Osman Khan is an artist interested in using technology to construct engines that help create artifacts for social criticism and aesthetic expression. His work explores certain themes to see how technology fabricates as well as subverts our understanding of identity, communication, and public space through interactive installations and site-specific interventions. His work has been shown at Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria, Beyond Media Festival, Florence, Italy; UC Santa Barbara, USA; LALALA Westweek, Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles, USA; nano, LACMALab, Los Angeles, USA; telic gallery, Los Angeles, USA; Dangerous Curve, Los Angeles, USA; bank, Los Angeles, USA. Osman received his MFA from UCLA's Department of Design | Media Arts. -- Sean Dockray on Wiring Sean Dockray will be giving an overview and demonstration of the Wiring platform . Wiring is a physical computing platform with a sophisticated I/O board and a development environment utilizing a Processing style language for programming microcontrollers. Sean Dockray is an artist whose practice follows from research into social systems and events. He is a founder of the Los Angeles chapter of the Institute for Advanced Architecture; a producer of Building Sound, an internet radio program about architecture; and has worked with the Center for Land Use Interpretation on their Land Use Database. Dockray received a BSE from Princeton University in Civil Engineering and Architecture in 1999 and completed coursework towards an MFA in Critical Studies from the California Institute of the Arts in 2002. His individual and collaborative work has been shown at the Telic Gallery (Los Angeles), the Turtle Bay Museum (Redding), Basekamp Gallery (Philadelphia), Oni Gallery (Boston), Marcuse Gallery (San Diego), Contemporary Artists Center (North Adams), LeRoy Neiman Gallery (New York), and the Storefront for Art and Architecture (New York). -- Arduino/Wiring Projects from UCLA This portion of the event will include quick presentations of some of the best projects built in a recent class by Sean Dockray and a workshop by Tom Igoe of NYU. These demos involve the creation of electronic instruments build for performance and small boxes imbued with behavior. All projects sense some aspect of its environment (e.g. light, distance, orientation, touch) and have a physical output (e.g. light, sound, motion). Each project uses an Arduino or Wiring boards as a software control system for mapping the input to the output. A variety of sensors have been explored: orientation, tilt, acceleration, light, sound, IR and sonar distance, RFID, etc. A variety of different actuators have been used: solenoid, step, DC, and servo. ------ [ M O R E _ I N F O R M A T I O N ] Map to DORKBOTSOCAL10: http://maps.yahoo.com/maps_result?ed=eZDrvOp_0ToiS8la6vHBH5OFfQ3.LmII34nqpRTULQ--&csz=90026&country=us&new=1&name=&qty= Please contact Garnet Hertz if you are interested in giving a presentation at an upcoming DORKBOTSOCAL event. LOST? If you're completely lost, call nine-four-nine-291-5666 on the day of the event for directions. * PLEASE REDISTRIBUTE THIS ANNOUNCEMENT * ........................................................................ .........dorkbot: people doing strange things with electricity.......... ..........................http://dorkbot.org............................ ........................................................................ From stacy at geog.ucsb.edu Thu Feb 2 19:05:59 2006 From: stacy at geog.ucsb.edu (Stacy Rebich) Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 19:05:59 -0800 Subject: [Visinfo] an interesting image categorization approach Message-ID: <006d01c6286e$c2a47830$3c6a6f80@phoebe> http://people.csail.mit.edu/torralba/iccv2005/index.html Here's a link to a course that I found about image categorization. I came across it when I was looking for info about LDA (latent dirichlet allocation). Even though this info is about images rather than text processing, it's based on the same principles and offers the clearest non-technical explanation of the algorithm that I've found. I'm trying out LDA with my dataset, and I thought some of you who are doing stuff with images might find it interesting. Stacy ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Stacy Rebich Graduate Student Department of Geography University of California Santa Barbara, CA 93106 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.create.ucsb.edu/pipermail/visinfo/attachments/20060202/8c0a6a9b/attachment-0002.html From angus.forbes at gmail.com Tue Feb 7 13:28:21 2006 From: angus.forbes at gmail.com (Angus Forbes) Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 13:28:21 -0800 Subject: [Visinfo] LSI using matlab tutorial Message-ID: Hi Stacy and whoever else is intersted, I found a promising tutorial on LSI using Matlab. Have you seen this it? It includes sample data to test