Speaking to a mate who recently attended Etech, as always it sounds like they had some amazing speakers and sessions - one of the many I’d have loved to have attended was Eric Rodenbeck’s talk on Information Visualisation is a Medium

Eric is the founder & CD of Stamen Design, who’ve been responsible for the likes of Swarm and Stack for Digg, as well as the awesome Cabspotting

The focus of the talk was on the aggregation and visualisation of data & information; and how the concept works both for Stamen and in a wider cultural context - with the central point that they consider information visualisation to be a medium in and of itself, not just a technique.

They highlighted their work for Trulia - a property search, information and aggregation site - which I think is a powerful example of their point in practice.

In this case their Trulia Hindsight project merges historical property data with a “heat map” indicating the hottest properties, with all manner of extra features enabling users to explore how areas have become developed over the years, compare city to city and more. Ultimately the point is that the visualisation of the information enables users to explore and interact, rather than merely search the data in a very linear process. Equally, neither is it just a pretty aggregation of data - visually stunning, but little more. Simply put, it frames the information in such a way as to be interesting and useful.

Visualisation isn’t thus a means to an end, I think it’s a fascinating - and growing - medium in its own right…. or as Jose Luis de Vicente puts it:

“Data visualisation is a cross-discipline which uses the vast communicative power of images to offer a comprehensible explanation of the relationship among meaning, cause, and dependence that can be found among large abstract masses of information generated by scientific and social processes….[combining] strategies and techniques from statistics, graphic design and interaction and computer analysis to create a new communication model more suitable for clarification in the emerging Age of Complexity…..The analysis of the relationship between data and their visual representation has transcended its scientific origin and can be seen as a language with great potential in a context where data bases are fast becoming…an influential cultural form”

Communications are so often based on the premise of taking selected nuggets of info or data as a hook to engage people, since that the data itself is frequently considered of little interest or use to the consumer. Yet when the data or information itself serves as interesting and useful communication in its own right, which invites active participation, isn’t that ultimately more powerful and rewarding?

[ via we make money not art - and in particular this fantastic post on tracing the aesthetics of data ]