Data Visualization: Comparison of Storage Media

Data Viz MASTERPIECE

So I really like data visualization. DataIsBeautiful is my favorite subreddit on Redditor. Someone recently posted a link there to a infographic about the 2014 US Federal Budget. It is an AMAZING piece of work.



Here's a high-res version where you can see detail.

Welcome to the Future

One thousand, nine hundred and forty-four years ago: Mount Vesuvius erupted and covered the city of Pompeii in ash, preserving remnants of everyday life. 

A few years ago: Archaeologists digging on Easter Island uncovered the remnants of another archaeological dig from a century ago. 

Seeing this inspired artist Daniel Arsham to wonder artifacts a Vesuvius-like eruption would preserve of contemporary life.

Welcome to the Future was the result.

Creating casts of modern consumer products with materials including ash, steel, obsidian, rock dust, and crystal, he scattered thousands of objects in a 25-foot hole that he dug in the floor of a gallery. His goal was to create a "collapsing of time" like the one he experienced on Easter Island. 

Soft-sell approach in advertising

Mary Stewart says that in the soft-sell approach in advertising, a sensory response is expected rather than a rational one (334). This helped explain a lot about what I find confusing about advertising. So often, I watch an ad and by the end I wonder "And what did that have to do with your product??" I've been expecting the hard-sell approach--the rational connection between the message of the ad and the product. While this shows a lack of understanding on my part about the nature of ads--because I didn't understand the soft-sell approach, it also shows a failure on the part on the advertisers because I didn't connect with the ad.

Film editing to show emotion

Mary Stewart tells about a film-based experiment by early Soviet filmmaker Lev Kulesov, in which they perceived a man's unchanging face as portraying different emotions by mixing it with shots of a bowl of soup, scenes from nature, a baby,, and a dead woman (311). This reminded me of color perception due to contrast. The exact same color is perceived differently depending on what color it is paired with. Like this, in the experiment the man's face, which was the same from shot to shot, with perceived to be show hunger, longing, joy and grief, all based on the image it was paired with.

Listening to your Wi-fi Signal

So there's this guy named Frank Swain whose a writer for New Scientist magazine that recently started using hearing aids. He wondered about using hearing aids for things we can't normally hear as humans, even with perfect hearing. So with the help of a sound artist, he hacked his hearing aids to let him hear nearby wi-fi signals as sound. The signal itself is represented by a clicking noise, with the frequency equal to the proximity. And it's directional - you'll hear it in your right ear if its on your right, for example. And then the network ID is heard as notes, with each letter or number corresponding to a certain note. Here's an example of what it sounds like.

Sound in establishing time and place

Mary Stewart says that sound can create a more convincing atmosphere in time and place (310). What comes to mind most quickly is the use of a saxophone, quickly rising and coming down again more slowly, to establish a love scene. Sometimes, we don't have to see anything else but the wall of a room, but if that particular saxophone sound is heard, we know to expect a love scene.

Pitch of Voice and Characters in Opera

Mary Stewart notes that the higher pitch of most female voices is less threatening than lower male voices, which is why the hero is a tenor and the villain is a baritone in most operas (309). It's worth noting that this principle also extends to the female voices as well. The love interest is usually a soprano, while her trouble-making rival is usually an alto. However, Stewart gets the male parts a little wrong. The villain is usually a bass, not a baritone, but that fact further emphasizes her point. For those wondering, the baritone is usually a side-character that doesn't get any of the big numbers, but is vital to the plot.

Scope and Intensity in The Lord of the Rings

As noted in Mary Stewart's Launching the Imagination, by alternately showing two or more events, in a technique known as crosscutting, a connection can be made between them (303) and that something can be made more intense by observing it closely (302). These concepts were used together to make a battle scene in Lord of the Rings: Return of the King far more intense and violent without being graphic.
In one scene, a human army is riding toward an army of Orcs, and they're attacked and brutally slaughtered. No blood or gore is shown in this scene, but it is made effective by crosscutting with a scene of a king eating. We are shown a close-up of just his open mouth eating chewing. By alternating the two scenes, what is happening to the food in his food becomes a metaphor for the slaughter of the soldiers on the battlefield. The close-up is crucial. A wider shot of the king eating would have seemed boring, lowering the intensity of the scene, or even portrayed apathy on his part, which would have been intense as well but wouldn't have left the audience with the same impression.

Plot duration

According to Mary Stewart's Launching the Imagination, plot duration refers to the time covered by the events of the story, and is especially important to the success of a work. In fiction writing, I've heard this concept as "In Late, Out Early". You focus on the action, whether it be an action or a decision. If you show too much leading up to an event, or too much of the results, the audience will get bored. It's interesting to see the guy who gets caught in the middle of a robbery while he's at the bank depositing money. You probably don't want to see that guy having breakfast that morning, or him going to be that night.

Art as Autobiography

"All artwork is autobiographical" (Stewart, 284). I found this to be a very interesting statement, probably becomes it ring true to me. Many forms of art, especially postmodern art, can seem to have little to do with the artist, or with humanity at all. But it still seems applicable, since autobiography means "a record of one's own life". Regardless of the work they do, an artist is saying something about themselves, because something about their life, their personality, drove them to make that piece.

The Ideal (Photoshopped) You

There's no debating that we see A LOT of photoshop images these days. It seems that every person on a magazine cover has been photoshopped to some degree. But do they wholeheartedly approve of what's been done to their image? That's up for some debate.

That's what I find interesting about the work of Scott Chasserot. He created the ideal version of 14 subjects. How did he decide what was "ideal"? By consulting the subjects themselves. He spent hours in Photoshop with these images, evidently making a wide range of versions. He then showed these versions to the subject of them and determined, by monitoring brain waves, which version got the most positive response.

I find it interesting that every "ideal" varied noticeably from the original. Did no one prefer their real face as what they were most happy with?