DOCSLIB.ORG

THE PAGE in the SCREEN: VISUALIZED INFORMATION and the AESTHETICS of the DIGITAL IMAGE Jacob T

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
THE PAGE in the SCREEN: VISUALIZED INFORMATION and the AESTHETICS of the DIGITAL IMAGE Jacob T THE PAGE IN THE SCREEN: VISUALIZED INFORMATION AND THE AESTHETICS OF THE DIGITAL IMAGE Jacob T. Watson A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. Chapel Hill 2019 Approved by: Gregory Flaxman Florence Dore Mark B.N. Hansen Matthew Taylor Rick Warner Henry Veggian © 2019 Jacob T. Watson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Jacob T. Watson: The Page in the Screen: Visualized Information and the Aesthetics of the Digital Image (Under the direction of Gregory Flaxman) The digital as we understand it today is incompatible with the concept of aesthetic experience. Numerous scholars have identified this incompatibility as the primary conceptual problem that must be addressed by the theory of digital aesthetics. “The Page in the Screen” provides a solution to this problem in the form of a reconceptualization of the digital image. The dissertation begins with a reading of Deleuze’s The Time-Image that culminates in a re- imagining of the digital image as an information-graphical image. I provide a historical account that shows how this digital-qua-infographic image transformed the moving images that we interact with on a daily basis. Infographics had a small and circumscribed place in the visual architecture of pre-war screens; they began to completely restructure the screen in the 1940s, beginning with the infographic innovations of the first television news broadcasts. The fact that television played such a large role in the proliferation of infographics underscores one of the major contentions of my theory of the digital image, which is that this image is a digital technology in its own right and not reducible to the phenomenal manifestation of digital processes carried out by computers. Finally, I present a theory of the infographic image based in the writings of C.S. Peirce and Jacques Bertin in order to show that the infographic image and the moving image have incongruous ways of organizing time and space. This incongruity results in a paradox when the two images become integrated in the digital age. In the end, I argue that this paradox is the site where the digital and the aesthetic interface with one another. iii To Larry and Pat Watson and Nadine Gravitt iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to express my deep and sincere appreciation to the members of my dissertation committee: Florence Dore, Gregory Flaxman, Mark B.N. Hansen, Matthew Taylor, Henry Veggian and Rick Warner. Their mentorship and guidance have been invaluable to my development as a scholar. I would like to thank my family for all of their support over the years. I owe particular gratitude to my parents, Alan and Phyllis Watson, and also my grandparents, to whom this dissertation is dedicated. By giving me the opportunity to pursue my goals, they have made all of this work possible. Most of all, I am grateful to my wife, Rae X. Yan, the most dedicated teacher and ethical scholar I have known. I am thankful every day for her generosity, constructive criticism, and emotional support. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE: A MEDITATION ON 24 FRAMES AND THE DIGITAL SCREEN ........................ 1 INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 7 The Problem of Digital Aesthetics ..................................................................................... 8 Digital/Graphical Aesthesis and the Materiality of the Image ......................................... 17 Chapter Synopses ............................................................................................................. 21 Assembling the Digital from The Time-Image ................................................................ 26 CHAPTER 1: TAXONOMIES OF THE NUMERICAL IMAGE ............................................... 28 Just an Image ................................................................................................................... 28 Cybernetique: Specters of Control .................................................................................... 35 Informatique: Regime of Order-Words............................................................................. 39 Télé / Vidéo: A Historical Digression............................................................................... 44 Électronique: Cinema of the Circuit ................................................................................ 48 Numérique: The Digital/Graphical .................................................................................. 50 Digital Aesthetics and Beginning Again .......................................................................... 53 CHAPTER 2: GENEALOGIES OF THE DIGITAL SCREEN ................................................... 57 The Page-Like Screen ...................................................................................................... 57 Infographic Cinema ......................................................................................................... 61 Infographic Television ..................................................................................................... 66 Television News: The First Fully Infographic Genre ...................................................... 71 CBS News, 1941-1949 ..................................................................................................... 74 Visualization: How Information Restructures Screen Space ........................................... 80 vi Infographic Space and the “Piano Nobile” of Digital Information ................................... 84 CHAPTER 3: SEMIOTICS OF GRAPHIC SPACE .................................................................... 