Visualization and the Art of Metaphor
A Tutorial in Day for Creativity and Cognition 2007
By Jack Ox
This tutorial is designed for students in various disciplines (arts & sciences) that
traditionally work in other media and would like to integrate visualization into their work
to enhance communication of ideas and concepts. Attendees that are already using
visualization methods in their work can benefit from this tutorial because they will be
exposed to different ways of visualization as it provides an environment to improve
communication skills and the opportunity to acquire visual literacy.
This tutorial provides an examination of different kinds of visualization concepts, which
will be exemplified by the work of different artists and scientists, both historical and
current. In addition to the lecture component the course provides hands-on experience
with a laboratory assignment.
Part 1:Historical and Present Overview
From artists who explore scientific and mathematical entities, to science that depends on
artists’ reifications in order to create understanding, the first section of this tutorial will
describe and show examples from history through to the present, exploring a large range
of possible kinds of perceptualization. This word, “perceptualization”, is more conclusive
and embracing than “visualization”, which is limited to only one sense. Although
visualization is the buzzword currently in fashion, and thus in the title of this proposal, I
predict that this will change in the future.
Artists and scientists making taxonomies shall be examined. In these cases one has a
vocabulary with an ordering of the list of objects. Part of this section will include
diagrammatic trees and tables of information.
There will be slides and discussion of noteworthy scientists’ drawings from the 18th, 19th,
and 20th Centuries, and how they visualized their concepts, tools, and discoveries.
The artist/philosopher team of Arakawa and Gins use the visuals created by their highly
unusual architectural spaces to prolong human life through the challenge of physically
navigating a precarious, illogical space. The New Yorker artist, Saul Steinberg, creates
maps of the United States congruent with New York City beliefs and attitudes.
Next we shall consider scientific models starting from Keppler’s nested planets in 1596
to 19th C. philosophical toys demonstrating such things as wave motion. The 20th C.
produced models of hemoglobin, Bucky Balls, and of course the famous DNA double
helix from Watson and Crick. How do these models reflect the styles and perceptions of
their times?
1
Part 2: Methods of Reification from the Author’s Work.
As we enter the 21st C. we shall see Ox’s own 3-D virtual reality models of sound files
[see Figure 1], collected by the composer Alvin Curran. These VR models will appear in
Ox and Britton’s Virtual Color Organ’s™ Desert Organ Stop as a part of the 2008
performance of Gridjam, with music composed by Curran. This composition will
include the before mentioned sound files. Gridjam is a real-time, virtual reality
visualization of a geographically distributed musical performance over the Global
Lambda Integrated Facility1. GLIF is an international, proprietary optical network that
has a regular delay so small it is equivalent to the time difference between the two
opposite sides of a full orchestra. 2
Figure 1: A hand modeled 3-D sound by Jack Ox based on pitch and dynamic
information from Alvin Curran's sound file. © Jack Ox
Figure 2: Data taken from sound file through digital analysis, including pitch and
dynamic information. © Jack Ox
1
[Link]
2
[Link] Cees de Laat is credited with
information about the specific delay of GLIF.
2
The Desert Organ Stop [see Figure 3] itself is a metaphor for the different families of
instruments in an orchestra, and attention will be paid to these relationships too. What is
the kind of thinking behind linking structural formations of landscapes with families of
instruments? Is this strictly “poetic” thinking or does it also embody “scientific”
thinking? What are the implications of this particular language of metaphor, and is this
kind of thinking useful in scientific visualizations? How can line and form be transferred
from the visual to the aural? The eight landscape drawings from which the VCO™
virtual world was modeled were also used as chance assignation texture maps for the
sound objects described and pictured above, based upon the grouping of the almost two
hundred objects into eight groups of sets. The objects in each set exhibited visual
similarity to their fellow members in their graphs [Figure 2] also seen above.
Figure 3: View inside Dave Britton and Jack Ox's Virtual Color Organ™; Desert
Organ Stop © Jack Ox.
3
Figure 4: 3 sound objects in the Desert Organ Stop of the Virtual Color Organ ™ by
Ox and Britton
Some Color Systems for Visualization
Jack Ox has created three different color systems for her work in the visualization of
music. She will explain these in detail and lead a discussion about ways to structure color
systems in various ways. The first system is based on the harmonic movement of keys in
Classical and Romantic music, including the relative level of dissonance/ consonance.
The color wheel created for this system can be seen in Figure 5 below. Ox then created a
system of color for how and where vowel sounds are made in the vocal tract, which is
part of her system of visualization for phonetics.
The third color system created is one based on timbre, or the color of sound. How does
one make judgements about the color of sound? Is it scientific? How much does it rely on
subjective decisions that very well might be in opposition to other peoples’ subjective
decisions. It is quite well known that people who have ‘crossed signals’ in their brains,
people who have the affliction known as synaesthesia, hardly ever agree on a color sound
relationship. Ox has ordered colors into a structure that reflects relationships between
colors that are similar to relationships between orchestral and vocal sounds.
4
Figure 5: Color/Harmony wheel based on the Circle of Fifths, by Jack Ox ©.
Part 3: Hands on Visualization Project
The participants will be asked to create a “mind map” of what has brought them to this
tutorial in Washington D. C., as part of Creativity and Cognition 2007. If they have
planned to take the tutorial before coming it is hoped that they will bring materials with
them, e.g. photographs, tables, drawings, etc. If they have their laptop computers with
them they can use any materials or programs therein to construct this map. If they do not
have pre-thoughts or materials we shall provide sets of colored pencils and paper to work
with.
The subject is intentionally wide open. One could think geographically or
philosophically. One can respond with a series of __________ to show the path that leads
to the day we meet. Having just been exposed to a wide variety of methods and
connection madness, the students should be able to extend their boundaries and try
something risky.
5
Bibliography of Printed and On-line Materials
Kemp, Martin,Visualizations: The Nature Book of Art and Science, University of
California Press; 1 edition (February 5, 2001)
Mirzoeff, Nicholas (ed.) (2002). The Visual Culture Reader, 2nd ed., London: Routledge.
Tufte , Edward, Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative
(1983)
Tufte , Edward, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1990)
Tufte , Edward, Envisioning Information (1997)
Ware, C. Information Visualization: Perception for Design. (2nd Edition) Morgan
Kaufman. December (2004)
[Link] Dr. Woohoo’s color analytics
[Link] Romote sensing and visualization in Archeology
[Link] Sound visualization from vibrations on
plate
[Link] Visualization of music—The 21st C. Virtual Color Organ
[Link] Complex Systems Visualization, Agent-Based Modeling, Self-
Organizing Systems Design.