Visualisations can offer a fabulous medium to convey knowledge to public’s. They can empower public’s knowledge of abstract and invisible concepts, as well as providing a platform for member of the public to express their creativity. Conversely however visualisations produced on a commercial scale bring about the opposite effect. Hyper-saturation of commercial visualisations can result in standardised, unattainable representations of reality. Resultantly this can produce a passive public that is ill equipped to effectively consume or critically analyst information.
An empowering quality possessed by visualization is to make invisible concepts visible. This empowers publics intellect as microscopic scientific concepts, and processes such as origami or whether processes tangible and understandable by individuals, and publics as a whole. The seemingly simplistic dotted line for example allows us to understand movements, step by step instructions such as metalwork, and hidden geometry. These information graphics allows the public to gain greater understanding of the world around them, and the opportunities for knowledge that exist within it. http://www.nearfield.org/2006/09/the-dashed-line-in-use
Additionally visualisation provides the public fabulous autonomy and creativity. In recent years a huge variety and diversification of visual contents emerged. The general public now has access to create their own visualisation not necessarily to deliver informative content, but rather creative expression. The qc, synapse, vdmx, kinect line drawer for example is a visualisation i fail to see the functional and informative function of. However i purpose it does add the cultural aspect of the public, and represents the inner thinking of the creator. In colloquial language this unique visualisation was created for ‘the lols’. Https://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http. It is interesting to note the multiple ways in which the public can interpret visualisations. I found the above pointless however a similar visualization ‘somnambulists’ https://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http interesting. In an abstract way the image is similar however movement in introduce and this added a new dimension that caught my interest (despite also being devoid of a functional purpose except to artistically enrich the public.
Nevertheless we live in a consumerist world, hell bent on achieving the ‘image’ of the ideal life, willing to go great lengths to achieve it. In a capitalist world digital media has opened the gate way for the mass production of visualisations.
http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/3.htm
Except these visualisations are of a different nature to those previously discussed. The content they make very accessible and visible are not for educational or creative purpose, but rather to attract a target audience. Advertisers tap into societies obsession with living an ideal life, and thus creates visual advertisements depicting such a life. Advertisements such as Cokes Endless summers, and the exclusivity and wealth associated with premium brands such as Channel, Prada and Hermes frame the world a false or sensationalised visual manner. However these visualizations are more often than not unattainable. A visualisation is only a representation of how the world ‘should’ be within its conceptual framework.
Thus it can be visualisations have tremendous potential to instil knowledge, and a new platform for creativity, but can also be restrictive and in fact limit the public’s creativity and the accessibility of truthful representations of the world due to the hyper-saturation of consumerist advertising based visualisations. The public today is being rapidly and continually being flooded with visualisations. How does one process such volumes of data? The answer, generally the public does not process it efficiently at all. The public is becoming lazy as they are automatically being visually told what the world is, rather than critically analysing the information (more common in written mediums)
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Caroline Leach- Arts 2090 
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