89 Immovable Object ............................................................................................................ 89 A Brief History of the Infographic ................................................................................... 93 First Formalization of Graphic Space .............................................................................. 96 Infographic Semiology ................................................................................................... 101 Cinematographic Time and Cinematic Logic ................................................................ 106 Conclusion: From One Screen to Another ................................................................... 110 CODA: THE ABSTRACT LINE AND THE DIAGRAM ....................................................... 118 vii PREFACE: A MEDITATION ON 24 FRAMES AND THE DIGITAL SCREEN Abbas Kiarostami’s 24 Frames begins with a static shot of Brueghel the Elder’s Hunters in the Snow. In the bucolic moment captured by the painting, the hunters and their dogs trudge across a snow-covered hillside overlooking a scene of village life below. The screen simply frames the painting at first, and then gradually, moving elements begin to appear within the frozen, painted space. Wisps of smoke escape from the chimney of a house. A photorealistic dog wanders idly through the foreground. As movement enters the frame, the painting becomes a layered space; between the points of distance simulated by the painting’s perspectival technique, filmic spaces are interposed. Painted surfaces that remain flat and motionless are suddenly intersected by digitally filmed and composited footage of birds and livestock. Through an uncanny and awkward collage of painted and filmed visual elements, a movement unfolds that seems entangled with both the moment of the painting’s narrative content and the moment of its creation. The ethereal smoke, the seemingly aimless movements of the animals, and the murmuring ambient noises that provide a soundscape to the shot all evoke the moment just before this scene became fixed in time. These cinematic traces of human and animal life that enter the frame don’t replace or seamlessly blend with the painting, but instead surround and fill it with the signs of a more nebulous and flowing material from which the painting distills and fixes its image. The shot remains framed on the painting throughout, so that it always fills the screen. There is no visible end or outside to the painted space, only the traces of a more weightless and anchorless image flowing through it. 1 This is the first of the 24 titular “frames”: 4.5-minute shots, most of which take the form of digitally-animated photographs or meticulously arranged and composed nature scenes. Each frame is separated from the one that precedes it by a black screen and a white-text intertitle that lists the number of the frame that comes next. Very few humans appear in the frames; most depict landscapes and seascapes populated by various animals, including birds, rodents, wolves, deer, and cattle. The animals interact sometimes purposefully, sometimes inscrutably, as they traverse the frame, while snow, rain, clouds, dust and waves provide more ambient, drifting patterns of motion. The frames make extensive use of digital animation and digital compositing to produce a paradoxical temporality: a sense of moments frozen and unfrozen in time. They are equal parts photographs come to life and pieces of time trapped in the orbit of a stationary instant. In one of the only frames to contain human figures, a group of tourists stand gazing at the Eiffel tower, suspended in a photographic pose, while pedestrians hurry past on the sidewalk,
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Maintaining Spatial Relations in an Incremental Diagrammatic Reasoner
    Maintaining Spatial Relations in an Incremental Diagrammatic Reasoner Ronald W. Ferguson, Joseph L. Bokor, Rudolph L. Mappus IV and Adam Feldman College of Computing Georgia Institute of Technology 801 Atlantic Avenue Atlanta, GA 30332 {rwf, jlbokor, cmappus, storm} @cc.gatech.edu Abstract gram. This work extends the GeoRep diagrammatic rea- soner (Ferguson & Forbus, 2000), which is described in Because diagrams are often created incrementally, a qualitative section 3. After describing GeoRep, we discuss how Ge o- diagrammatic reasoning system must dynamically manage a po- Rep was modified to allow incremental processing, and tentially large set of spatial interpretations. This paper describes cover a number of implementation issues: how to handle an architecture for handling spatial relations in an incremental, nonmonotonic diagrammatic reasoning system. The architecture composite objects, the interface between low-level and represents jointly exhaustive and pairwise disjoint (JEPD) spatial high-level reasoning, and a modified default assumption relation sets as nodes in a dependency network. Examples of these mechanism. We also describe extensions to a user interface spatial relation sets are interval relations, relative orientation rela- allowing a user to create diagrams and update the infer- tions, and connectivity relations. The network caches dependen- ences of the reasoner. We then discuss future challenges cies between low-level spatial relations, allowing those relations for this architecture. to be easily assumed or retracted as visual elements are added or removed from a diagram. We also describe how the system sup- ports high-level reasoning, including support for creating default 2. Related Work assumptions. Finally, we show how this system was integrated In qualitative spatial reasoning, researchers have explored with an existing drawing program and discuss its possible use in how to process qualitative spatial vocabularies incremen- diagrammatic and geographic reasoning.
