I have recently been exploring the work of Edward Tufte, as recommended to me by Rod. My initial thoughts are that whilst Tufte's ideas on the relationship between data and visuals is fascinating, and has some scope in the ideas I have on this project myself, his actual practises in creating visuals of data are far too niche, far too focussed on scientific ideals.
In Beautiful Evidence, Tufte touches upon some of his own methods of data visualisation, such as the Sparkline, which has been made popular in visualising rises and falls in the stock market, or temperature activity, and I feel it doesn't really have much to do with visualising the imagery a reviewer uses. A lot of Tufte's methods are about compressing as much data into as smaller an image as possible, just for the sake of efficiency and whatnot. With reviews, if I conclude something to be a key element, it's not about being dense, sparse and cutthroat with the way I display it. Taking creative data and re-imagining it creatively does not really call for the same kind of methods in order to preserve time or page space.
Again, as I briefly mentioned before, it would be great to show which words show dominance in each review with a method like these; whether or not the word 'chorus' fluctuates more and more with one certain reviewer's work, for example, but to simply convert text to an image seems a lot more of a creative process than an analytical one.
In my initial search, I also came across Tufte's Beautiful Evidence lecture, from Intelligence Squared in London, Wednesday 19th May. Here is a brief highlights video;
The full version is available to view for members only on the Information Squared website. In this lecture, Tufte explains the reasoning for some of his arguments, gives some examples of his work and generally tries to put his ideas into context. Here are some quotes I found particularly interesting:
I realise Tufte's ideas are a lot more scientifically orientated, but the message I want to explore is largely the same. I think in regards to my experiment and music reviews, the format is irrelevant. There are ideas, emotions and feelings that the reviewer tries to evoke with his writing, but I don't think the writing aspect is essential in that. This is why I want to see if it really works on a visual level as well.
By default, music reviews take one idea and almost transcode it to a completely disconnected and unrelated format. I don't think it is data that they are dealing with at all; data collection on music would just be a much more sterile, emotionless take - what kind of guitars were used, how was it mic'd up, how many strums of each chord pattern and so on. That would be a more Tufte-like approach to exploring creative writing dealing with music.
By default, music reviews take one idea and almost transcode it to a completely disconnected and unrelated format. I don't think it is data that they are dealing with at all; data collection on music would just be a much more sterile, emotionless take - what kind of guitars were used, how was it mic'd up, how many strums of each chord pattern and so on. That would be a more Tufte-like approach to exploring creative writing dealing with music.
"Evidence is evidence, whether words, numbers, images, diagrams, still or moving. The information doesn't care what it is. The content doesn't care what it is. It is all information. For readers and viewers, the intellectual tasks remain constant regardless of the particular mode of evidence. To understand and to reason about the materials at hand and to appraise their quality, relevance and integrity."
This quote is perhaps more key in understanding what it is I'm trying to achieve. Obviously there are questions about how I approach this creatively, but what I am looking to do is to make a visual representation of existing texts. There will be certain things I can't really incorporate into a collage, such as specific words that make up sentences; the "ands," the "buts" the "the's". But it is more so the message that I am trying to visualise. "The content doesn't care what it is." For the experiment to work, I need to draw my own conclusions as to which medium does the job it is set out to do in a better ability, but that aside, analytically, all I really want to know is if the user gains the same, or draws the same conclusions regardless of whether they've experienced each review visually or textually.
This quote is perhaps more key in understanding what it is I'm trying to achieve. Obviously there are questions about how I approach this creatively, but what I am looking to do is to make a visual representation of existing texts. There will be certain things I can't really incorporate into a collage, such as specific words that make up sentences; the "ands," the "buts" the "the's". But it is more so the message that I am trying to visualise. "The content doesn't care what it is." For the experiment to work, I need to draw my own conclusions as to which medium does the job it is set out to do in a better ability, but that aside, analytically, all I really want to know is if the user gains the same, or draws the same conclusions regardless of whether they've experienced each review visually or textually.
"We shouldn't deny ourselves the uses of every possible mode, and we shouldn't segregate the information by the modes of production."
Again, Tufte's ideas play into how I want to look at the relevance of text as a format. Either way, sound is difficult to visualise, and all music reviews seem to do is create a mental image of how music sounds. It's quite complex, but Tufte definitely takes a similar approach with his presentation of data as I intend my project to.
Again, Tufte's ideas play into how I want to look at the relevance of text as a format. Either way, sound is difficult to visualise, and all music reviews seem to do is create a mental image of how music sounds. It's quite complex, but Tufte definitely takes a similar approach with his presentation of data as I intend my project to.
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