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Digital Art and Philosophy #2The Design Aesthetics of Meaning-Making: Information Visualization
Melanie SwanUniversity of the Commons and the Emerald Tablet Gallery
Syllabus: http://www.MelanieSwan.com/PCA
Image: Emese Szorenyi
Agenda: Info Viz
• Short review of Digital Art and Philosophy• What is Information Visualization?• Tools and Examples• Philosophical issues in information
visualization• The Readings• Deleuze and the Diagram• Conclusion
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Digital Art is anything involving computers and art
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Sub-categories of Digital Art
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Virtual Reality, Gaming
BioArt, Generative Art Identity, the Future
Information Visualization
Philosophy of Digital Art
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• Perception– Dominic Lopes: Interactivity is
related to deeply evocative viewer responses, complex cognitive behavior, and the process of perception
– Mark Hansen: The virtual image lacks any material autonomy of its own and is produced by the viewer. Virtual image production is the process by which information is made perceivable
What is Information Visualization?
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Classic Info Viz Examples
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What is Information Visualization?• Visual representation of abstract data - Wikipedia
– Impossible to comprehend big data directly• Scientific analysis tool that has become artistic
practice• “Visualization is a form of ‘computer-aided seeing’
information in data” – The Philosophy of Information (Floridi, 2011)
• Full-fledged field; SIGGRAPH conference• Science, art, both, something new? • Philosophical issues?
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History of Information Visualization
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Timeline charts (Joseph Priestley, 1765)
History of Information Visualization
10The bar chart (William Playfair, 1786)
History of Information Visualization
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Trade-balance time-series chart, William Playfair, Commercial and Political Atlas, 1786
History of Information Visualization
12Trade-balance time-series chart (William Playfair, 1786)
Classic Info Viz Examples
13Napoleon’s March (Campaign of 1812)
Edward Tufte (1970s-1990s) information display, data-rich illustrations, information design, visual literacy, visual communication of information
Classic Info Viz Examples
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200 years that changed the worldGapminder (Hans Rosling, 2009) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPt8ElTQMIg
Classic Info Viz Examples
http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/dynamic/app/
Info viz is rapidly evolving
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2009 2012
21c Data Literacy and Info Viz 2.0
• Level 1: basic plotting for ordinal (qualitative) and quantitative data– Bar chart: simple quantitative and ordinal values – Scatterplot: multiple quantitative data values– Shape-based plot chart for multiple ordinal values
• Level 2: sophisticated visualizations– Small multiples– Bullet charts– Sparklines– Horizon charts– Interactivity
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The New Info Viz Tools: Small Multiples
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Plotting several similar charts to highlight differences in one variable
The New Info Viz Tools: Bullet Charts
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The New Info Viz Tools: Sparklines
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The New Info Viz Tools: Horizon Chart
21Space efficient way to analyze and compare multiple time series data sets
The New Info Viz Tools: Real-Time
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http://square.github.com/cubism/
The New Info Viz Tools: Processing.org, Tableau, Visual.ly, D3
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D3.js is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data
http://www.creativeapplications.net/news/processing-org-exhibition-now-curated-by-fv-news/
NodeXL
The New Info Viz Tools: Processing.org
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The New Info Viz Tools: Internet-of-Things Sensors
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http://blogs.cisco.com/news/the-internet-of-things-infographic/Meetups: Sensored (San Francisco 2/25), Internet of Things (Hacker DoJo 2/20)
Not just tech gadgets but everyday objects and microsensors
Source: Swan, M. Sensor Mania! The Internet of Things, Wearable Computing, Objective Metrics, and the Quantified Self 2.0. J Sens Actuator Netw 2012, 1(3), 217-253.
The New Info Viz Tools: D3.js javascript library
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The New Info Viz Tools: Gephi social network graphing
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Contemporary Sleep Tracking Dataviz: Is it Art?