    [Show full text]
  • “Authentic” News: Voices, Forms, and Strategies in Presenting Television News
    International Journal of Communication 10(2016), 4239–4257 1932–8036/20160005 Doing “Authentic” News: Voices, Forms, and Strategies in Presenting Television News DEBING FENG1 Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, China Unlike print news that is static and mainly composed of written text, television news is dynamic and needs to be delivered with diversified presentational modes and forms. Drawing upon Bakhtin’s heteroglossia and Goffman’s production format of talk, this article examined the presentational forms and strategies deployed in BBC News at Ten and CCTV’s News Simulcast. It showed that the employment of different presentational elements and forms in the two programs reflects two contrasting types of news discourse. The discourse of BBC News tends to present different, and even confrontational, voices with diversified presentational forms, such as direct mode of address and “fresh talk,” thus likely to accentuate the authenticity of the news. The other type of discourse (i.e., CCTV News) seems to prefer monologic news presentation and prioritize studio-based, scripted news reading, such as on-camera address or voice- overs, and it thus creates a single authoritative voice that is likely to undermine the truth of the news. Keywords: authenticity, mode of address, presentational elements, voice, television news The discourse of television news has been widely studied within the linguistic world. Early in the 1970s, researchers in the field of critical linguistics (CL; e.g., Fowler, 1991; Fowler, Hodge, Kress, & Trew, 1979; Hodge & Kress, 1993) paid great attention to the ideological meaning of news by drawing upon a kit of linguistic tools such as modality, transitivity, and transformation.
    [Show full text]
  • Improving Knowledge Development and Exchange Via Transformative Pictogram Design
    2020 24th International Conference Information Visualisation (IV) Visual Design Thinking for Public Education: Improving knowledge development and exchange via transformative pictogram design 1st Nana Wang 2nd Leah Burns Sichuan University Aalto Univeristy China Finland 0000-0003-3902-7393 leah.burns@aalto.fi Abstract—How might the exchange and development of knowl- edge improve through a critical examination of pictogram- based methods of information visualization? In this article, we investigate the International System of TYpographic Picture Education(ISOTYPE), an influential model of pictorial diagram design theory and practice. Given ISOTYPE’s continuing impact on information design, we use it as a critical case study to assess the potential and limitations of pictorial diagrams(PD) for knowl- edge development and exchange. The goal of this study is not to evaluate artistic quality, style, or designer talent; rather, our focus is on analysis of the learning functions of pictograms and their potential for knowledge transmission and supporting reasoning behaviour among diverse audiences. We explore the different features of a pictogram, and how these features might support knowledge development through diagrammatic reasoning(DR). Three key questions are posed: 1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of pictograms for promoting learning and reasoning behaviour versus more abstract or representational visual information design? 2. What are the criteria for choosing the visual characteristics of pictograms? 3. How can the visual characteristics of pictograms be evaluated and revised base on the goal of supporting learning and reasoning behaviour? Index Terms Fig. 1. ISOTYPE, Atlas, Gesellschaft und Wirtschaft,1930, reproduced from —ISOTYPE; Pictorial diagram(PD); Public ed- Osterreichisches¨ Gesellschafts - und Wirtschaftsmuseum ucation; Informal learning; Knowledge visualization(KV); dia- grammatic reasoning(DR) I.
    [Show full text]
  • Knowledge Representation in Bicategories of Relations
    Knowledge Representation in Bicategories of Relations Evan Patterson Department of Statistics, Stanford University Abstract We introduce the relational ontology log, or relational olog, a knowledge representation system based on the category of sets and relations. It is inspired by Spivak and Kent’s olog, a recent categorical framework for knowledge representation. Relational ologs interpolate between ologs and description logic, the dominant formalism for knowledge representation today. In this paper, we investigate relational ologs both for their own sake and to gain insight into the relationship between the algebraic and logical approaches to knowledge representation. On a practical level, we show by example that relational ologs have a friendly and intuitive—yet fully precise—graphical syntax, derived from the string diagrams of monoidal categories. We explain several other useful features of relational ologs not possessed by most description logics, such as a type system and a rich, flexible notion of instance data. In a more theoretical vein, we draw on categorical logic to show how relational ologs can be translated to and from logical theories in a fragment of first-order logic. Although we make extensive use of categorical language, this paper is designed to be self-contained and has considerable expository content. The only prerequisites are knowledge of first-order logic and the rudiments of category theory. 1. Introduction arXiv:1706.00526v2 [cs.AI] 1 Nov 2017 The representation of human knowledge in computable form is among the oldest and most fundamental problems of artificial intelligence. Several recent trends are stimulating continued research in the field of knowledge representation (KR).
