Data Visualization and Defunct Visual Metaphors

This dossier concerns the relationship between visualization as a mode of knowledge-production and vision as a (visual) metaphor for knowledge. It looks at the history of data visualization and its relationship to epistemology, particularly renderings of statistical data. Key moments in the history of statistics and data visualization are discussed, with a particular focus on so-called political arithmetic and the decline and re-emergence of visualization techniques as an effect of complex quantification methods and computing, respectively. The dossier advances the argument that visual metaphors are fundamentally inadequate for the contemporary forms of data acquisition, analysis, and knowledge-production that are endemic to the informatic mode. The persistence of visual metaphors for surveillance is considered alongside the increased incidence of opaque data capture and mining, practices which do not lend themselves to familiar metaphors or renderings. The dossier concludes with a critical discussion of the use of data visualization techniques in artistic interventions which seek to make this process more legible.

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