with. http://www.joma.org/images/upload_library/4/vol5/search/JOMASEMatlab.html from this article: http://www.joma.org/mathDL/4/?pa=content&sa=viewDocument&nodeId=636&bodyId=1104 -A From godwin at umail.ucsb.edu Tue Feb 7 22:12:35 2006 From: godwin at umail.ucsb.edu (Mike Godwin) Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2006 22:12:35 -0800 Subject: [Visinfo] Neat-o visualization Message-ID: <43E98BD3.4030700@umail.ucsb.edu> Comprehensive visualization of 4 letter words in 3 dimensional space. Built in processing with source code on the site http://toxi.co.uk/p5/base26/ From corina1 at umail.ucsb.edu Sat Feb 11 21:57:14 2006 From: corina1 at umail.ucsb.edu (Corina S. Schweller) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 21:57:14 -0800 Subject: [Visinfo] Week 3 Reading Message-ID: <20060211215714.tek2f9ttkw04o004@webaccess.umail.ucsb.edu> Corina Schweller Week 3 Reading Info Interaction Design - Shedroff Shedroff believes it is vital for us to have the skill to communicate data in a way that will allow others to experience that information in a comprehensive manner. This can be accomplished in any medium since the process is similar across various mediums. It is not enough to have data, there must be a way to share it with others in a way that they can understand. The Shedroff Data model shows the direct correlation of data to wisdom. Data turns into Information and then knowledge, with the final step being wisdom. I'm not sure about the term 'wisdom' since you can understand data that will not make you any wiser. Information and knowledge can also have a blurring boundary since I think they can be interchangeable depending on the purpose. Shedroff defines data as the "raw material we find or create that we use to build our communications." He does not think that data can inform. I think that data can inform those who know what it means, so defining it in this manner leaves out other options. The amount of 'wisdom' that is gained from the data depends on the consumer of the data as well. What happens to the Shedroff data model when we think that we understand the data while in actuality we do not comprehend it ? The data can be organized into distinct ways such as alphabet, locations, time, continuums, numbers, categories, and randomness. Alphabetical and numerical organizations are part of every-day life in our society. Schools run on the basis of alphabetical organizations of students, and grades. The successfulness of data absorption depends on how engaging the representation was. If the visual, sound, or olfactory, or tactile sense are stimulated engagingly then the data is more likely to be absorbed. From corina1 at umail.ucsb.edu Sat Feb 11 22:22:16 2006 From: corina1 at umail.ucsb.edu (Corina S. Schweller) Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 22:22:16 -0800 Subject: [Visinfo] Week 4 IGERT seminar Message-ID: <20060211222216.3ahi37kxaio808g4@webaccess.umail.ucsb.edu> The seminar this week was about 'Capturing and Rendering Spatial Audio' by Ramani Duraiswami. The goal was to create a virtual environment that has the sound placed in proper spatial locations. By measuring the intensity and velocity of sound on a two ear model a formula can be derived that would allow for spatial placement of the sound. You can compute the response to a general source by convolution, knowing the Impulse Response. The Head Related Transfer Function takes into account the scattered sound off of the human form. The Room Model explores the scattering of sound in an environment. The problem faced with these sound placement functions is the differences in human bodies. There are differences in the shapes of our ears and bodies that cause the sound scattering to vary and would affect our perception of sound in virtual environments. From legrady at arts.ucsb.edu Tue Feb 14 01:39:06 2006 From: legrady at arts.ucsb.edu (glegrady) Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 01:39:06 -0800 Subject: [Visinfo] came in late tonight - lab tomorrow In-Reply-To: <43E2C6A3.6000000@umail.ucsb.edu> References: <43E2C6A3.6000000@umail.ucsb.edu> Message-ID: hi Everyone, My planes from Madird came in later then expeceted and I am somehow 2o hours out of sync. As I consequence I need to re-sync tomorrow morning, and will not attend class, so it shsould be lab time. I will do my lecture on Thursday, and meanwhile please forward emails if you have questions. Best, George Legrady George Legrady University of California, Santa Barbara MAT: http://www.mat.ucsb.edu ART: http://arts.ucsb.edu IGERT: http://media.igert.ucsb.edu STUDIO: http://www.georgelegrady.com tel. 1.805.637.6195 fax. 1.805.563.5752 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 648 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.create.ucsb.edu/pipermail/visinfo/attachments/20060214/dcd9266e/attachment-0002.bin From legrady at arts.ucsb.edu Tue Feb 14 19:44:10 2006 From: legrady at arts.ucsb.edu (glegrady) Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 19:44:10 -0800 Subject: [Visinfo] THis week's REading: After the Storm Message-ID: <91f76e03ab4ffe1daaf4a9f6c74adb73@arts.ucsb.edu> Dear M259 group, Apologies for not being in class today. I am recovering as fast as possible. For Thursday's presentation please read and be ready to discuss the "After the Storm" article, and also look up Tufte's discussion of the design in his "Visual explanations". There seems to be a lot of references on line. I have yet to check them out. Also you should by now have completed the review of the Ben Fry thesis. See you in on Thursday. George Legrady University of California, Santa Barbara MAT: http://www.mat.ucsb.edu ART: http://arts.ucsb.edu IGERT: http://media.igert.ucsb.edu STUDIO: http://www.georgelegrady.com tel. 1.805.637.6195 fax. 1.805.563.5752 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 766 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.create.ucsb.edu/pipermail/visinfo/attachments/20060214/2e2e7232/attachment-0002.bin From jenn_bernstein at yahoo.com Wed Feb 15 18:36:47 2006 From: jenn_bernstein at yahoo.com (Jennifer Bernstein) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 18:36:47 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Visinfo] responses to BenFry and Baker & Bushell Message-ID: <20060216023647.69762.qmail@web81811.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Hi all, Here they are. Have a great weekend. -jenn BEN FRY (dissertation) I appreciate the work of Ben Fry. I appreciate his philosophy of information design, I appreciate his writing style, and I appreciate what he has contributed to the formalization of the field. That said, his work seems to be very creator-centered. As I see it, information design differs from art in that that there is a right and wrong way to do it. The creation of good data graphics can be made inside a room based on a set of principles without ever needing to check whether the graphic resonates with the user. The principles of Information design seem straightforward once explained to a user, but the explanation is necessary nonetheless. This seems particularly relevant when the information visualized is abstract. I like all his examples in Ch7 of his dissertation, but I?m not sure what to say beyond ?wow, cool.? BAKER and BUSHELL The Baker and Bushell paper was interesting to read, as I had seen the before and after versions of the storm visualization. It took some guts to revise ones own design publicly. I find redesigning graphs and charts a great process to go through to apply the principles of good information design. I liked the decision to include small multiples of the stages of the storm at the bottom. I find that viewers like to know where they are in a process, even if other (numerical) means of orientation oneself in time are offered. To be able to see the stages of the storm in static form while the animation plays is a good design strategy. I especially appreciated an issue raised during the discussion on color. The authors were struggling with the choosing between a color scheme whose meaning was familiar to the target audience and a color scheme that made sense from a design standpoint. For instance, the rainbow color scheme is familiar to many viewers, and according to the authors, holds significance in different disciplines. But from a design standpoint, it implied breaks in a continuous phenomena. How do you make this decision? Do you use good design that is less cognitively viable, or design that misrepresents the information although it isn?t perceived as such? Stacy? From godwin at umail.ucsb.edu Thu Feb 16 08:18:54 2006 From: godwin at umail.ucsb.edu (Mike Godwin) Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 08:18:54 -0800 Subject: [Visinfo] response to Baker & Bushell Message-ID: <43F4A5EE.9080403@umail.ucsb.edu> Baker and Bushell I very much enjoyed this article; it seems like a very telling exercise to come back to one's own visualization and rethink it. But from an arts perspective I can't help but see how much both visualizations are part of historical "style" in the moment that they were created. While it's wise for them to be considering physiological phenomena like simultaneous contrast - and theoretically those parameters shouldn't change over time - they didn't really consider the never-ending challenge of producing something new and "punchy" to get an audience's attention. We have the hindsight to look back and see that some of the conventions of their earlier graphics are bold at the expense of misrepresenting the information, but it must also be questioned: if the earlier graphic hadn't been so high-tec and bold in its design, would it still be the teapot of visualization? If they had released their tame monochromatic revision first, would it have had the impact it had on the community at large? I wonder if a visualizations's stylistic relation to its contemporaries