    [Show full text]
  • Radio and Television Correspondents' Dinner” of the Betty Ford White House Papers, 1973-1977 at the Gerald R
    The original documents are located in Box 6, folder “3/25/76 - Radio and Television Correspondents' Dinner” of the Betty Ford White House Papers, 1973-1977 at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library. Copyright Notice The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Betty Ford donated to the United States of America her copyrights in all of her unpublished writings in National Archives collections. Works prepared by U.S. Government employees as part of their official duties are in the public domain. The copyrights to materials written by other individuals or organizations are presumed to remain with them. If you think any of the information displayed in the PDF is subject to a valid copyright claim, please contact the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library. THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON March 19, 1976 MEMORANDUM TO: RED CAVANEY P~ER SORUM FROM: S AN PORTER . SUBJECT: Mrs; Ford Attendance at the Radio and TV Correspondent's Dinner (Fay Wells), Washington Hilton Hotel, March 26th Mrs. Ford will attend the Radio and TV Correspondent's Dinner as a guest of Fay Wells of Storer Broadcasting Company. Mrs. Ford has attended this dinner as Fay's guest for many years and has been very fond of Fay through the years . She will travel to the dinner with the President (the cocktail period is 6:30-8:00 in the Georgetown Suite). Mrs. Ford then will break from the President and will join Fay and her guests in the Jefferson Room for dinner (I understand the President will be eating in the Ballroom) .
    [Show full text]
  • Meeting of Television Professionals to Promote Dialogue and to Encourage Cooperative Action on the Middle East
    MEETING OF TELEVISION PROFESSIONALS TO PROMOTE DIALOGUE AND TO ENCOURAGE COOPERATIVE ACTION ON THE MIDDLE EAST Report of a conference organized by Search for Common Ground with support from the Hollings Center in Istanbul, Turkey February 3-5, 2006 “We as journalists are part of this conflict. We try not to be…. We try for objectivity, but I don’t think we’ve been successful.” – Correspondent for Arab Satellite Station “The problem we have before us is not language or reporting; it is the problem of conflicting narratives… We don’t listen to each other; we don’t absorb each other’s story…. We have to meet somewhere on the road and strike a compromise.” – Israeli Anchor “This is a problem of a dialogue between two deaf people.” – Palestinian Independent TV Executive “It’s very important that tomorrow I will have friends from Palestinian TV and the Gulf. We are all doing the same news daily.” – Israeli Television Executive BACKGROUND The media's traditional approach to controversial and sensitive issues is to explore the extent and range of disagreement, but this rarely results in common understanding or provides a solution to a problem. In fact, the media often seems to exploit a contentious issue for its entertainment value, sometimes leaving readers and audiences with the impression that nothing positive can be achieved and that the extremes of opinion being presented are representative of the majority. In contrast, Common Ground methodologies encourage the exploration of possible areas of agreement between opposing sides of a discussion, try actively to subvert prejudices and stereotyping, to promote the dignity of all sides, and to encourage a positive vision.
    [Show full text]
  • What's in a Diagram?
    What’s in a Diagram? On the Classification of Symbols, Figures and Diagrams Mikkel Willum Johansen Abstract In this paper I analyze the cognitive function of symbols, figures and diagrams. The analysis shows that although all three representational forms serve to externalize mental content, they do so in radically different ways, and conse- quently they have qualitatively different functions in mathematical cognition. Symbols represent by convention and allow mental computations to be replaced by epistemic actions. Figures and diagrams both serve as material anchors for con- ceptual structures. However, figures do so by having a direct likeness to the objects they represent, whereas diagrams have a metaphorical likeness. Thus, I claim that diagrams can be seen as material anchors for conceptual mappings. This classi- fication of diagrams is of theoretical importance as it sheds light on the functional role played by conceptual mappings in the production of new mathematical knowledge. 1 Introduction After the formalistic ban on figures, a renewed interest in the visual representation used in mathematics has grown during the last few decades (see e.g. [11–13, 24, 27, 28, 31]). It is clear that modern mathematics relies heavily on the use of several different types of representations. Using a rough classification, modern mathe- maticians use: written words, symbols, figures and diagrams. But why do math- ematicians use different representational forms and not only, say, symbols or written words? In this paper I will try to answer this question by analyzing the cognitive function of the different representational forms used in mathematics. Especially, I will focus on the somewhat mysterious category of diagrams and M.
