Photography as Information Design

Photography as Information Design

by John Barclay-Morton

On Thursday October 17, 2019, I attended Digital Transition's Annual East Coast Round Table on Cultural Heritage, held at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. Here, I learned quite a bit about current and emerging best practices in the field of image capture as it pertains to museums and other institution dedicated to preserving aspects of cultural heritage.

I was at first quite surprised when I realized that the “best practices” being outlined were very much in line with the approaches that Kim Baer promotes in the text “Information Design Workbook”. With this in mind, I would like to focus for the moment upon and explore a specific research context that I will call “photography as information design”.

One “best practice” that Baer promotes is using an alphanumeric system for tracking project components: “An alphanumeric system is a simple way to effectively communicate with the team about assorted pieces of content over the long course of a complicated project…Things like nomenclature changes or changes in content are much easier to track and are much less confusing with the numbering system in place (Baer, 39).”

Accurate documentation was a keynote point conveyed by Michael Overgard and Anna Levine from University of Pennsylvania Libraries, who presented an overview for "Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis: Digitization Medieval Manuscripts from Fifteen Philadelphia-area Institutions”. In addition to recording standard metadata (data of capture, author, equipment, lighting, etc.) for the imaging they undertook, they also meticulously recorded structural metadata, in the form of spreadsheets with metadata about the components of the pieces being imaged (to provide preliminary and ongoing identification of the objects); and collation metadata (dates, times, information about the assemblage of objects and their disassembly for imaging). All of this proved very useful for identifying and reuniting previously scattered fragments of manuscripts, and provided researchers with a wealth of information with which to study and compare the digitized manuscripts once they were placed online.

Compiling such accurate metadata during the project also allowed researchers to go back afterward and compare the originals with their captures. This quickly revealed any gaps in the captures, and allowed for missing materials to be quickly identified and reshot.

In a way, such collections of metadata served as a “design brief” for the project, but with one important difference: during this project, metadata was being actively acquired and compiled in an ongoing fashion, adding to the information that could be shared as the project neared completion. Baer notes that “(the design brief) outlines the pertinent information about the project so that the entire team has a clear sense of the project’s background and goals (Baer, 50).” When considering photography as a case study in information design, the possibility of adding to the basic design brief in an ongoing manner — in this case, adding to the metadata accumulating with reference to the objects being photographed — emerges as a powerful tool that generates information in the course of applying design best practices. This metadata proved to be extremely useful to later researchers who undertook to contrast and compare different manuscripts using the digitized versions that had been produced.

Charles Walbridge from the Minneapolis Institute of Art presented on the topic "Photogrammetry for ‘flat’ art objects”. This presentation examined how techniques used for imaging objects in three dimensional space (such as statues) could also be applied to flat, but highly textured surfaces (such as any painting by Vincent Van Gogh). The basic approach used here is to “visualize the underlying surface without the color information” — an approach similar in intent to the creation of a sitemap for an information design project:

“A sitemap or similar flowchart outlining all project components is one of the first documents you may need, and it should be created long before visual design begins.

“Basically, the sitemap (or a similar overview map if you’re working on something other than a website) should give a visual outline of all the components and informational elements of the project (Baer, 64)”.

Walbridge’s methodology is an interesting one, in that two degrees of image capture are utilized. A wide-angle survey of the object being imaged provides a record of the surface textures; and a close-field series of image captures from different angles (using variable lighting) provides information on the physical structure of the surface being photographed. By separating texture from structure, the topology of the surface becomes more readily apparent; and this yields a “depth map” of the surface, the end result of which is somewhat akin to the relationship holding between a sitemap and what is called a “wireframe”:

“While a sitemap or structural overview provides a birds-eye view, wireframes flesh out the finer details of a complex project (Baer, 71)”.

Baer goes on to examine and stress the vital importance of design testing, to determine user responses. Interestingly, with Walbridge’s work enough data is collected to facilitate digital programs that can “change simulated light sources using environmental maps” — such large amounts of information are captured that they can then be selectively utilized for specific purposes. This aspect of photography considered as information design presents an interesting possibility that seems to be more or less overlooked in established approaches — that of environmental variance influencing design functionality, over and above the differences presented through varying users during the testing of designs. 

Such a consideration might lead us to the last presentation of the conference: Tahnee Cracchiola from The Getty Museum and Kevin Candland from The Asian Art Museum speaking on ”The Fine Art of Documentation: Rethinking Object Photography of Cultural Heritage”.

In many ways, this presentation was closest in its considerations to those which weigh upon information design. A great deal of emphasis was placed upon consultation; in this case, with the curators who best knew the objects which were to be photographed. The presenters were of the opinion that, “Every object has a story, and we are the storytellers”; and to this end, they found themselves asking “What is the narrative of a three dimensional object — how can light and shadow be used to tell shape stories?”

The traditional approach in object photography for cultural heritage purposes has always been to evenly illuminate such objects, to give the most visually uniform presentation possible. However, Cracchiola and Candland have realized that the visual footprint of images is often the first exposure that audiences will have to the items being displayed in a museum — and that first impressions matter. From this realization, a “Fine Art” approach to photo documentation was developed, with photographs of cultural heritage objects being created in accordance with the creative vision of the cameraperson. This approach is at first glance the resolution of very similar issues raised by Baer in Chapter Four of the “Information Design Workbook” — the “Design Toolkit”; but, there is a very important and subtle point in this “Fine Art” approach that might easily be overlooked within Information Design: that photography as information design is always presenting something that exists tangibly, for which there is an expectation of accurate correspondence. 