is yet another axis to consider in information design. From stacy at geog.ucsb.edu Thu Feb 16 09:57:31 2006 From: stacy at geog.ucsb.edu (Stacy Rebich) Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 09:57:31 -0800 Subject: [Visinfo] comments on Fry thesis and storm article Message-ID: <000001c63322$78005470$3c6a6f80@phoebe> I think that Ben Fry's thesis (Masters, I didn't read his dissertation) proposes some interesting ideas about the use of organic metaphors for information visualization. It seems that the biological metaphor is a very popular one in all areas of research these days, from infovis to engineering to geography. I hesitate to jump on the bandwagon wholeheartedly, however, since I think this kind of metaphor can be useful in selected cases but I wonder if it is useful to try to apply very generally. I do think that Fry's valence and anemone visualizations are aesthetically pleasing and fascinating to watch, but I don't feel like they offer enough concrete specific information to be very useful in the area of information communication that I'm interested in. I must admit (I suppose) that the Tuftian way of thinking is appealing to me, and from that perspective, I feel that the data-ink ratio in the valence design is not very high. I also wonder how different the valence visualization for different texts would appear (aside from the words that appear to give some sense of content). Since I feel that this display appeals to the viewer mostly on an aesthetic/emotional level, I would hope that the form of the figure would be able to convey differences in the emotional tone of the text represented. I'm not saying that valence can't do this, but the examples provided don't seem to illustrate that it does. As for anemone, this one can be mesmerizing to watch, but I'm not sure how much I get out of it in terms of knowledge about traffic on the webpages represented. I think there are important outstanding questions on the value of animation for information communication at the cognitive level. Again, I think anemone has an aesthetic appeal (although it's 'jitteryness' makes it hard to watch for too long), but is it easy to extract information from it beyond a vague 'general sense' of what's happening? It is possible that adding more information could increase its value: for example, a more obvious graphic representation of time scale could help the viewer get a better idea of how much time is being represented. Interactivity could also provide significant improvements (and may be available in the non-"toy" version?) - for example, the ability to change the speed of the animation could possibly allow for a lot more information extraction. Patterns of interest may not be visible at the current speed, and I think it's very difficult to determine in advance which speed would be appropriate for any given task. Overall, I think Fry's work is a good source of inspiration for information visualization, and it will be interesting to see how far the biological metaphor can be taken in the realm of infovis. On the other hand, I feel that visualizations like Fry's are inadequate for communication of scientific information in my area of interest (science for the public) since I feel that it is important to communicate a specific set of ideas, in addition to a "feeling". ------------------------------------------------ I enjoyed reading the Baker and Bushell article for several reasons. First, the information content of this visualization is very similar to the type of thing I'm interested in visualizing. Furthermore, I like the narrative approach taken and the authors' willingness to reexamine a successful visualization they've created and detail their thought processes while doing so.I find this kind of example very useful when trying to improve my own designs. One can definitely see the Tuftian influence in the revisions they discuss here. Some of the additional information elements that they talk about in section 2 (such as inclusion of geographic features to give a sense of size or grad marks to illustrate computational resolution) are great candidates for interactivity. Giving the viewer the chance to 'turn on' or 'turn off' these graphic elements can allow for information communication that doesn't clutter the display and obscure other elements of interest. The discussion of color was interesting, and it illustrates all of the competing factors that must be weighed when choosing colors: the nature of the phenomena, how it appears to the naked eye, the conventions that the audience is familiar with, etc. I'm also interested in a couple of factors that weren't given too much attention here: the properties of the human perceptual and cognitive systems, and the means by which the data were collected/generated. I feel that either of these, as well, can and should have an influence on choice of color schemes. To illustrate what I mean by the way in which data are