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Zeo
FitBit Lark
University Data Viz Departments
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Philosophical issues arising in information visualization
• Philosophy of information– Measurement; entropy, complexity, thermodynamics,
malleable spacetimes• Representing the unrepresented (accuracy?)• Form vs. function debate• Aesthetics and authenticity• Retaining humanity, shifting role of humanity • Subject/object debate: room for freedom,
imperfection, serendipity• Justice and inequality: data processing inequalities,
voice plurality & inclusivity?• Shift in relationship of humans to the world,
environment, and resources30
Reading: Aesthetics of Information Visualization by Warren Sack (2013)
• Philosophy branches: metaphysics, epistemology, and aesthetics
• Aesthetics is concerned with sensation and perception. Aesthetic qualities:– Beauty: pleasing to the senses– Sublime: loftiness, excellence, inspiration; sublime
is the name given to what is absolutely great (Critique of Judgment (Kant, 1790))
– Mimesis: imitation; projecting oneself outside oneself and acting as though one had really entered another character (The Birth of Tragedy (Nietzsche, 1872))
– Uncanny: beyond normal/expected; plays on fears (The Uncanny (Sigmund Freud, 1919)) 31
Aesthetic Qualities and Digital Art• Anti-Sublime Ideal (user-friendly); Sublime is
for artists; anti-sublime is for non-artists • Uncanny: “Powerful visualization projects are
often uncanny in aesthetic “
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Not anti-sublime: Every Icon (John Simon, 1998)
Uncanny: Carnivore (Alex Galloway and the Radical Software Group, 2002)
Lyotard on Kant and the Sublime• Sublime: loftiness, vastness, excellence, inspiration • Two kinds of sublime experience
– Mathematically sublime - an object strikes the mind in such a way that we cannot take it in as a whole (ex: Pyramids in Egypt)
– Dynamically sublime - the mind recoils at an object whose weight, force, scale could crush us (ex: hurricane)
• The sublime is a crisis where we realize the inadequacy of the imagination and reason to each other. This is the differend; the straining of the mind at the edges of itself and at the edges of its conceptuality.
33Source: Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime (Jean-Francois Lyotard, 1991)
The Sublime in Digital Art?
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Listening Post : Real-Time Data Responsive Environment (Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin, 2001)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD36IajCz6ASource: The Sublime in Interactive Digital Installation by Tegan Bristow
The Sublime in Digital Art?
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Translator II: Grower (Sabrina Raaf, 2004)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3b9LlAYqAwSource: The Sublime in Interactive Digital Installation by Tegan Bristow
The Sublime in Digital Art?
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The Cloud Harp (Nicholas Reeves and the NXIO GESTATIO Design Lab, 1997)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyyCIDsRB1o, http://vimeo.com/5235502Source: The Sublime in Interactive Digital Installation by Tegan Bristow
Digital Art and the Sublime
• Sublime: loftiness, vastness, excellence, inspiration
• Kant’s sublime - object so big cannot take it in as a whole, could crush us
• Lyotard’s differend - the straining of the mind at the edges of itself and conceptuality
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2001
2004
1997
Digital Art more like Conceptual Art?• Conforms more to concept than aesthetics• Justification: Kant - distinction between aesthetic and
cognitive judgments (Critique of Judgment, 1790) and Sol LeWitt - the aim of the artist is to give the viewers information (1966)
• Paradox: Information is bureaucratic and radical– Digital art and computing techniques are bureaucratic– Infoviz Art exploring opposition to bureaucracy – themes of
governance, self-representation, the body politic
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Troika (Lisa Jevbratt, 2002)
3D Dataviz: Smiley Radio Telescope
Smiley Telescope, PARI, Balsam Grove, NC USA
Smiley in Second Life
Smiley Virtual Control RoomReal-time radio data received into 3D graph
Euclidean Visualization Environment
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3D Dataviz: Cheminformatic-Assisted Image Array (CAIA)
8 images24 meters
36 meters 12 images
40Gus Rosania, University of Michigan - The Rosania Research Group studies the microscopic transport properties of small drug-like molecules inside cells
3D Dataviz: real-time statistics
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3D Dataviz: Second Life exhibits
Real-time LAX airport traffic
Real-time NOAA weather dataSAP airline booking application
Svarga Artificial Life Ecosystem
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Reading: Authenticity and Computer Art (Margaret Boden, 2006)
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• Examines claim: “computer art is not authentic”– Authentic: genuine, trustworthy, credible
• Artworld’s philosophical assumptions of authentic art1. Art must spring from human agency2. Art must be grounded in emotion3. Art must involve the communication of experience4. Art must be honest 5. Art must be unique6. Art must be transformational
