Artistic Visualization
Лев Манович · 2016
This chapter focuses on what the author sees as one of the most important and interesting developments in the area of digital art. It discusses work by artists who challenged the most fundamental principles of the data visualization field as it has existed since the 18 th century. Following the pioneering work of other artists, the chapter develops software tools to visualize massive cultural data sets and applied them to a variety of data sets, ranging from 4535 covers of Time magazine to 2.3 million Instagram photos from thirteen global cities. In the author's opinion, the practice of data visualization, from its beginnings in the second part of the 18th century until today, relied on two key principles including data reduction and privileging of spatial variables. The chapter also discusses three well-known art projects that exemplify a “media visualization” approach: Listening Post, Cinema Redux, and The Preservation of Favoured Traces.