    [Show full text]
  • Barbara Cochran
    Cochran Rethinking Public Media: More Local, More Inclusive, More Interactive More Inclusive, Local, More More Rethinking Media: Public Rethinking PUBLIC MEDIA More Local, More Inclusive, More Interactive A WHITE PAPER BY BARBARA COCHRAN Communications and Society Program 10-021 Communications and Society Program A project of the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program A project of the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Rethinking Public Media: More Local, More Inclusive, More Interactive A White Paper on the Public Media Recommendations of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy written by Barbara Cochran Communications and Society Program December 2010 The Aspen Institute and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation invite you to join the public dialogue around the Knight Commission’s recommendations at www.knightcomm.org or by using Twitter hashtag #knightcomm. Copyright 2010 by The Aspen Institute The Aspen Institute One Dupont Circle, NW Suite 700 Washington, D.C. 20036 Published in the United States of America in 2010 by The Aspen Institute All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 0-89843-536-6 10/021 Individuals are encouraged to cite this paper and its contents. In doing so, please include the following attribution: The Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program,Rethinking Public Media: More Local, More Inclusive, More Interactive, Washington, D.C.: The Aspen Institute, December 2010. For more information, contact: The Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program One Dupont Circle, NW Suite 700 Washington, D.C.
    [Show full text]
  • Discipline-Based Education Research: Understanding and Improving Learning in Undergraduate Science and Engineering
    This PDF is available from The National Academies Press at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13362 Discipline-Based Education Research: Understanding and Improving Learning in Undergraduate Science and Engineering ISBN Susan R. Singer, Natalie R. Nielsen, and Heidi A. Schweingruber, Editors; 978-0-309-25411-3 Committee on the Status, Contributions, and Future Directions of Discipline-Based Education Research; Board on Science Education; 282 pages Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education; National 6 x 9 PAPERBACK (2012) Research Council Visit the National Academies Press online and register for... Instant access to free PDF downloads of titles from the NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES NATIONAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL 10% off print titles Special offers and discounts Distribution, posting, or copying of this PDF is strictly prohibited without written permission of the National Academies Press. Unless otherwise indicated, all materials in this PDF are copyrighted by the National Academy of Sciences. Request reprint permission for this book Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Discipline-Based Education Research: Understanding and Improving Learning in Undergraduate Science and Engineering DISCIPLINE!BASED EDUCATION RESEARCH Understanding and Improving Learning in Undergraduate Science and Engineering Committee on the Status, Contributions, and Future Directions of Discipline-Based Education Research Board on Science Education Division of Behavioral
    [Show full text]
  • TELEVISION NATIONAL HONOREES 24 Hours: Assault on the Capitol
    TELEVISION NATIONAL HONOREES 24 Hours: Assault On the Capitol (ABC News and Hulu) ABC NEWS Frontline - Special Report [TV - National] 60 in 6: Covid and Domestic Abuse CBS News Investigative Feature [TV - National] 60 Minutes: Talking to the Past CBS News Soft News Feature [TV - National] Alexa Mansour & Aliyah Royale (The Walking Dead: World Beyond) AMC Networks Actress in a Breakthrough Role- Drama [TV - National] Bess Kalb, Karen Chee, Akilah Green, Franchesca Ramsey, Jocelyn Richard (Yearly Departed) Amazon Studios Writer Scripted- Comedy [TV - National] Between the World and Me HBO Special [TV - National] black-ish Disney Television Studios Comedy [TV - National] Bravery and Hope: 7 Days on the Front Line (CBS News Special) CBS News Documentary- Covid Special [TV - National] Breonna Taylor: Her Life, Death and Legacy (CBS This Morning) CBS News Hard News Feature- Interview [TV - National] Caitriona Balfe (Outlander) Starz Actress in a Leading Role - Drama [TV - National] Catherine O'Hara (Schitt's Creek) Not a Real Company Productions, Inc., Pop TV, CBC Actress in a Leading Role - Comedy or Musical [TV - National] Catherine Reitman (Workin' Moms) Wolf + Rabbit Entertainment ULC Showrunner Fiction- Comedy [TV - National] Cecilia Peck, Inbal B. Lessner (Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult) Starz Showrunner Nonfiction [TV - National] Erin Andrews (FOX NFL) FOX Sports On-Air Talent - Sports [TV - National] Eve Lindley (Dispatches from Elsewhere) AMC Networks Actress in a Supporting Role - Made for TV Movie or Limited Series [TV - National] folklore: the long pond studio sessions Disney+ Grand Award for Special or Variety [TV - National] Gina Brillon (Gina Brillon: The Floor is Lava) Amazon Prime Video & Comedy Dynamics Variety [TV - National] Hear Her Voice (Nightline) ABC NEWS Hard News Feature [TV - National] Hoda Kotb & Jenna Bush Hager (TODAY with Hoda & Jenna) TODAY Show/NBC News On-Air Talent - Lifestyle, Entertainment [TV - National] Jessica Goldberg (AWAY) True Jack Productions USA, Sixth and Idaho, Refuge Inc.
