The weatherman on TV has been replaced by the shower radar; you can check whether your train is delayed with your iPhone App. We use transitory media such as internet and the mobile telephone to find information much more quickly, in any format required. There are an increasing number of products on the market which select the required information and deliver it ‘made-to-measure'. The consumer no longer wishes to be served; he serves himself.
Data visualisation, the profession that is involved in visualising and structuring data, has achieved a prominent place in graphic design. The exhibition INFODECODATA puts our explosive information world in the spot lights.
How do designers structure complex data?
Where do we find the information that we are looking for?
The exhibition presents an overview of information design with image icons, scientific data visualisations, infographics and experimental computer animations. From the invention of the printing press, with which we could for the first time duplicate information, to scientific 3D visualisations of highly complex data.
A journey to information spaces
Prof. dr. ir. Jack van Wijk
Jack van Wijk, professor of visualisation at the Technical University of Eindhoven presents his fascinating data visualisations in the Graphic Design Museum. The abstract data with which he works provides Van Wijk with considerable freedom for his designs. His visualisations appear to be autonomous works of art, but, on closer investigation, reveal a world of information. The professor developed with his group something called SequoiaView, a method of visualising the contents of your hard disk. The computer program has been downloaded by more than a million people. The Graphic Design Museum will exhibit hundreds of disk visualisations of visitors, but also maps of a folded-out world, congested surfaces, and stream visualisations.
Designing universal knowledge
Gerlinde Schuller
Designer Gerlinde Schuller shows the development of information design and data visualisation throughout the centuries. Knowledge is power, goes the saying. Does this mean that somebody who owns a collection of the universal knowledge of the whole world also possesses ultimate power? Just like encyclopaedia makers, philosophers, and scientists before her, Schuller is fascinated by the idea of putting together a comprehensive, global knowledge collection. In the research for her book Designing universal knowledge (2009), she asked people what they considered the most universal images, events, and persons in world history. Using these data, Schuller designed a 26 metre long time line from the Big Bang to 2010, the present. Visitors can add their own highlights to this wall with historical data and milestones in the history of information design.
Work in Process
Luna Maurer, Edo Paulus, Jonathan Puckey and Roel Wouters
In their work, the designers Luna Maurer, Edo Paulus, Jonathan Puckey and Roel Wouters focus on processes rather than on products: things that adapt to their environment, emphasise change, and display differences. Their installations in the Graphic Design Museum visualise processes that have taken place in the year prior to the exhibition. The works arise from the combination of programmed rules and the interaction with them by people and their environment. In their project Skycatcher, the designers have been making a photograph of the sky above Amsterdam every five minutes since 2005. For INFODECODATA, they made obsessive self-portraits with the camera in their laptops. They programmed a script that for nine months made a picture of themselves and their screen image once every five minutes. In these projects, the focus is both on the details and on the larger patterns that become visible by multiplying the details.
