introduction to indexical design conference 2016

25 JUN

the experience of information and materiality of data

Indexical Design

Fenway Center

Northeastern University

77 St. Stephen Street

Boston, MA

Organized by the

MFA program in

Information Design

and Visualization

Department of Art + Design

Peircean Semiology revisited

iconic

symbolic

indexical

Peirce, Charles Sanders. "What is a sign." (1894).

symbolic

indexical0

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iconic?

Information design and visual analytics

How can images, visualizations, visual languages, diagrams … help us build knowledge? What makes a good research question?

Ursus Wehrli – Tidying up Art - http://www.kunstaufraeumen.ch/en

is data visualization really all about symbolic operations? three reasons why we do not think so.

#1. The kinship between indexical phenomena and languages of visualization

we can read certain traces like data visualizations

http://imgur.com/Fz3TKfE 0

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The seismograph shows the dual role of the trace as symbol (linechart) and index

Kamel Makhloufi, “function”, 2010

indexical relationship in the digital domain - 1 pixel = 1 casualty (chart with defined resolution)

#2. Implicit causality: traces and visual evidence

“Seven” (1995), Dir. David Fincher

• Public Lab, Brooklyn NY. Balloon Mapping of the Gowanus Canal. Photo Josh Weinstein

establishing physical evidence as a central concern also in citizen science

Galton, Francis. 1892. Finger Prints. Macmillan and Company.

traces are the result of the method of measurement. they may be (literally) objective but are not necessarily neutral

to see tree rings, we have to cut a tree

#3 Experience: traces do not explain, they show

Adrian Pratt Router

we can read symbolic representations like traces (router LEDs as ambient display)

Subvisual Subway, Craig Ward, 2016

problems of representation across scales - Biology / micro biome projects

Design principles of indexical design: framing, not mapping a phenomenon

Offenhuber, Dietmar, and Orkan Telhan. 2015. “Indexical Visualization – the Data-Less Information Display.” In Ubiquitous Computing, Complexity and Culture, edited by Ulrik Ekman, Jay David Bolter, and Lily Diaz. New York: Crc Press.

Wilks, Kiesl, Moser, 2007, Garden of Eden, air quality display, Ars Electronica 2007

Lorenzo Scarpelli, Xiaxin Chen, Sound Identity 2015

"Is reading traces an ancient relic of “wild knowledge,” or is it present in all developed symbolic, epistemic, and interpretative practices?

How can we differentiate reading traces from reading text, and from interpreting linguistic and visual signs?

Are traces the seam where the meaningless becomes meaningful?

Do they connect our representational practices with the tangibility, physicality, and materiality of the world?

Are traces discovered or are they constructed in the act of reading?"

translated from: Krämer, Sybille, Gernot Grube, and Werner Kogge. 2007. Spur: Spurenlesen Als Orientierungstechnik Und Wissenskunst. 1st ed. Suhrkamp.

Pedro Cruz & Tom Starr - conference program Cyanometer - Horace-Bénédict de Saussure and Alexander von Humboldt, 1789