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| Sink or Swim: Polar Bears and the effects of Climate Change (Source: WikiMedia Commons) |
"Scientific visualisation is an interdisciplinary branch of science according to Friendly (2008) "primarily concerned with the visualisation of three-dimensional phenomena (architectural, meteorological, medical, biological, etc.), where the emphasis is on realistic renderings of volumes, surfaces, illumination sources, and so forth, perhaps with a dynamic (time) component
(:Wikipedia)
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With a conscious effort to avoid making an overly-generalised, all-in-all qualifying statement about human behaviour, I would still go on to argue that we - as people, as individuals, all in part of a wider social dimension - are afforded our greatest knowledges via visual connections to other people, objects, climactic phenomena, wide-scale events, etc, etc... OR, more simply put: We learn most easily when seeing and immediately conceptualising - opposed perhaps to hearing, interpreting, and making best fit of information that has been conveyed.
For the purpose of this week's blog post, I will set out to clarify and the 'How' and 'Why' visualisation is used, and greater still, their relations to the Body and too, the Social Body.
However firstly, I must also make clear that it is difficult to argue a singular way of 'How' data representation is conveyed. Largely, the means by which one may interpret, and then further to visualise content is all-but endless - of course, visualisations may thence take the shape of any given form, in any given format, at any given time.
The reasons 'Why' we use visualisations, in contrast, become much more apparent with critical reflection to academic studies.
Iliinsky (2012) argues that "...our visual system is extremely well built for visual analysis. There’s a huge amount of data coming into your brain through your eyes; the optic nerve is a very big pipe, and it sends data to your brain very quickly..." and therefore visual data representation is the most efficient way of conveying otherwise difficult to grasp (or widely uncommon) concepts and/or information packages. Iliinsky furthers to state that "[Visualisation] casts data into a format that can be grasped and understood much more quickly and easily than the raw numbers alone."
In light of these points, refer to the image of the Polar bear at the top of this post: Without any additional contextual information having been provided, we can see that the animal is in a state of discomfort, looking to merely survive above and beyond anything else. We come to understand that something is not 'right', there is a need for social change/action to halt global warming, etc... We come to understand the plight of the creature much more quickly and much more easily than that is Polar Bear data was to say, be presented in a table.
Thus 'How' (in this instance more so than on a whole) in a literal sense is somewhat more clearly defined: perhaps, 'the How' equals that of an emotional connection, and thus 'Why' = to promote wider social change.
Watch: (0:01-1:22) for an insight on the benefits behind visualisation, and the reasons behind its use.
With these points in mind, we may then ask how can (specifically scientific) visualisations be linked back to the Body, and greater still, the Social Body on a whole?
First, turn over your palms and look at the base of your hands. Assumedly, they'd look something like this:
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| http://cdn.sciencefocus.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/490px_wide/qanda/images/qa_palm.jpg |
Now, take a look at the below image
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| Visualisations and the Body: an illustration Human Hand controlling Bacterial Biofilms, which uses a novel biofilm imaging technique to show the growth of bacteria, at 400 times normal resolution. (Source: abc.net.au)
Of course, with the obvious exception of the hands being of the opposite side of the body, there is quite a strong contrast in what we come to understand as being on the hand.
The human eye is not adept to view such microbes on the hand, and I would argue that data alone - presented in a table or in prose - would not spark such a mental reaction as the one I had experienced when first viewing this image.
Visualisations, in this case, may thence be used to promote good personal hygiene, i.e 'Washing your hands after taking out the bin, or patting the dog, or going to the toilet, etc...'
Once more, we may come to see that Visualisations are not only effective in communicating data quickly, but also in a way that can be best interpreted to promote either (or both) personal and social change.
References:
Anon. (2008) 'Struggling polar bears put on endangered list', Metro.co.uk, May 15, <http://www.metro.co.uk/news/147937-struggling-polar-bears-put-on-endangered-list
Iliinsky, N. (2012) 'Why Is Data Visualization So Hot?' [online] accessible at http://blog.visual.ly/why-is-data-visualization-so-hot/
* images as previously attributed.
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