VizWorld.com

The Knowledge Cartography website is dedicated to researching how cartography can be used to represent various types of information, and they’re performing most of their research with a tool called ‘ATLAS’.

The images displayed below are screenshots taken from ATLAS, the application that’s being developed to explore the possibilities of the application of a cartographic metapjor to the realms of knowledge. The concept of atlas in this context doesn’t depict as much a list of maps, but rather a system of representations of space, a communication device aimed at representing complex contexts through the use of many partial overlapping narrations: a network of maps, diagrams, texts and peritexts, combined together to describe the space of research in its multifaceted aspects.

The work is based primarily on a series of papers from Marco Quaggiotto at the Politenico di Milano (Italy), and several videos of the ATLAS interface are available at their site.

via Knowledge Cartography.

Science atlas, cartography, research, visualization

Andy Woodruff, Robert Roth, and Zachary Johnson have a new paper in the latest issue of The Cartography Journal of the British Cartographic Society called “Value-by-alpha Maps: An Alternative Technique to the Cartogram”.

Value-by-alpha maps (hereafter shortened to VBA), like everything noble and good, have their roots in somebody complaining about something on the internet—me, about election cartograms. Seeking an alternative to what I think are ugly and unreadable election results cartograms, I worked with my Axis Maps dudes to create a 2008 U.S. election map that used transparency rather than size to vary the visual impact of map units, thinking that avoiding the distortion of these units into unrecognizable sizes and shapes would make the map easier to read.

One of the more interesting contributions in the paper is their solution to “Johnson’s Cube” where they map the 3 axes to Visual Equalisation, Topology Preservation, and Shape Preservation and show cartographic rendering techniques to illustrate the various combinations.

via Value-by-alpha maps | Cartogrammar.

Science algorithm, cartography, paper, research

“Emotional Cartography – Technologies of the Self” is a freely downloadable collection of essays from artists, designers, psycho-geographers, cultural researchers, and more all brought together by Christian Nold to visualize intimate biometric data and emotional experiences.

Probably the best known emotion maps are the ones resulting Bio Mapping project, a community mapping project in which the Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), a simple indicator of the emotional arousal, is recorded in conjunction with one’s geographical location. By combining the emotional responses of over 1,500 people over a period of 4 years, several “Emotion Maps” were generated of the city in which the participants roamed around.

Emotional Cartography: Implications of Visualizing Intimate Biometric Data – information aesthetics.

Science biomapping, cartography