Visualization offers powerful methods to help us understand the world around us. It is used to reveal the hidden connections, patterns and stories inside any dataset, whether it is the patterns in a great literary work, the timelines of a historical collection or the geographic distribution of important archaeological sites. Furthermore, the density of information now available to scholars in a ne
tworked and digital era is enormous. Humanists, including artists and designers, are developing visualizations as essential ways in which to ‘see’ their data and to see the future. The theoretical aspect of this course offers students a general introduction to data visualization, visual complexity and information aesthetics and the five basic principles of information organization Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, and by Hierarchy (LATCH). We are inundated with thousands of words on e-mails, tweets, digital documents and web pages every day. The sheer volume overwhelms an individual’s ability to read, and we increasingly rely on visualization methods to help us summarize, digest, and analyse text-based information. In this course, students will learn the fundamentals of these methods, evaluate their benefits and drawbacks, and apply them in a hands-on term project.