collected/generated, I'll use a controversy that continues in the field of remote sensing. Traditionally, vegetation is shaded red in color images based on satellite imagery. This is partly for historic reasons, since although these images were initially generated by scaling the sensitivity of regular photographic film to pick up infrared radiation, which would then show up as red in the image. Now that satellite images are computer generated, the choice of red for vegetation seems arbitrary (and counterintuitive for the general audience), but the tradition persists. Some have insisted on starting to color vegetation green, and do so against the general trend in the community. There are many good arguments for switching to green, but I'd like to suggest one reason for keeping the red color in some cases (depending on the nature of the desired communication). The red color is indicative of the process by which this information was generated, and I feel that in some respects this could be important for an eventual audience to be aware of. If vegetation is colored green as it would be in a photograph, this may keep the audience ignorant of ways in which the image they're looking at is different from a photograph. Anyway, I think that serious considerations of all of the factors that could influence appropriate color choice are important, and often overlooked by scientists visualizing geo-phenomena. For this reason, I'm happy that these authors are bringing the importance of these decisions to light in a context that may reach some members of their own community. There are many other things that I could discuss about this article (especially about the use of animation and an implicit assumption that it will facilitate understanding), but I'll finish with one final observation that was briefly mentioned in section 4. The two versions have very different emotional impacts - the original being dark and sinister, while the other is calm and beautiful, not jarring the senses at all. The question remains, for the general audience, which do we prefer? Should we be communicating that storms are scary, or that they are a beautiful part of the natural world? I'm not sure there's one right way to look at them, but it seems that choices between visualizations (let's say those shown on the weather channel) will be based on the emotional reaction that the presenter trying to provoke. It is an interesting question to consider: how should the scientific community make use of emotional reactions generated by visualizations? Should this be a major design factor, or should we try to rely on dispassionate presentation of 'facts' and data? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Stacy Rebich Graduate Student Department of Geography University of California Santa Barbara, CA 93106 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.create.ucsb.edu/pipermail/visinfo/attachments/20060216/ac891704/attachment-0002.html From legrady at arts.ucsb.edu Thu Feb 16 20:54:03 2006 From: legrady at arts.ucsb.edu (glegrady) Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 20:54:03 -0800 Subject: [Visinfo] responses to BenFry and Baker & Bushell In-Reply-To: <20060216023647.69762.qmail@web81811.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20060216023647.69762.qmail@web81811.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > as I had seen the before and after versions of the > storm visualization. Hi Jennifer, Did you see both visualizations in animation, or stills? Today we looked at the old animation. George Legrady Studio http://www.georgelegrady.com respond to: gl at georgelegrady.com tel.+1.805.637.6195 From corina1 at umail.ucsb.edu Fri Feb 17 12:28:23 2006 From: corina1 at umail.ucsb.edu (Corina S. Schweller) Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 12:28:23 -0800 Subject: [Visinfo] Week 5 reading Message-ID: <20060217122823.trh3zmmnko4ws4gg@webaccess.umail.ucsb.edu> Ben Fry's thesis explores the problem of visualizing dynamic information. The thesis skips around a bit and is clearly written, however, it does not flow smoothly from one topic to the next. The thesis states that 'Organic Information Design' will provide a system to show dynamic data. Graphic representations allow a large amount of info to displayed and absorbed at once. Organic systems have parameters such as growth, metabolism, and responses to stimuli that allow it to represent dynamic info. The different types of Organic Info Visualization are Simulated Organic systems, Interactive Environments, Visual Refinement, Qualitative Facts from Large Bodies of Quantitative Data, and Dynamic Information Sources. The Star Logo environment sounds like it can be used for observing natural occurrences and behaviors. The interactive environments draw the viewer into the experience, however, it also could make the viewer miss integral aspects of the information since they might not be aware of how to navigate the scene. The