    [Show full text]
  • When Everything Goes Wrong Make a Diagram Focusing on Visualising Reasoning and Trying to Reclaim the Power of Logical Thinking and Good Argumentation
    https://doi.org/10.25145/b.2COcommunicating.2020.006 34 COmmunicating COmplexity When Everything goes wrong Make a Diagram focusing on visualising reasoning and trying to reclaim the power of logical thinking and good argumentation. It might feel a small action, but diagrams are actually really powerful. Maria Rosaria Digregorio De Montfort University, Leicester Media School, Faculty of Technology, 2 The Power of Diagrams The Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH, United Kingdom focusing on visualising reasoning and trying to reclaim the power of logical thinking [email protected] and good argumentation. It might feel a small action, but diagrams are actually reallyVisual inferences. In math and geometry, visual configurations are used as proper powerful.inferences to demonstrate the validity of reasoning – for instance in the case of the Pythagoras’s Theorem and the binomial theorem. Despite written words or Abstract. Looking at historical examples, this research explores the power of notations can also be used to visually represent theorems, the diagram is able to diagrams and visual reasoning. It focuses on their ability to make knowledge show at glance the reasons behind the rule (Perondi, 2012). more accessible, train critical thinking and trigger a form of intellectual 2 The Power of Diagrams resistance in a post-truth world; it encourages a deeper integration between diagrams and writing, and the diffusion of information design approaches Visual inferences. In math and geometry, visual configurations are used as proper outside the design realm. inferences to demonstrate the validity of reasoning – for instance in the case of the Keywords: post-truth / diagrammatic reasoning / non-linear writing / visual Pythagoras’s Theorem and the binomial theorem.
    [Show full text]
  • Do We Really Reason About a Picture As the Referent?
    Do We Really Reason about a Picture as the Referent? Atsushi Shimojima1,2 and Takugo Fukaya 1School of Knowledge Science, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology 1-1 Asahi-dai, Tatsunokuchi, Nomi-gun, Ishikawa 923-1292, Japan 2ATR Media Information Science Laboratories 2-2-2 Hikari-dai, Keihanna Science City, Kyoto 619-0288, Japan [email protected] [email protected] Abstract the previous case, however, the hypothesized operation is not an operation on the hinge picture, but an operation A significant portion of the previous accounts of infer- on the physical hinge the picture depicts. You may refer ential utilities of graphical representations (e.g., Sloman, 1971; Larkin & Simon, 1987) implicitly relies on the exis- back to the hinge picture now and then, but what your in- tence of what may be called inferences through hypothet- ference is about is the movement of the upper leg of the ical drawing. However, conclusive detections of them by hinge, not the movement of the upper line of the hinge means of standard performance measures have turned out picture. You are reasoning about the picture’s referent, to be difficult (Schwartz, 1995). This paper attempts to fill rather than the picture itself. the gap and provide positive evidence to their existence on the basis of eye-tracking data of subjects who worked Well, the concept of “reasoning about the picture it- with external diagrams in transitive inferential tasks. self” is thus clear, but is it real? Are we really engaged in that type of inferences in some cases? If so, how do Schwartz (1995) cites an intriguing example to dis- we tell when we are? tinguish what he calls “reasoning about a picture as the Schwartz (1995) himself assumed the existence of that referent” from “reasoning about the picture’s referent.” type of inferences, and went on to investigate what fea- Suppose you are given the picture of a hinge in Figure tures of pictorial representations encourage it.
    [Show full text]