• Argument 1: Aesthetic flaws• Argument 2: Computer art is not possible
Reading: Authenticity and Computer Art (Margaret Boden, 2006)
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Evolutionary Art and Computers (Stephen Todd and William Latham (1992))http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN6ngsckRZs
Argument 2: Computer Art is not possible
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• Emotion: computers are not emotional agents– Even if programs model human emotion and engage the emotion of
viewers/listeners, the artwork is not genuine (Hofstadter)• Experience: art is the communication of human experience
– Even if the work evokes emotion, this would evaporate if known that it is a digital art work (O’hear)
• Counter: complex self-reflective mental architecture• Conclusion: authenticity of computer art remains contentious
but can’t be disproven
Guernica (Picasso, 1937)
Reading: Authenticity and Computer Art (Margaret Boden, 2006)
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David Cope, UCSC, Emmy/EMI (Experiments in Musical Intelligence) and Emily Howell, creative original music; Chopin-like mazurkas
http://www.psmag.com/culture/triumph-of-the-cyborg-composer-8507/
“I knew all 50-60 of the Chopin mazurkas very well. I listened to the Emmy mazurka. The piece did not seem in any way plagiarized. It was new, it was unmistakably Chopin-like in spirit, and it was not emotionally empty. I was truly shaken. How could emotional music be coming out of a program that had never heard a note, never lived a moment of life, never had any emotions whatsoever? Emmy was threatening my oldest and most deeply cherished beliefs about music being the ultimate inner sanctum of the human spirit, the last thing that would tumble in AI's headlong rush toward thought, insight, and creativity” - (Hofstadter 2001 in Boden 2006)
Does knowing it is Digital Art matter?
• Is it important to know that it is digital art? – For experience? For authenticity? How does
authenticity relate to experience?• Is a digital artwork inauthentic if it is not
known that it is a digital artwork? – Does the experience or the work of art
become less authentic?– Does it matter how a work of art was
created?• Is there a responsibility to disclose digital art?
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Digital Art is anything involving computers and art
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Distinguishability of Computer Art and the Uncanny Valley
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• Is it “art” or “not art” if we can tell it was computer-made?
Deleuze and the DiagramAesthetic Threads in Visual Organization
• Magnum opus: Difference and Repetition, 1968, traditional metaphysics topics, difference in itself
• A Thousand Plateaus, 1980, (Deleuze and Guattari), innovative new concepts
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French PhilosopherGilles Deleuze
1925-1995
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Deleuzian Model of the World
PhilosophyConcerned with: Understanding
Art, economics, politicsConcerned with: Experience
Concepts
Qualitative
QuantitativeScience and technology
Concerned with: Characterization
Abstraction
Figuration
Enumeration
Concepts: rhizome, body without organs, molar, molecular, smooth, striated, figural, machinic, faciality, deterritorialization, haecceity, nomadology, diagram
Deleuze’s Concept of the Diagram• The diagram is a way of thinking that
bypasses language. Examples: musical notation, mathematics
• A diagram or abstract machine is a map of relations between forces, of intensity. Relations take place within the assemblages they produce. (Deleuze (Foucault, pp 37, 44))
• Diagrams have no intrinsic connection with visual representation. The critical part is how the diagrams are used in practice. Matter can generate its own form (morphogenesis) and does not need form to be externally imposed. The nature of reality can only be grasped during the process of morphogenesis. (Difference and Repitition (Deleuze, 1994) in Deleuze, Diagrams, and the Genesis of Form - (De Landa 2000))
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Information Visualization
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• Concluding Frame: not whether info viz is digital art or not but sense of being in a new era that includes big data, computing, design, and aesthetics
• Essay question: is big data sublime?
Agenda and Upcoming Sessions2/12 - Introduction "What is digital art?" and what philosophers say about it.2/19 - The Design Aesthetics of Meaning-Making: Information Visualization.2/26 - Democratized Creativity: Performance, Music, Virtual Reality, Gaming.
“Performance is the Thing” (Dzifa Benson, 2006)“Videogames and Aesthetics” (Grant Tavinor, 2006)
3/5 - Natural Aesthetics: Generative Art, SynBio, Biomimicry, CrowdArt.3/12 - Portable ArtTech: Identity, Fashion, Wearable Electronics, the Future.
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Comments and Feedback: [email protected]
Digital Art and Philosophy Melanie Swan
University of the Commons and the Emerald Tablet Galleryhttp://www.MelanieSwan.com/PCAhttp://www.slideshare.net/lablogga
Image: Emese Szorenyi
Thank you!