Visual Thesaurus though is rather straightforward in its use and leaves little room for deviation. Important attributes of organisms are adaptation and movement. The guidelines of Organic information Design are structure, appearance and movement. From corina1 at umail.ucsb.edu Fri Feb 17 12:48:18 2006 From: corina1 at umail.ucsb.edu (Corina S. Schweller) Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 12:48:18 -0800 Subject: [Visinfo] week 6 reading Message-ID: <20060217124818.8knwvgb8kk0ocgc8@webaccess.umail.ucsb.edu> " After the Storm" by Baker & Bushell This article discusses what changes could be made to the animation of the 'Study of a Numerically Modeled Severe Storm', which is widely known among the scientific community. The original data came from a 1964 storm in Texas and the data was produced by a supercomputer. A grid provides the visual grounding for the animation and indicates direction and speed. Baker & Bushell propose to have a grid that is lighter in color and a set of coordinate axis to reveal the actual size of the storm. The details of an inner slice of the storm will also be altered in color gradient and a bar graph will be added. A timeline will show the elapse in time and a row of images of various stages of the storm allows the viewer to see the changes in static form. I think the new visualization is more current in the color scheme, but it clutters the image with too much information. The timeline is reminiscent of today's history shows on television, but the small images of the storm along the bottom are redundant and take away the element of surprise you may experience when first watching the storm take form in the animation. From zmd at umail.ucsb.edu Mon Feb 20 19:24:06 2006 From: zmd at umail.ucsb.edu (Zachary M. Davis) Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 19:24:06 -0800 Subject: [Visinfo] Reaction to Shedroff Message-ID: <20060220192406.iehdo51xws4g0800@webaccess.umail.ucsb.edu> Shedroff's article did not wow me in any sense, nor did I find it overly useful. However, I think it is an important article nonetheless. It seems to me that what Shedroff has set out to do, and more or less accomplished, is to essentially state the obvious. He has taken on the (unenviable) job of sifting through the common sense of information and interaction design to draw out specific guidelines and principles. It is for this reason that I didn't find the article particularly engaging--most of what Shedroff said struck me as obvious--but also the key to its usefulness. The concepts that did grab my attention were amplified by the fact that I felt like Shedroff was telling me something I already knew, but had never really taken the time to think about. One such example is his strict separation between information design and interaction design. Because the projects I am working on for this class are both informational and interactive, I wasn't taking the time to look at them as two separate concepts, but as a single entity. I think that taking a step back and looking at the two separately will help to improve my final outcomes. Another example is the idea that designing for one medium does not imply that your only "competition" is within that medium--rather your competition will come from all media, but will be similar in scope and content. Again, this is something that is "common sense", but I usually don't consider my new media projects as directly competing in any way with traditional media. I had a few problems with the article, and most of them are admittedly nitpicky. But for me, I simply couldn't believe that an article about effectively communicating information and context could be so confusing and ineffective. The cube? No idea where anything lies on those continuums. The figure on Passive vs. Interactive? There's only one piece of information on the whole left side of the diagram. And in the final figure, I have no idea why an upside down briefcase (or is it one of those floaty things lifeguards carry?) is touching the keyboard. I feel like he included diagrams just for the sake of having them, which, as Shedroff should be able to tell himself, is not an effective method for storytelling. -- Zachary Davis zmd at umail.ucsb.edu From godwin at umail.ucsb.edu Wed Feb 22 08:00:46 2006 From: godwin at umail.ucsb.edu (Mike Godwin) Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 08:00:46 -0800 Subject: [Visinfo] Link to document visualization example Message-ID: <43FC8AAE.10000@umail.ucsb.edu> A recent entry on infosthetics.com reminded me of Stacy's project. http://web.media.mit.edu/~amber/cogmac/cogmac1.html From legrady at arts.ucsb.edu Sun Feb 26 01:02:25 2006 From: legrady at arts.ucsb.edu (glegrady) Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2006 01:02:25 -0800 Subject: [Visinfo] Tues 2/28-Thurs 3/2- Presentation and Meetings Message-ID: Dear MAT259 Info Vis class, The plan for the week is as follows: Tues, Feb 28 