HUMANITIES APPROACHED TO GRAPHICAL DISPLAY

The text argues that because capta is actively “taken” while data is assumed to be “given,” “capta” is a more precise term than “data.” “The rhetorical nature of statistics is inevitable. I found the author’s example of Google Maps, an app that nearly all of us use daily but which is not as objective, realistic, or accurate as we believe, to be very interesting. According to the author, we require a new method that employs humanities principles to constitute capta and its display. This objective is extremely difficult to achieve, but I believe that people should first be aware of the distinction between capta and data, and then construct and specify relevant principles so that data does not exist and everything is capta.

Data as Capta

In the first part the authors use humanities principles for a deeper explanation and application of the traditional visual representation. The information should be referred to as capta rather than data because it is derived from the perspectives of various observers who, as in the Google Maps example I mentioned earlier, add their own subjective positions to the graphical representation. Specifically, the notion that scale divisions are not equal intrigues me the most. I am  trained as an architect to think in terms of standard mapping patterns and modes of thought. The scale’s data corresponds to reality. Nevertheless, from the perspective of humanites, the mapping process should incorporate information other than physical distance, and the information included varies depending on the context. In addition to objective physical information, the overlap, discontinuity, and interruption of time and space partially express the factors influencing the expression of this graph. Despite the fact that the other factors considered are a manifestation of the observer’s subjectivity, it is a significant improvement for the viewer to comprehend the creator’s intent when viewing the graphics when they are created in this form.

The authors next interpret time and space further, organizing them into two similar formulas. time as a function of x (temporality= time (x))；space as a function of x (spatiality= space(x) ). Time is no longer viewed as a constant, linear variable, but rather as a variable that is measured by emotion, by feeling. The Temporal Modeling project explains how emotions can influence the visual representation of time. I believe it is possible to begin with the standard mapping, consider the standard map to be one of the variables, and then add other variables by adding other dimensions, such as adding the y-axis to measure emotion, adding thickness to measure emotions, etc. In this context, TIME is not constant, but is TEMPORALITY.

From the designer’s perspective, we design a space to convey a message to the audience, but it also serves as a factor that influences how the audience feels about other things. This raises the question of whether a good space should minimize this influence. However, if this is the case, the architect’s identity is completely eradicated. For the time being, it is sufficient that we are aware of such a spatial variable, and it may be more important to recognize this than to eliminate it in order to achieve a particular objective.