Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
could be useful for this purpose. Since people
are familiar with general concept of a parking
lot or a skyscraper, this type of environment is
often used to create metaphors for large web data
organization. For instance, data are structured
toward metaphorical representation of a building.
Floors, rooms, elevators, or corridors are being
used as visual interpretation of subsets of a data
set. Thus by imaginative tour of a skyscraper, one
may create associations and connotations about
each subset and its relationship to the whole set
of data and its links. Many authors (for example,
Russo & Gros, 2002; Russo, Gross, Abel, Loisel,
Trichaud, & Paris, 2000) developed multidimen-
sional visualization tools using several kinds of
metaphors: a system management viewed as
a city metaphor with districts, blocks, houses,
and buildings, topological views as cone trees,
workstation views as a solar system, file system
view or a site view as pyramids, geographic view
as a landscape, and temporal view as a library. In
a city, there are districts, residential blocks with
houses, and financial blocks with tall buildings
that have a height dimensionality, disks size, and
status notation; there are also roads as a metaphor
of connections.
A city metaphor that is widely used in data
visualization presents static and dynamic in-
formation. Selecting this type of metaphor can
reduce an effort, but also gives enjoyment when
navigating through a city in 3D. Visual quality of
data-, information-, and knowledge-visualization
projects hinges on the choice of imagery. Artists'
cooperation can amplify an aesthetic experience
and enlarge possible imagery from which visual-
ization metaphors may be selected. This requires
that a visual language that presents information
with images, symbols, and metaphors is created,
or taken from the arts, both from the iconography
of masterpieces and contemporary work of artists
using technology. However, perception of digital,
participatory, multisensory art has become even
more transformed with the growing spectrum of
domains included into the general notion of art.
Blais and Ippolito (2006) confronted generally
accepted definition of art by adding several fields
of creative activity, such as computer code-based
art, games, online autobiography, haktivism,
computer virus making and preservation, and
community building.
Figure 5, “Online Intelligence” conveys some
concerns about networked communication. A
simplified, programmed image of a man has been
juxtaposed with the photos of apes and monkeys
in their natural environment. With all advantages
of intellectual development, humans are now sub-
jected to some limitations due to the government
and corporate intelligence measures:
Figure 5. Anna Ursyn, “Online Intelligence” (©
2010, A. Ursyn. Used with permission).
