York presentation
Slide 1
title
Slide 2
There is an information overload, and as communication channels proliferate, problem solving complexity is only going to increase.
In other words, there’s more data out there in more forms and languages than ever before.
¢ Structuring information for clarity and easier understanding to acquire knowledge
¢ Which structure/visual maps are clearest/most innovation and creativity at communicating/organising this complexity within our modern culture, to be able to elicit information, perceive the info & initiate reflective praxis?
¢ Does allowing self to be visible aid or hinder the communication of this data?
¢ Using the internet to reach a large audience to collate these highly innovative/creative visuals to inform others for knowledge acquisition
Slide 3
My map – language, communication, thinking
Using our innate ability to see—both with our eyes and our mind’s eye—gives us entirely
new ways to discover hidden ideas, develop those ideas intuitively, and then share those
ideas with other people in a way they are simply going to “get.” Dan Roam 10 ½ commandments of visual thinking.
We will view some of these of these ways that will creatively and innovatively help the learner / reader ‘get it’ as dan roam author of The back of the napkin sketch
Slide 4
Pic – Berlo Communication
Added the 2nd message after the receiver as they decode it and it may be interpreted differently.
The receiver decodes and abstracts the knowledge contained in the message to support [her] own beliefs/attitudes. During abstraction not only is the message tweaked, decoded, and interpreted differently to the map designers own, the meaning will also.
‘what appealed to modernist thinkers was the belief that authors or designers could transmit fixed meanings through constructed forms […] a brave new world that would deliver radical messages through the authorship of form’ (Baines & Haslam, 2002, p.35).
This was the belief of structuralism, which doesn’t work within map design. Maps do not communicate knowledge, i.e. they do not transmit messages (information) with fixed meanings. They may ‘“contain” meaning put there by the cartographer’, but map users/readers ‘have pre-existing knowledge that is necessarily involved in the comprehension of the map’ (Montello, 2002, p.292).
‘the reader brings his or her own ideas & experiences to a message; language is defined by interpretation. In this way structuralism was itself dismantled or “deconstructed” (Baines & Haslam, 2002, p.36).
Maps stimulate and suggest meanings, ‘ideas & inferences by interacting with the prior beliefs’ of user/reader(s) to interpret from messages. Therefore I would like to append the decoded message column to Berlo’s model because the received message is not the same, fig 15. Meaning is interpreted differently, the structure, style, topic, element everything is identical but decoded within the beliefs/attitudes, experiences/wisdom & ideas of the user (Montello, 2002, p.296).
‘What something means to individuals is dependent on the discourses available to them’ (Richardson, L, 2005, p. 961)
When I interpret I go through ‘a decoding operation, which implies the implementation of a cognitive acquirement’ I have learnt particular ‘cultural codes’. These cultural codes can access the ‘stratum of secondary meanings, i.e. the level of the meaning of what is signified’ to understand as much of its meaning and purpose as possible (Bourdieu, 1979, p.2). The semiotician Ferdinand de Saussures explains this that ‘language is determined by culture’ and that ‘structuralism tells us that the link between words & their meaning is arbitrary; post structuralism adds that this link is culturally determined & ever changing’ (sharples, 1999, p69 – 70).
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Pic – Schram Communication
It is a circular continuation of communication. This is current with in education as they feedback to us, but with in map design the receiver cannot always feedback. I hope that they would add there additions to expand/correct the maps they downloaded from the website. This would be how the circular communication process worked.
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Map list
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¢ Mind Map - ‘A Mind Map is a powerful graphic technique which provides a universal key to unlocking the potential of the brain. It harnesses the full range of cortical skills – word, image, number, logic, rhythm, colour and spatial awareness – in a single, uniquely powerful manner. In so doing, it gives you the freedom to roam the infinite expanses of your brain’ (Hirvikallio, 2007, p.1), ‘Intriguing and helpful method of making “linking” notes’ (Curzon, 1985, p 153).
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¢ Brainstorm - is where the ‘aim is to generate new ways of understanding or exploring a topic through the train of connected ideas’ and it is useful to have ‘another perspective, a good approach is […] deliberately suppressing any temptation to evaluate the idea or turning it into prose’. An excellent example of this is through the website visualtheasaurus.com, fig 6 (Sharples, 1999, p.49).
¢ Spider Diagram – similar to brainstorming
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¢ Concept Map - are ‘graphical representation[s] where nodes (points or vertices) represent concepts (defined by [Joseph .D] Novak as perceived regularities in objects and events), and links (arcs or lines) represent the relationships between concepts’. These objects and events are the common features which we abstract from our experience.
The events form Wordsworth’s childhood, or the visual memories of Picasso in Barcelona and the objects could be the Iberian sculpture, or the Monet painting (Coffey, Hoffman, Cañas, & Ford, 2002, p. 2).
The poet Wordsworth utilised daydreaming which he described as ‘“emotion recollected in tranquillity”’. Here he would summon memories from his childhood which he described as ‘“spots in time”’ that were not only ‘“links with a past self, but [as] sources of adult confidence and creativity”’ and helped him when writing Daffodils, and The Prelude (Sharples, 1999, p. 48).
