Visualisation isn’t new. In actual fact, it has been an effective way to communicate both abstract and concrete ideas since the dawn of man. Examples from history include cave paintings, heiroglyphs and Leonardo da Vinci’s technical drawings.
This site by Michael Friendly and Daniel J. Denis explores the history of visualisation, starting 6200 years before the birth of Jesus Christ and tracing developments up until recent times. Their work demonstrates that visualisation has a long history as a significant communication medium.
The introduction of computer graphics and the development of animation have been two very important steps in the advancement of visualisation. These developments have made it possible to create interactive visualistions.
Jonathan Harris has designed a significant number of visualisation systems that have explored different subject matter, and have drawn upon elements of computer science, anthropology, visual art and storytelling. His work demonstrates the power of visualisation as a story telling medium.
Visualisation is also being increasingly used as a medium for making sense of the increasingly large amounts of information that people everywhere come across on a daily basis. It has been estimated that the World Wide Web contains 17 terabytes of information on its surface; instant messaging generates five billion messagesa day (750 gigabytes) or 274 terrabytes a year and email generates about 400,000 terrabytes of new information each year worldwide.
Stamen Labs have produced interactive and real-time visualisations that seek to represent the information flow that people experience as users of the Internet. They are probably best known for Digg Swarm, which shows popular topics on Digg as swarms that grow as they are ‘dug’ by more users, and fall away when there is a lack of interest in the particular topic. Thus Stamen have managed to represent the interactions and transactions that occur on Digg within this visualisation.
Visual Complexity is a unified resource that catalogues the visualisations of complex networks. It demonstrates the multitude of ways that information can be extracted and represented visually in the domains of art, biology, social networks, political networks, semantic networks and transportation networks. It is a great example of how appropriate visualisation is for gaining a better understanding of the information contained within complex networks.
