Information visualization and sonorification

Displaying complexes of problems, strategies, values and organizations

The Union of International Associations is faced with a major challenge of how to provide greater insight into complex networks of relationships amongst international organizations, world problems, strategies in response to them, human development and human values. Extensive databases are maintained on each of these sets of entities. There are (hyper)links between the entities in each set, and between entities in different sets.

Anthony Judge, former Director of Communication and Research of the UIA, had a long-term interest in information visualization. As early as in 1971 he produced a 16mm film about the work of the UIA in this field. The short document (9'03") has now been converted to electronic format and you can view it below:


Visualization of Organization

In the on-line form of these databases (http://www.uia.org/db/), users have access to several different kinds of on-going experiment. These are as follows:

  • Network mapping facility: In this case relationships are presented as lines between nodes. The nodes provide hyperlink access to text profiles or further maps. All the displays are generated directly in response to user request, by clicking on the map logo (), and are self-organizing. The highly dynamic map displays can be radically manipulated and reconfigured by the user. The display technique is based on a Java applet developed by Gerald de Jong (Beautiful Code BV).

  • NetMap: Based on the assertion that humans respond to graphical patterns up to one thousand times faster than numeric or character sets, NetMap takes data from one or more sources, identifies any associations between data elements, and turns the entire data set into a colour coded graphical "map" of data interrelationships. This allows the user to analyse visual representations of the data relationships starting with a holistic, yet drillable view. More information about this extraordinary visualization tool is available at http://www.netmapsolutions.com/. Please click here to see results of NetMap analysis of some of the UIA databases.

  • Tensegrity: This experiment is an effort to make use of a somewhat unique tensegrity structure displayed through virtual reality (viewable through freely available browser plug-ins). Individual entities (eg problems or strategies) are associated with the struts in such a structure. The aim being to produce a coherent configuration that a user can rotate and explore using the virtual reality plug-in navigational tools. So the structure can be turned, zoomed into, etc. In principle clicking on an active strut with which a problem (say) is associated will bring up the corresponding text profile. A commentary on the value of this technique is given elsewhere under the title Configuring strategic dilemmas in inter-sectoral dialogue (http://www.uia.org/transfor/a11.htm)
  • Polyhedra-1: Through this experiment, software selects a polyhedron onto which relationships from a problem (say) are projected. Each facet thus becomes the interface to another problem. The polyhedron as a whole is thus a configuration of facets representing the problem as it interfaces with related problems. Clicking on the facets should bring up the corresponding text profile. This experiment is based on a similar justification to that based on tensegrity. In the current version, the selection of polyhedron is crude and the colouring is random. The virtual reality browser enables the user to manipulate and explore the structure.
  • Polyhedra-2: This is a development of the previous experiment in which the user can endeavour to control the way in which the software selects and designs the polyhedron. The user is free to include or exclude particular types of relationship and to colour the corresponding facets differently, as well as selecting a preferred shape. Again clicking on a facet should bring up the text profile. The virtual reality browser enables the user to manipulate and explore the structure.

A selection of earlier experiments using virtual reality to display complexes of problems and organizations is presented (elsewhere). These structures were generated in 1997 as static pages (in contrast to the dynamic generation of structures above). It is planned to continue experiment with some of the visual metaphors used there.

Users may experience some difficulty and frustration in getting virtual reality browser plug-ins to work correctly. An additional irritation in relation to the virtual reality experiments above is that they were done using the earlier (simpler) version of the VRML language (version 1), whereas current browsers work with the later version (version 2) and are not necessarily faithful in their reproduction of version 1 colour values. This adds to the colour unfriendly nature of the differences between browsers. It is hoped to develop the experiments with the additional facilities of VRML 2.

It must be stressed that these visual experiments are designed to find ways of representing, comprehending and exploring complexity. The purpose is to provide sophisticated techniques which generate structures that are visually interesting in their own right but raise interesting questions about what they are able to represent and how they might be developed. It is a deliberately intention to give the user as much control as possible in exploring these structures creatively. The intention is also to make this process as interesting to academic researchers, students, the media, and to those concerned with formulating more appropriate policies in a complex society.

For further discussion see papers written by UIA staff members and associates in their personal capacity:

Links to relevant external resources:

  • http://www.cybergeography.com/
  • http://www.chryzode.org/

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