One Sinister Hurricane: Simondon and Collaborative Visualization

Abstract

This article offers a theory and methodology for understanding and interpreting collaborations that involve visualization technologies. The collaboration discussed here is technically a geovisualization—an immersive, digital “fulldome” film of Hurricane Katrina developed by the Advanced Visualization Laboratory (AVL) at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, produced in collaboration with atmospheric scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. The project, which brought together AVL's programmers, visualization experts, and artists with NCAR's scientists, required the integration of diverse disciplinary perspectives. In the language of such collaborations, the term renaissance team was coined to capture the collective expertise necessary to produce modern, high-end visualizations of large data sets. In this article, we deploy Simondon's concepts of technical objects and collective individuation to analyze the development of AVL's Katrina simulation. One extended sequence of team member collaboration suggests that technical objects also be treated as “collaborators,” for they have the capacity to transform such collectives through the unique problems they present.

本文为理解及诠释包含可视化技术的 “合作”，提供理论与方法论。此处所讨论的 “合作”，是技术上的地理可视化——一个由伊利诺大学厄巴纳—香槟分校的先进可视化实验室（AVL），与位于科罗拉多州博德的国家大气研究中心（NCAR）共同合作生产，所发展出的卡翠娜飓风的沉浸式、数位化的球幕影片。该计画协同AVL的程序员、可视化专家、艺术家与NCAR科学家，需要整合不同的领域视角。在此般 “合作” 的话语中， “復兴团队” 的概念，被创造来捕捉生产大数据集的现代、高端可视化所需的集体专门技术。我们于本文中，运用西蒙顿的 “技术目标与集体个人化” 之概念，分析AVL的卡翠娜飓风模拟发展。团体成员合作的其中一向延伸序列，主张技术目标亦应被视为 “合作者”，因其透过其所呈现的特殊问题，具有改变此般集体之能力。

Este artículo presenta una teoría y la metodología para entender e interpretar las colaboraciones que involucran tecnologías de visualización. La colaboración que aquí se discute técnicamente es una geovisualización—una película de sumersión, a “domo pleno” digital sobre el Huracán Katrina, desarrollada por el Laboratorio de Visualización Avanzada (AVL) de la Universidad de Illinois en Urbana-Champaign, producida con la colaboración de científicos atmosféricos del Centro Nacional para la Investigación Atmosférica (NCAR), en Boulder, Colorado. El proyecto, que concertó a programadores del AVL expertos en visualización y artistas con científicos de NCAR, demandó la integración de diversas perspectivas disciplinares. En el lenguaje de tales colaboraciones, se acuñó la expresión equipo de renacimiento con el cual captar la necesaria experticia colectiva para producir visualizaciones de punta, modernas, de grandes conjuntos de datos. En este artículo desplegamos los conceptos de objetos técnicos e individualización colectiva de Simondon para analizar el desarrollo de la simulación del Katrina en el AVL. Una secuencia extendida de colaboración de miembros del equipo sugiere que los objetos técnicos también se traten como “colaboradores” porque ellos tienen la capacidad de transformar tales colectivos a través de los problemas únicos que ellos representan.

Key Words:

• Advanced Visualization Laboratory
• geovisualization
• Gilbert Simondon
• renaissance teams
• science studies

关键词：:

• 先进的可视化实验室
• 地理可视化
• 吉尔伯特．西蒙顿
• 復兴团队
• 科学研究。

Palabras clave:

• Laboratorio de Visualización Avanzada, geovisualización, Gilbert Simondon, equipos de renacimiento, estudios de ciencia

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the artists and scientists at the Advanced Visualization Laboratory and the National Center for Atmospheric Research for their cooperation in this research. We extend a special thanks to Donna Cox for her generous assistance. Collaborative writing space for this project was provided by the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories and by Anthony and Marion Rushbrook of Besalú, Spain. Thanks, finally, to the editor and reviewers for their recommendations.

Funding

This research is part of a larger project titled “Art/Science: Collaborations, Bodies, and Environments” (http://artscience.arizona.edu/), cofunded under joint agreement by the U.S. National Science Foundation (Grant No. 86908) and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (Grant No. AH/I500022/1).

Notes

1 AVL is one among many art–science–technology collaborations using the computer as the organizing object. For more on the history of these collaborative endeavors, see Goodman (1998).

2 The study of technological developments and learning processes of geovisualizers sits alongside a tradition of using the audiences to examine the cognitive elements of visual and spatial literacy, including way-finding (Crampton 1992; Lewis 1993; Fabrikant and Buttenfield 2001; Kraak and van de Vlag 2007). There is, too, a rich vein of research that explores the challenges posed by the variable sensory acuities of audiences in the design of geovisualizations (Fabrikant, Rebich-Hespanha, and Hegarty 2010). Whereas some studies are based in an appreciation of difference in physiological conditions, such as color blindness, others combine this with experimental designs to examine a visualization's legibility (Pike and Thelin 1992; Lobben 2008).

3 Co-author Vigdor was responsible for the organizational ethnography of AVL. Woodward accompanied Vigdor and the AVL team to their initial visit to NCAR at Boulder, and Jones paid a site visit and conducted interviews with AVL members in Urbana.

4 For a dynamic view, see AVL's coproduced PBS/NOVA documentary, Hunt for the Supertwister (2004).

5 See Woodward, Jones, and Marston (2012) for more on theorizing without preconfigured positionalities.

6 Maya is an extendable, commercially available 3D software (www.autodesk.com/Maya). It is used often by professional animators to create photorealistic imagery. AVL's programmers have adapted the software to create, among other features, the colored glyphs used in many of its visualizations.