Folks,
Hello. I would like to amend the minutes a bit.
The first two of the three questions that I tried to structure the discussion
around yesterday are slight variations of those below.
I am bothering the dhcs list with this only because
I think these are crucial questions about every
topic to be included in the MA curriculum.
With regard to visualization and display:
what issues do computer generated (or enabled) visualization and display
raise that are new (with respect to Humanities scholarship)?, and
what aspects of visualization and display for Humanities scholarship
are different (with respect to Scientific scholarship)?
If there are not substantial "issues" and "aspects" of those varieties
then there is no need for additional curriculum coverage of visualization
and display and the third question is moot.
Cheers,
Worthy
"Andrea K. Laue" wrote:
>
> January 16, 2002
> display and visualization
>
> What do humanists add to the research of display and visualization?
> What's new?
>
> What's different about humanistic studies of display and visualization and
> science/engineering studies of the same topics?
>
> What would we teach in the humanities versions of such a class?
>
> -----
>
> What is visualization? When the Blake Archive reproduces a plate, is that
> visualization? imaging?
>
> SG: visualizations are created to support some task, created with a
> specific purpose.
>
> E: synthetic visualization. overlay a surrogate with some extra
> information.
>
> WM: imaging, making those Blake images, is not new. we've been doing it
> for years. issues are old--resolution, color fidelity, etc--are issues in
> print as well as digital media.
>
> what is the surrogate is a 3-D CAD model?
>
> SR: great socratic discussion, but if you pick up the literature a very
> clear distinction is made. these really are separate discussions in the
> scholarship. their definitions are determined by use, by practice.
>
> JD: distinction is based on source. imaging reproduces a visual source.
> visualization reproduces, reforms non-visual data.
>
> JU: example of Chris's Crystal Palace. that's animation and/or
> simulation.
>
> in visualization, you're not attempting to reproduce an already physical
> structure. you're probably creating a physical structure.
>
> WM: what sorts of transformations do we want to talk about in the course?
>
> GR: but we're talking about a GIF image as if it were really an image in
> our machine. it's really just data. what is the rhetoric of images vs.
> visualizations?
>
> what's a grammar for reading images? for reading visualizations?
>
> WM: in visualization, little agreement on what algorithms are appropriate
> for what data. one set of data and many ways of transforming that into a
> visualzation. should we be teaching the different algorithms?
>
> it seems that there is more agreement on the algorithms for imaging.
>
> SR: humanists doing quantitative humanities research rely on science and
> social science visualization tools. we haven't developed our own models
> of transformation, our own grammar of visualization.
>
> JD: even thinking about primary sources as data isn't accepted in the
> humanities.
>
> WM: is quantitative analysis viable research in the humanities? we've
> talked about this in relation to history. what about other disciplines?
>
> JD: how can an interpretation be visualized and then quantitatively
> analyzed.
>
> JU: using the computer to generate some visual provocation, the creation
> of an interpretation that isn't meant to be authoritative. underlying any
> such provocation is an algorithm, a starting point.
>
> JD: what is the use of these methods? rhetoric of visualization is a
> primary field of inquiry.
>
> SG: encoding vs. decoding. it's often easier to encode than to decode.
>
> JU: where might we start in developing a grammar of visualization?
> iconography?
>
> PG: keep creeping around issues of interface here. in social sciences,
> etc. they use scatter plots, pie charts etc. to support arguments. it
> seems like we want to create new ways to interact with artifacts
> ratherthan for supporting an argument.
>
> BN: but i want to be careful with that distinction. b/c i think an
> interface necessarily employs some rhetoric and makes some argument.
> assumes or enforces particular paths and choices.
>
> GR: in the course, must address issue of visualizing text. for instance,
> when we digitize a text we're already quantifying it. so if we produce a
> visualization of a digitized text, what are we representing?
>
> what about the tradition of non-digital visualizations of text. emblems.
>
> CR: how does illustration fit in here?
>
> JM: must first make strange the book -- it is visualization too. must
> first make the students realize this and then move to digital.
>
> SR: leitmotif of seminar -- everything has a rhetoric. maybe we should
> push this to the forefront.
>
> E: in visualization, trying to capture emergent properties of some data.
> maybe illustration and visualization are similar in this manner -- effort
> to emphasize one aspect of the data. in many cases, abstracting away the
> less important details.
>
> JD: what about visualization as a method for solving problems. remember
> Vannevar Bush. he first used visualization to solve problems, not just
> illustrate or explain solutions.
>
> JM: Peirce was working with this. but he saw visualization as a method
> for solving logic problems.
>
> JD: pedagogical exercise -- find an image to comment on another image.
>
> AL: possible project -- rhetoric of the stock chart.
>
> WM: so what's different about a humanities course in this area vs. a
> science course in this?
>
> science -- quantitative data derived from instrumentation. something
> "pumping" the data in.
>
> science -- units are clear. measurement is not a problem (less of a
> problem). in the humanities, this isn't as clear. maybe it's somewhat
> clear in poetry, in metric literature, but maybe not in prose.
>
> JU: structure of source matters. in generating the visualization of
> Dante, there were lots of structures to draw on--canto, stanza, line, etc.
> but thinking about how to visualize a novel is more difficult. what is
> the structure below the chapter? i suspect that in the physical sciences
> there are more agreed upon structures.
>
> WM: but there are some agreed upon structures, some agreed upon coordinate
> schemes. for instance, if we wanted to represent that attendance at this
> seminar, we might list the names in alphabetical order. this would be an
> accepted coordinate system.
>
> JM: every poem has markup, a metric, a meter. in a poem, the point is to
> "see" the words. they are called to your attention by the metric. prose
> is different. its point is a fantasy world beyond the words. the page is
> transparent.
>
> GR: ethics of visualization. is it ethical to map Joyce's _Ulysses_
> literally? what does that do for us?
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Jan 17 2002 - 21:52:30 EST