Visual

This week’s topic of ‘making the invisible visible’ was truly incredible, even the title gets you thinking. I had never thought about how many visual signs I ‘take for granted’ or I just know/recognise daily.

One of the examples Andrew used which struck me was ‘the dashed line’. I studied Industrial Design for one year and had to do copious amounts of technical drawings. These drawings aren’t easy; they take hours and are incredibly detailed. They end up looking something like an architectural drawing, but for a product not a building. As the drawings are done in black and white with a pen, you have to show many different kinds of details with line thickness and dashed lines. When I was learning how to do these drawings, I just took those rules for what they were and got on with it. I never thought how people just somehow knew what each line represented. It’s kind of like speaking another language.

If we look at the art of VJ-ing, we see another way in which something intangible can be physically seen. “VJs,” as they are called, employ the use of images and visuals, which are synchronized with and/or respond to their music. It’s like you can see music. But isn’t the performing arts way ahead of VJing? In my opinion ballet was way ahead of its time.

Visualisation can never replace firm facts or extensive data, they should only exist to complement the data and make it more manageable. I don’t think visualisation should replace the text, are we so lazy we have to have everything drawn out for us?

A quote from the reading ‘The Virtual Window Interactive” saying “how the world is framed may be as important as what is contained within that frame,” I thought was brilliant. Very abstract but here it is anyway – everything is about perception.