15-20 Minute Paper
Tara Zepel
PhD Candidate
University of California, San Diego
Biography
Tara Zepel is a researcher, theorist, and intermittent artist at the intersection(s) between data visualization, design, and emerging configurations of knowledge expression. She is currently pursuing a PhD in the Art History, Theory & Criticism at the University of California, San Diego where she is a member of the Software Studies lab, the Center for Design and Geopolitics, and a teacher in the Culture Art & Technology writing program.
Abstract
Today, in 2012, the idea that visualization has aesthetic, social and cultural dimensions is neither new nor revolutionary. Over the last decade, visualization, broadly defined as the graphical representation of data, has grown into a mature media form (van Wijk 2006, Bogost 2011) pervading across many functions and many cultures of use. And, as a result, into many realms of study. One such realm is the digital humanities. This talk explores the pervasive reach of the current visualization landscape, and suggests that visualization, in and of itself, is increasingly becoming a (digital) humanities discipline. This is a rather substantial claim. Firstly, it implies that there may be such a thing as a digital humanities discipline. More specifically, it situates visualization in a different space than it has previously occupied within the field.
Observing existing projects, we can see that at present, visualization is primarily used within the digital humanities as a tool and/or a methodology. This use, however, is beginning to change. For a handful of scholars, visualization is not only a tool for analysis of cultural artifacts but also a mode of inquiry specific to digital culture (Manovich 2010, Drucker 2011, Sack 2011). From this perspective, visualization is a topic to be studied within the digital humanities. At the intersection of these two perspectives, I suggest is a deeper understanding of visualization. As data and data-analytics have entered the aesthetic, the cultural, and the social realms of experience, visualization has followed suit. Recent uses of visualization suggest that it is increasingly becoming an interface for our interaction in the world. It designs and influences that way we behave. If we see the humanities as the study of the human condition, then, I argue, we need to begin ‘seeing’ visualization as a (digital) humanities discipline. Today, visualization functions not all that differently from art, music, dance or theatre. More specific to the digital humanities, though, it functions across disciplines, including those outside the humanities.