These spots in time are like the Visual Memories that inspired the painting of ‘Les Demoiselles of D’avignon’ by Picasso. They were memories of the:
· ‘red light district of Barcelona,
· Ancient Iberian sculpture at the Louvre,
· Cezannes Mont-Sainte-Victoire
· A recent Monet’ (Frayling, 1993/4, p.2).
‘Concept maps are used to form knowledge models by placing them in a hierarchical organization and appending elaborating media onto the nodes within each map’ (Montello, 2002, p.2).
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¢ Cognitive Map – are ‘a process composed of a series of psychological transformations by which an individual acquires, codes, stores, recalls, and decodes information about the relative locations and attributes of phenomena in their everyday spatial environment’ (Montello, 2002, p.283).
The locations and attributes of phenomena being concepts (perceived regularities in objects & events). The phenomena could be the Concept Maps, Brainstorms or books, websites, films from which concepts/locations & attributes, may be acquired & communicated.
‘the process by which ones mental representations (i.e. a cognitive map) is acquired and manipulated’ (Jeffries & Yeap, 2000, p.85).
They function as Cognitive Artefacts which are an ‘artificial device designed to maintain, display, or operate upon information in order to serve a representational function’ i.e. representing knowledge (Wood & Keller, 1996, p 61).
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¢ Topographic Map - Topographical is ‘the detailed mapping or charting of the features of a relatively small area, district or locality’ (Jeffries & Yeap, 2000, p.90). It involves ‘landmarks’ that ‘are simply connected as a topological network’ (Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. 2007, p. Topographical).
This was exhibited at the Tate Liverpool but this certainly grabs the user/readers attention and it categorises the content into Topographic landmarks of the city, such as The Docks, The Walker Art Gallery, Tate, Bluecoat Art Gallery, Liverpool College of art & also by The Beatles.
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¢ Notebook / Sketchbook / Visual Diaries - as ‘an aid to clarifying thought’, fig 20 (Jury, 2002, p. writing).
‘words on and around graphics are highly effective-sometimes all too effective-in telling viewers how to allocate their attention to the various parts of the data display’ (Tufte, 2001, p.182).
Laura Jackson is an educator and a designer.
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More visualisation techniques by martin j eppler and Ralph lengler.
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If we explore visual language now and see some of the disciplines/categories that are integral to the way these styles of graphic visual mapping’s succeed in their communication, transmitting of the message.
I will go through each one explaining some of these issues around visual language/visual communication.
Slide 15
Anthropology
If we look at language it involves writing and speech. Within Grammatology (1967) Jacques Derrida states ‘the material forms of language - writing and speech – together represent meaning’ (Baines & Haslam, 2002, p.103).
But which voice do we externalise in our writing when used in a notebook for example?
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Cartography
This is here in graphic visual mapping because it refers to maps.
It is more commonly associated with the geographic landscapes maps depicting earth, reality such as these associated with cognitive maps & topographic maps. Such as the map of earth with countries, seas.
But there are other territories, such as mental maps/schemas that aren’t visible directly in the world and are our internal, connections of thoughts, memories, unconscious inferences. This is a conceptual space that involves cartographic cognition – patterns and relationships.
There is the internet space which I call virtual reality as it exists but there aren’t objects that exist in reality physically but have their own spatial / map arrangement of websites.
Then there is also data/information territory and it is this space of how we map / arrange data that graphically so as to simplify the complexity of information so as to aid understanding and decoding faster, easier more innovatively and creatively than just sentences, plain.
How well can we translate what is stored in our mental schemas in a pattern clear to our selves, to those externally
Mental Schemas, ‘…schemas integrate all our senses. They are pre-linguistic and must be converted into language before they can be expressed as words’ or images (Sharples, 1999, p.91).
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Semiotics is the study of signs.
These signs can vary between word and image.
Rudolf Arnheim, Pierce & Saussures determine signs in to 3 categories:
Picture / replica – this is usually typified by a realistic representation of an object such as a photograph. in liguistics it is known as a pictogram
Sign / semi-symbollic – this is where the object is lightly more abstracted as it isn’t completely realistic but it represents the shape of an object in reality.
These two are universal in that everyone is able to recognise what object is depicted from reality, and hasn’t had to learn any specific language of meanings that are associated to such objects. You would still have had to experience the object to know what it depicts in reality. (slightly arbitrary)
Symbol / Symbollic - this has no direct relation to an object visibly in reality but it refers to the object indirectly, it refers to the idea of the object. In linguistics it is known as an ideogram (idea graph). This is arbitrary and must be learnt.
Then the signifier is the idea of what it depicts in reality,
object / photograph
signifies/represents / a cow
signified/interpretation / as being a cow, an animal, meat
we have further connotations implied from that sign
as opposed to just a denoted cow
we deconstruct a sign through its familiarity with objects/shapes/patterns that are already stored in our mental schemas in our brain.
Signs are also used in the more geographic road maps etc
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Graphic Design
Semiotics is partly included in this category. This is very important as it is this category that will most effect the innovation and creativity of how information is communicated.
