Envisioning information - The Visualization of Spatial Social Structure - page 13

digits are turned into a single picture. In terms of storage, most of the pictures
in this topic required more disk space individually than the entire (typeset) text. 8
Illustration is to clarify - to make clear, pure or transparent. Visualization
does not aim to see through the data; it aims to see into it. Methodology is
about transforming reality to fit particular conceptions. The more we simplify,
the more reality is blurred. Turning people and the events of their lives into
numbers is bad enough. Throwing away almost all of those numbers is worse,
and yet this is what we must do, in one elaborate form or another, if we are to
try and understand without images.

1.4 Texture and colour

Colour is most useful, after position, to show information ... Colour
deserves more attention than the others, especially in view of the hope
for synthesis.

(Tukey and Tukey, 1981, p. 193)

If we are to envisage information we must first know what can be seen as
well as what there is to see. To decide how to turn numbers into pictures we
must know what pictures can contain and what is seen in them. The simplest
pictures are constructed of pure black and white from basic geometrical shapes.
What they contain, what the eye searches for, is pattern - from order, repetition,
grouping and texture. 9 What the eye then does is to find breaks in that order and
discover inconsistencies while ignoring irrelevancy. The eye does this because
that is what it evolved to do, and to do so extremely quickly. In our minds we
then compare what we see with what we have seen before; we learn to do that
but evolved to be able to learn.
The eyes are constantly engaged in focusing, panning and zooming. They
compare different sections of the image and home in on interesting detail (the
eyes are designed to scan continuously - they cannot focus for long on a fixed
point). The resolution of the eyes is enormous, but far finer at the point on which
they are centred. This action can be enhanced when pictures are electronically
produced, and can be instantaneously enlarged or reduced.
Research has provided explanations for some of the mechanisms through
which vision may operate and suggests that it is easier for people to compare
objects horizontally rather than vertically. 10 It also suggests that colour is an
invaluable embellishment to basic vision (Box 1.2). It is wrong to think of it either
as adding another dimension or merely supplying some further minor tagging of
data to existing features of the graphic. It alters the character of the image.

8 Even the most complex image shown here could be fitted on a single 1.4 Mb floppy disk!
9 See Bachi (1968), Hunt (1968), Tobler (1973b) and Levkowitz (1988, p. v).
10 '

because the eyes are spread apart horizontally - as is, presumably, the spatial medium
they feed - they have a greater horizontal scope' (Kosslyn, 1983, p. 71).

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