10am: Presentations of 3 Visual Complexity of relevance to your project Please describe and present the 3 projects, and pointing out how it is relevant to your research interests Things we are interested in being addressed: . Concepts/themes . Methodologies . Data organization choices . Visualization choices . Design issues Presentation Sequence: . Stacy . Mike . Corrine . Jennifer . Sofia . Zach Thurs, March 2: Individual Consulting Meetings (20 minutes each): . Corrine . Jennifer . Zach . Stacy . Sofia . Mike Please be prepared to present to me: . your data . your method of organizing the data . the software tools used . where you hope to end up with the final version George Legrady University of California, Santa Barbara MAT: http://www.mat.ucsb.edu ART: http://arts.ucsb.edu IGERT: http://media.igert.ucsb.edu STUDIO: http://www.georgelegrady.com tel. 1.805.637.6195 fax. 1.805.563.5752 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 1112 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.create.ucsb.edu/pipermail/visinfo/attachments/20060226/c9e61212/attachment-0002.bin From angus.forbes at gmail.com Tue Feb 28 00:02:33 2006 From: angus.forbes at gmail.com (Angus Forbes) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 02:02:33 -0600 Subject: [Visinfo] interesting Flickr mashups Message-ID: http://www.hotwired.com/webmonkey/06/08/index4a_page2.html?tw=commentary -Angus From legrady at arts.ucsb.edu Tue Feb 28 15:38:12 2006 From: legrady at arts.ucsb.edu (glegrady) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 15:38:12 -0800 Subject: [Visinfo] Skupin Thursday afternoon talk: 3:30pm Message-ID: <09cb5187d82dd4ab481a31531d3f3164@arts.ucsb.edu> Anyone interested in Andre Skupin's talk on Thursday at 3:30pm will focus on knowledge domain visualization: Anyone engaged in scientific work knows how difficult it has become to stay abreast of the latest scientific advances. This is largely due to the overwhelming volume of scientific literature, related to the growing number of peer-reviewed print outlets and Internet-based sources, combined with the increasingly interdisciplinary character of cutting-edge science. Scientists, educators, students, policy-makers, and funding agencies alike need new methods to gain understanding of the structure and development of scholarly knowledge. Knowledge domain visualization has emerged as a promising approach, drawing on the expertise of multiple fields, including information science, computer science, and geography. This presentation discusses some approaches currently pursued, with particular recognition of geographic contributions. (http://vw.indiana.edu/places&spaces/dev/big_thumb.php?map_id=30). George Legrady University of California, Santa Barbara MAT: http://www.mat.ucsb.edu ART: http://arts.ucsb.edu IGERT: http://media.igert.ucsb.edu STUDIO: http://www.georgelegrady.com tel. 1.805.637.6195 fax. 1.805.563.5752 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 1331 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.create.ucsb.edu/pipermail/visinfo/attachments/20060228/798f2dee/attachment-0002.bin From zmd at umail.ucsb.edu Tue Feb 28 23:09:00 2006 From: zmd at umail.ucsb.edu (Zachary M. Davis) Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 23:09:00 -0800 Subject: [Visinfo] Reaction to Baker and Bushell Message-ID: <20060228230900.iil8if4t6o4kcs48@webaccess.umail.ucsb.edu> I would agree with the seemingly unanimous opinion that, on the surface, the content of this article was an interesting and worthwhile exercise in reevaluating design. However, I agree very strongly with Mike about the idea of the two videos representing two very distinct moments in time. Some of the changes are clear improvements over the original design, but several of the changes are, as the authors admit, arbitrary (for example the "light" almost monochromatic color scheme). Which I guess makes me wonder about the motives of the authors in the redesign of the visualization. I mean, who hasn't looked at something they created years and years ago and thought, "if only I could do it over again..." Well Bushell got the chance, and she admittedly updated and improved the original design, but I should hope six years in the field and vastly improved technology would result in a more optimized version. Note that Bushell was one of seven designers working on the original, "inferior" visualization, while two people were able to bang out the sleek "improved" version. To me this is a tell-tale sign that things changed dramatically in the field between 1989 and 1995. Not that I'm saying that this wasn't an interesting or useful article. I think it was. I just think that it could be repeated every year for the next however many years, and each year the design could be "improved" and "updated". To me, this article is more just a show of how the field of information visualization evolved over the early 90's. -- Zachary Davis zmd at umail.ucsb.edu