This will happen between form and function.
Function involves the meaning/ message of the information that is to be communicated, such as the meanings of the signs, information.
These are then understood through our modern culture is this world of complexity. Not all cultures have this complexity.
Through this media we try to make the familiar strange so as to capture our attention. To subvert our understanding as the shape is unfamiliar. With in information design, we can make the familiar signs, information presented in a strange form/shape, arrangement of data/info so that they will deconstruct/interpret.
Form this is the style/aesthetic that we can arrange complex data in a more clear, innovative, creative arrangement so that it is more intriguing to look at easier to understand/interpret this complexity quicker and simpler. As our communication today is quick and must depict communicate in an instant.
These visual graphic mapping can do this, organising complex information into a clear, innovative, vibrant layout that users will be more inclined to read as it is an easier path, thinking to the meaning.
Slide 19
If we explore visual thinking now as these are important in the comprehension of graphic visual maps.
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Psychology
We all see things in the world, but what we see is affected by our mental patterns/maps/schemas knowledge of what objects look like, hence we need to make the familiar strange in order to make it noticeable to challenge our perceptions stored knowledge/concepts of patterns/maps.
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Education
This information of knowledge in its graphic visual arrangement/map that is strange unfamiliar shape will help us learn as we look at it new, use reflective praxis with this new seeing, new perspective.
This is known as spatial cognition, similar to the description of cartographic cognition. This will help:
· The acquisition, organisation, utilization and revision of knowledge.
· Knowledge of the shape of objects, and the patterns of knowledge of ideas, concepts.
We will decode the knowledge/signs such as words images anew, like anamnesis. This is in line with forms of experiential learning through reflective praxis. We will re-evaluate our patterns of knowledge to develop wisdom.
We want to challenge their perceptions in education so that thy can develop and take on board alternative perspectives to situations/topics subjects in their everyday spatial environments.
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Information Technology
This is where I hope that the interdisciplinary research should take place via the internet. People with differing disciplines will be able to participate in action research.
Due to the rise of the internet there has inevitably become a trove of social networking websites, where people can collaborate. They can share information easily through blogging & rss/feeds.
People can reflect on their own information source that they have subscribed to and are alerted to of new content.
Sites such as flickr, myspace, facebook, youtube, all allowing people to share their favourite pictures and content from interdisciplinary subjects.
I have created a website resource to collect, share, reflect, participate, collaborate on visual maps to share knowledge.
Slide 23
Abstraction techniques
‘When individuals form concepts they are abstracting from something they perceive’ (malin, 1994, p 142).
Abstraction is about the grasping of essentials, ‘the grasping of significant form’ (arnheim, 1970, p 140).
There are different techniques to abstract information, that can help achieve significant form of the information.
We must also need a break, for understanding we require limits such as the edge of the page, a full stop, otherwise we forget our starting point as we connect ideas and lose the thread of the task/goal that we first sought out to understand better.
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How we abstract
We look, see perceive form percepts, and then use thinking/cognition to form concepts to help understanding.
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Writing & Sketching
‘activities such as sketching & doodling are not distractions from the task of writing, but an integral part of it’ (Sharples, 1999, p.10).
‘Drawings help mediate and externalise thoughts and ideas. […] [They are a] multipurpose tool for enquiry, comprehension and communication, […] and visuo-spatial reasoning’.
Drawing is a fast easy tool to visualise ideas and research a topic. It helps capture the significant form of characters/objects but also spatially conceive thoughts & knowledge. ‘Anning (1997) has emphasised […] the use of drawings in representing ideas or objects, as a tool for learning and recording thinking’ (Khunyakari, Mehrotra, Chunawala & Natarajan, 2007, p.6).
Dan Roam in the back of the napkin sketch
‘it doesn’t matter the nature of the problem we face—if we can imagine it, we can draw it. By drawing it we will see otherwise invisible aspects and potential solutions emerge. Drawing out our problem is always worth a try. Even in the worst case—if no solution becomes visible—we’ll still end up with an infinitely clearer view of our situation’.
Slide 26
Picasso - Guernica
Picasso’s influences for these drawings of war were Goya who did drawings of war. Picasso’s drawings gave him insight into how to portray the destruction or the concept of a distorted sun.
These were his visual research for his outcome.
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Picasso states,
‘When I paint, my object is to show what I have found and not what I am looking for.’ (Frayling, 1993/4, p.2).
Frayling in Research in Art & Design states ‘how can I tell what I am till I see/visualise what I make and do?’ (Frayling, C, 1993/4, p.5).
Does this mean that self should be included in my visualisations as these visualisations of what I make and do, help tell me what I am. I realise what I am, my interests, knowledge, through what I make and do.
Slide 28
¢ These visualisations I have made are what I have found about who I am.
¢ So for communication of knowledge should self be made visible explicitly in the visualisations?
¢ If so which voice (self), and to what degree?
¢ Or should the findings be presented/visualised without these elements of self to aid in clearer communication?
¢ Also what is the best visual graphic mapping technique at capturing attention and clearly presenting knowledge/information of a complex subject in easy to interpret visual layout? less
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