The Social in the Visual

Figures: the social in the visual has reached 1! Given that we have reached 1, we thought it was a good time to discuss making some changes to our website. The main reason for this is that we want to become more transparent to our readers. In changing the website, we aim to change the role of the user and change the role of the writer to enhance interactivity. So one thing we are planning to do is, rather than you having to post your names, we propose that the system automatically generates a number, e.g., “reader 1, 2 etc.”. We have had some feedback that writing a comment can be rather intimidating, so we hope that this will create a level of anonymity for you.

We also want to make the visuals more dominant, we are the social in the visual after all! So we are considering that the first page of the site is a list of the visuals with the associated headings without the contextual statement. We are hoping that by focusing on the visuals it will help us in constructing our aesthetic. There will still be the opportunity to post, and we will still keep tags, but we are planning to categorise the information via the outputs. This we hope, will provide a different way of building links with potentially diverse content.

We think that it is about time that we have a “Contact Us” section for you to email any suggestions on the content or future content, or anything that you want to really. Regarding Figures content, we are considering focusing on one major project for a dedicated time, allowing us to work towards a number of outputs: the website, public projection work (see our recent post “Swine Flu”), locative media work (see the post “Locative Infodesign”), booklets / prited material (see “Figures 001: Explosion Over The Horizon”) and many other possibilities. In conjunction to this, we will have a series of sub-projects on the go at anytime, so please keep having a look. We plan to submit new postings at the end of each month, keeping you up to date with our stuff! And, we also want to include questions for you, so we can develop converstaions. So please let us know what you think regarding our birthday makeover plans.

… And here is the video in situ at the Spectrum Gallery. We would love your thoughts on the animations, the difference between the two aesthetics and anything else you notice about these latest Figures works.

… And here is our more rational approach. These two animations, the sensationalist and the rational, were projected next to each other within the gallery. The Swine Flu version was the one passers-by could see from the street. As they approached, viewers began to see the rational approach projected on to a wall more hidden from the street. The two projections were synchronised so that the comparisons were impossible to avoid. Please pop back soon for the video clip …

Here’s the first of two animations that we projected on to the walls of the Spectrum Gallery in Beaufort Street, Perth, last week. We’re beginning to get to grips with what this Figures thing can be. All along we’ve wanted to look at alternative visuals for news. Here we decided to compare the usual news approach of photographs and attention grabbing headlines with a more reasoned approach (next post).

We need your feedback on our site.

Here is a little spiel to explain our research, please let us know what you think!

We are examining both the form and content of news information using the web and info graphics as interrogative tools. We feel that these two belong together as we can reach a broad audience in the same way that news media does. And at the same time proposing new ways of shaping information visually.

This is an examination of alternative news information – we don’t profess to provide answers, far more it is about presenting information in new ways. A lot of the postings so far are about the form, using new models to communicate socially relevant information, hence the content is at times arbitrary. After this initial research period we hope to have some productive visual forms we can apply to media content that we feel is worth investigating.

So after reading our spiel, please have a look and post your thoughts on the Figures website: Which postings do you connect with and why? Can you spot any key themes that are worth developing? What are some issues that you might like to be addressed? Are there any problems with this approach? 

We look forward to you sharing your thoughts about Figures.  

Mapping using the Internet, like most applications on the web, seems to begin by using existing models of visualisation. It makes sense to use what we know and understand about paper maps from their long history. When maps are used as a tool to try and locate a place there is a relationship between that visualised place and the actual place. The main difference between a printed map and a virtual might be the passage of time. The Internet, with its ability to change and update quickly, gives us the ability to apply filters to the visualisations.

Google maps is a good example. These maps employ the aesthetic of a road map: A bird’s eye view; small icons; various line widths and colours to denote area. (more…)

Our friends over at Hidden Shoal Recordings had a gig in December ‘08 for which Uriah and I designed this flash animation of music biz statistics (from stats gathered by Uriah and Dr Malcom Riddoch). We looked at various music technologies and how each has been superceded. We tried to show that the markets have arrived at favouring digital downloads (at least for the present): Hidden Shoal’s main method of distribution. At the gig, this animation was projected directly on to a matt black wall in an almost completely black room. Amazingly this experiment paid off. The effect is much as you see here: bright white lines on a black ground, but with the added advantage of a borderless background for the graphics to float upon. Anyway, we think we have something that’s aesthetically engaging, but what about consistency? Are these hard to decipher? Your thoughts would be appreciated.

This is an infographic sign we designed to explain some location-specific stats. Mosman Park in Perth is unusual in that it has a pronounced split between the haves and the have nots. This side of the two-sided sign faces the less affluent part of the suburb. The sign explains several points of interest. These include that the more affluent are more likely to use their cars for most trips, however short; and that the poorer denizens spend around one third of their income on car running costs, while the richer spend less than one eighth. Its placement in a place of leisure and relaxation is deliberate: This is a place to reflect on the day-to-day, and to recharge the batteries before returning to the weekly grind.

What are your thoughts on guerilla infographics? What might they contain and where might they might be placed?

Designed by our own Uriah Mathews based on data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Happy Australia shows a correlation between relationships and subjective well-being. Let us know how effective you think this graphic is. We’d be very interested to read your comments on:

Whether the format (appearance, use of shapes) seems objective or biased, credible or questionable;
Whether the format seems too dense or difficult to decrypt, too far removed from its subject matter; and
Whether the colours seem too similar or whether this clearly shows that the bandwidth of perceived happiness is quite narrow: that noone seems 100% happy, nor less than 50% happy.