Critical Visualization

Peter A. Hall is Reader in Graphic Design at CCW, University of the Arts London, UK. His publications include Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data, co-authored with Patricio Dávila (Bloomsbury, 2022), Sagmeister: Made You Look (2009), Else/Where: Mapping - New Cartographies of Networks and Territories, co-edited with Janet Abrams (2005) and Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist (2002).Patricio Dávila is a designer, artist, researcher and educator. He is Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Arts in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design at York University, Canada. He is the editor of Diagrams of Power (2019) based on the international exhibition he curated on critical practice in mapping, and co-author, with Peter A. Hall, of Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data (Bloomsbury, 2022).

Debunking the idea that data is ever ‘raw’ or unbiased, this book brings information anxiety to a new level as it goes deep into the underlying power structures at play in the assemblage of data and the motivations of those who amass it. Hall and Dávila explain how design’s focus on clarity and statistical accuracy can serve to enhance dominant narratives inherent in the data and challenge designers to activate their agency to visualize the kind of world in which we want to live. This should be required reading in any data visualization or information design curriculum.

• 1. An Introduction to Critical VisualizationDefining the fieldLooking at Visualization beyond Western ParadigmsAlternative Western perspectives: Distributed Cognition and Humanistic Approaches2. Disruptive HistoriesPositivism and ObjectivityA History of ProgressCritical Cartography: a 'Defining Moment'A Few Examples: Not a Canon- Haptic Visualization: the Quipu (1200-1532)- Plan and Sections of a Slave Ship (1789)- Polar Area Diagram (1859)- Great Trigonometrical Survey of India (1802-1875)- Data Visualization at the Paris Exposition, W.E.B. Du Bois (1900)- Community-building with Isotype: Otto and Marie NeurathConclusionFocus: Anna Ridler, Myriad (Tulips) 20183. Making DataQualitative and Quantitative DataThe Role of CategorizationFocus: Data4Change- Keepiton- Hear the Blind Spot- Perceiving Yemen4. Data and the SelfTaylorism Within?Comic CritiqueWhat is Normal?Biometrics and Risk-ProfilingChallenging NormsThe Examined LifeFocus: Margaret Pearce and Michael Hermann, They Would Not Take Me There: People, Places, and Stories from Champlain’s Travels in Canada, 1603-16165. Data and the CityParticipatory planning: HECTORFocus: Heath Bunting: Status Project6. Aesthetics and RepresentationAesthetics and RepresentationRepresentation as Translation7. Beyond Critical Visualization Practice