Week 8

This week I have been conducting further theoretical and methodological research. In my initial discussions in the tutorials about placing my work into a theoretical context, a number of key figures were brought to my attention, and I had only just realised that I'd saved quite a few bookmarks on the UWE system. So without further adieu;



Otto Neurath. (1882-1945) An Austrian social scientist, political economist and philosopher.

Neurath designed Isotype, which is  the International System of Typographic Picture Education. Isotype is basically a system implemented to put data visualisation into practice. Isotype is simply a method of displaying information gathered from data in a text format. Neurath teamed up with Gerd Arntz in order to actually create the language. Antz designed upwards of 4000 images to correspond with Neurath's ideas, and focussed around industrial and political ideas when approaching the design. It was significant at the time of design, around 1935, because the majority of those working in the industry could not read or write, let alone deal with industry terminology, so the idea was to create a simple way of understanding.

Gerd Antz's website brings forth the idea that 'Another outspoken goal of this method of visual statistics was to overcome barriers of language and culture, and to be universally understood.' I believe this ties in well with my approach to the project, but at the same time, depending on the review, a certain amount of intertextual awareness and, I suppose, a sense of cultural capital will help the reader to understand the images easier. A lot of reviews feed off of the audience's awareness of similar-sounding artists and so on, which could be a barrier when perhaps more interesting ideas, in a similar vein to Isotype, is introduced.

It would be interesting for me to create my own form of Isotype specifically for my website. Since I am not particularly artistically gifted when it comes to hand drawing, it may be something to explore in the second half of the semester. If I get a chance, I will attempt to create something as an experiment though. But for now, it doesn't really work as a critique on whether or not text based reviews are successful, it merely collects the data in a more visually pleasing way.