Last week I attended Lauren Klein’s talk, “Speculative Designs,” which I found engaging and thought provoking. Klein opened by asking a question about the effect of data visualization’s origin story, and then suggested that if we tell the story differently, we might approach alternative histories and new forms of visualization. Her intention was not only to explore what could have been, but what could be if we take “failed” experiments in visualization seriously.
Klein used Elizabeth Peabody’s data visualizations to exemplify a strategy that was not widely adopted, but that we can learn from. Peabody created visualizations that did not value the clear and immediate perception of data, but that were purposefully abstract and demanded sensory and experiential engagement from users and makers. Not only did Peabody create rug-sized models of her grid that potential buyers would gather around to view from different perspectives, but visualization-makers would have to painstakingly compare a list of events with a color code with a blank grid with a grid map and then make decisions about how they would represent their history—a very experiential and time consuming process.
Peabody’s story led me to reconsider my own experience creating a Neatline map this semester. Although my goal was to create a clear and easy-to-read visualization for users, actually creating the map was neither clear nor very easy. The program required me to make decisions that eventually led me to an, if not actually new, newly perceived understanding of nineteenth century print culture. I would love to find a way to provide map users with a more interactive experience, but I don’t think Neatline has that type of functionality.
This is a bit of a leap, but Klein’s talk also reminded me of the introduction to Peter Coviello’s Tomorrow’s Parties: Sex and the Untimely in Nineteenth-Century America. Coviello writes of the untold possibilities for sexual identity that were ruled out by the institutionalization of sexuality, arguing that these possibilities aren’t necessarily failures, but that they actually offer avenues for the future. Coviello and Klein’s method of looking at undeveloped pasts for future possibilities is a line of thought I’d be interested in following in my own work on southern periodical publication.
