Data, interactivity, immersion. Some notes between data visualization and media visualization

Abstract

According to both direct visualization, as “visualization without reduction” (Manovich), as well as information visualization and data visualization (in which “principles of design replicate principles of thought”, according to Tufte), visualization practices reproduce as closely as possible their object (data): both aim in fact, even if with different means, to construct a discourse that is as objective and referential as possible, in which marks of the enunciator’s practice are canceled or reduced to a minimum.
On the other hand, it seems interesting, from a semiotic point of view, to pay attention to the specific ways of putting data into discourse both in media visualization and in data visualization: in the first case, the media data are embodied in special interactive interfaces with some extent of user intervention; in the second, the data are translated, diagrammatically, into complex static visualizations which do not however exclude the presence of specific enunciation devices. Specifically, the interactive installation On Broadway (2014), created for the New York Public Library by Manovich and his research group, and The Room of Change (2019), designed by Accurat for the XXII Triennale di Milano (Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival) will be examined.