Design Issues article published

My article for the journal Design Issues is now out.

The article discusses issues in the mapping of historical time to a graphical surface, focusing on the orientation of the time axis.

It contrasts the lack of intellectual debate on mapping time with the rich controversies over competing geographic projections. It is a step in the process of generating debate in relation to chronographics, and proposes a research agenda.

The article combines a synthesis of the literatures of cognitive science and gesture studies with original archival research.

1. The first reveals that the metaphorical direction of time differs between verbal and gestural usage, and to a lesser extent between cultures. There is no "right" direction for time in graphics. 
2. The second reports on my original investigations into the emergence of modern chronographics in the mid-eighteenth century when there was a shift from typographic, tabular layouts to truly graphical time-maps based on a changing model of time spawned by Descartes and Newton. Here, research into the timelines of Oresme (1350s) and Barbeu-Dubourg and Priestley (1750s) highlights for the first time their difficulties in finding the "right" direction for time.

The article is: Boyd Davis, Stephen (2012) History on the Line: time as dimension. Design Issues, 28 (4). pp. 4-17. ISSN 0747-9360.

At the moment it is downloadable free. The direct link to the PDF (7.4MB) is here: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_a_00171.

Project blog launched

Florian's studentship on the visualisation of cultural data is going well.

He has launched a blog (called YYYY-MM-DD) of thoughts, articles and findings on the subject of time, cultural data and interactive visualisations which already offers some interesting articles.

Find it here: http://research.kraeutli.com/index.php/author/florian/

Kerouac - On the Scroll

I did not know until I got my regular newsletter from the British Library just now, that Jack Kerouac wrote his On The Road on sheets of paper that he taped together in a continuous sequence.
The Library says:

Written over a period of three weeks in April 1951 in manic bursts of what Allen Ginsberg referred to as ‘spontaneous bop prosody’, Jack Kerouac typed the manuscript on rolls of tracing paper, which he taped together into a long scroll to avoid replacing paper at the end of the page and interrupting his creative flow.

We are delighted to welcome the 120-foot-long scroll to London for the first time. It will be on display in a specially-constructed case, alongside sound and printed materials from the Library’s collection.

As the tale itself, I believe, tends to the serial (ashamed to say I have not read it), the scroll is a nice model of that temporal linearity.
According to Wikipedia, the scroll was bought in 2001 by Jim Irsay (Indianapolis Colts football team owner) for 2.43 million US dollars.

On the Road: Jack Kerouac's manuscript scroll is open until Thursday 27 December 2012.

Information on the British Library site.

Studentship begins

Today at last I am glad to say that the PhD funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council through the Creative Industries Knowledge Transfer Network has begun!

Florian Kräutli (seen below winning a design prize in 2009), has previously studied at the Design Academy Eindhoven and most recently on the MSc Cognitive Computing at Goldsmiths University of London. He will investigate - through a series of practical projects - the visualisation of cultural data, with special emphasis on visualisations over time.

Florian Kräutli (right), now PhD student, presented with a design prize by Swiss minister of Home Affairs Pascal Couchepin in 2009.

There will shortly be a blog for the project with regular links to the Chronographics blog you are reading now.

The commercial partner is System Simulation, a software house with unrivalled experience of creating tools to manage and present cultural and other datasets. Their clients include the British Museum, the London Transport Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Getty Images, SCRAN (Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network) and Culture24.

Florian's personal page
System Simulation company page

Guy Königstein's Family Stories

Guy Königstein's "Family Stories" is a stop motion film about family history, in which the family members are represented by unwinding spools of thread. The spools roll through their lives, changing direction when they move away or back home, crossing life lines of others, joining them for a while and sometimes separating from each other again.

There's something appealing about the physical qualities of the imagery so that each spool seems to be animated by the spirit of the person it represents. The understated narration, I assume in Guy's own voice, is poignant at times.

"He eventually found out that she been transported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and that he would never see her again."

Guy's Family Stories: 1. Moving Family on Vimeo
Guy's page for Family Stories



 

Creationism at the Causeway 2 - NT reconsiders

The response to my complaint to the National Trust was a request that I take the issue up with the Trust's Northern Ireland office, which I duly did. I got a prompt reply which suggests that a welcome change may be in prospect.

Thank you for getting in touch about the new Giant’s Causeway Visitor Centre.

We have been receiving a large number of views via email and social media expressing concern that the Trust is somehow endorsing or promoting creationism in our new interpretation at the Giant’s Causeway.

Our new exhibition and outdoor audio guide clearly set out the science of the Causeway’s formation and shaping - that the Causeway is around 60 million years old.

There is one small exhibit in the visitor centre which briefly references creationism. It was our intention to present this view in the context of an historical debate about the age of the Earth.

However we recognise that many people have written to us concerned that the wording of the exhibit suggests that there is an ongoing debate in science about the formation of the Causeway - we are trying to listen to these views and take account of them. The National Trust is very clear that there is no debate in science.

The Trust’s approach is focussed on our visitors and members. We always try to respond to their feedback about how we present information and stories where we can. We have therefore decided to review the interpretative materials in this small section of the Visitor Centre.

You can find out more about this here:
http://ntpressoffice.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/giants-causeway-visitor-centre-interpretation-statement/

We hope this addresses your concerns. 

I wrote to thank them for taking the criticism seriously. Let's hope they actually make the change without being nobbled by the fundamentalist lobby again.

Creationism at the Causeway

Sadly, the National Trust, the UK's guardian of buildings and sites of past and present value, has embraced Creationism. I mention it here since I have previously posted on the irony that attempts to make diagrams of all of time were undermined almost as soon as they were invented in the 1750s by the realisation at the end of the eighteenth century that "all of time" was very, very much longer than the pioneer chronographers had supposed.

God amuses himself with making geometric rocks

I have been a member of the National Trust for many years. I have never written before to complain about information given by the Trust at its properties, but I wrote to them today to explain that I was very unhappy about press reports of their treating Creationism seriously in their information at the Giant's Causeway. Although it seems they have tried to cope gracefully with lobbying from religious fundamentalists, they have effectively handed them just the kind of victory these people seek.

The Trust is reported as saying "this debate continues today and we reflect and respect the fact that creationists today have a different perspective on the age of the Earth from that of mainstream science."
The Trust has no business according "respect" to a benighted superstition. It is silly to accord a position based solely on faith the status of a position in a "debate".

The phrase "a different perspective ... from that of mainstream science" will be read as implying that Creationism has some legitimate claim to be science, even if not mainstream, whereas it has no right to be considered as science in any shape or form. Science is based on evidence, and Creationism is based on faith – these are radically different.

This terrible move by the Trust establishes a precedent, something gleefully pointed out by the Caleb Foundation on its Web page (http://www.calebfoundation.org/):

"we have worked closely with the National Trust over many months with a view to ensuring that the new Causeway Visitor Centre includes an acknowledgement both of the legitimacy of the creationist position on the origins of the unique Causeway stones and of the ongoing debate around this. We are pleased that the National Trust worked positively with us and that this has now been included at the new Visitor Centre.

[...] This is, as far as we are aware, a first for the National Trust anywhere in the UK, and it sets a precedent for others to follow.

I have asked the Trust to reconsider its decision which gives credibility to a ridiculous sect and misrepresents it has having some kind of legitimacy.

Link to the New Humanist page setting out the story.