With information design, there is always a possibility that the design will highlight the information to the detriment of attention more properly directed toward the situations from which the information has been derived. Were this to happen with photography as information design, that would very much constitute a failure of the design itself. In contrast, skilled photography of cultural artifacts artfully accomplished can actually be repurposed as lighting maps, and used by curators to guide their display set-ups; and such photography, done well, will often take on a life of its own in the form of event posters, banners, guide books and academic publications. In this way, photography as information design illustrates a principle we considered earlier, in the context of Charles Walbridge’s work: the possibility of design functionality traversing between multiple environmental contexts of occurrence.

One very important insight that photography as information design can provide us with, then, is an understanding of the role that design can play in guiding us toward whatever situation the information involved is meant to convey. Great design embodies a degree of transparency that never obscures that which it is meant to communicate; and this is why it is said that good design never goes out of style. 

Thus, photography as information design presents us with another important insight as to the pure utility of good information design: in leading us directly toward the situations from the information utilized was derived, such an approach to information design facilitates the collection of further information by those who are using the design work created in the course of making the initial information more accessible to others. As with “The Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis Project”, additional metadata could always be accumulated and added in by those who are party to an exemplary work of information design — if this possibility is first acknowledged and added into a project’s design, beyond what would otherwise be instituted through initial design strategies such as wire-framing and user testing.    

Works Cited:

Baer, Kim., and Vacarra, Jill. Information Design Workbook Graphic Approaches, Solutions, and Inspiration + 30 Case Studies . Beverly, Mass: Rockport, 2008.

Information Design: Pros and Cons

For the purpose of critique, I have chosen Chapter 11 in Robert Jacobson’s Information Design; that is, “Information Interaction Design: A Unified Field Theory of Design” by Nathan Shedroff.

Shedroff begins this paper with a call to arms of sorts, admonishing all that “The most important skill for almost everyone in the next decade and beyond will be the ability to create valuable, compelling, and empowering information and experiences for others” (Shedroff, pg. 267). Since the most recent work quoted in his references was published in 1991, it would seem Shedroff was speaking of the 1990s — which allows us, in retrospect, to assess to some degree the prescience of his prediction.

I certainly remember the 1990s, which began for me with my accepting a position as Photo Editor and Environmental Columnist for a small, alternative newspaper — called “NOISE” — in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. In the decade prior to that, I had watched photo-mechanical print technologies slowly being superseded by digital technologies; but the early part of the 1990s saw this process accelerate, with the widespread adoption of software packages that allowed all aspects of print production to be undertaken digitally, on a desktop computer.

The initial aspects of this digital revolution in productivity were not at all as expected: where most thought that this would be a process of empowerment that allowed the many to gain control of production, in fact it instead caused a dramatic decrease in the number of people employed for such production — and a corresponding increase in the workload assigned to those who were left in the remaining office jobs geared toward print production. 

So in fact, the “most important skill” was simply “multitasking” — doing the work of numerous other employees using technology that eliminated their specific skill sets in favor of a generalized computer literacy.

Shedroff continues at outline his position by stating:

“The process of creating anything is roughly the same. The methods of solving problems, responding to audiences, and communicating to others in any medium are enough like for us to consider them identical for the purposes of this paper. The same issues apply across media and experiences, because they directly addressed the phenomena of information overload, information anxiety, media literacy, media immersion, and technological overload — important problems that need better solutions.

“The intersection of these issues can be addressed by the process of information interaction design that is described in this paper” (Shedroff, pg. 267).

There are two major problems that I can see with this position. First, the idea that “the process of creating anything is roughly the same” is ludicrous, and would have been promptly refuted by the sudden appearance of the Internet in the 1990s. Coding how things appear was a completely different approach to production than physically creating them, and the two approaches were in no way “identical”. Second, the concept of “information overload” is very much one taken from an era of broadcasting, when everything was directed through singular channels expected to encompass all. The idea of narrowcasting was quickly evolving, though; and soon the proliferation of specialty channels and media would completely change the nature of information delivery in ways which would no longer allow ‘everything to be created the same way’. There was something else in play, though, that isn’t addressed by Shedroff: the work overload experienced by those who were tasked with actually creating the productions of which he speaks. These are major issues of that time which seem to have been completely passed over by Shedroff, suggesting that his assessment was no more than an overview (rather than an on-the-ground report on the actual situation then unfolding).

The idea that Shedroff presents no more than an isolated overview is reinforced by the observation that he immediately contracts himself in his paper, moving from a position that states “The process of creating anything is roughly the same. The methods of solving problems, responding to audiences, and communicating to others in any medium are enough like for us to consider them identical for the purposes of this paper” (Shedroff, pg. 267) to one which holds that “Media have always affected the telling of stories and the creation of experiences, but currently new media offer capabilities and opportunities not previously addressed in the history of interaction and performance. . . We do not yet understand precisely how these skills are expressed through interactive technologies, what interests audiences will have in them, and what demands audiences will make of these technologies” (Shedroff, pg. 269). How can someone state that ‘all ways of creating anything are the same’ when “we do not yet understand how (new media) skills are expressed…”? If we do not know how something works, we certainly cannot say it works the same way as everything else: all we can say is, we do not know how it will work; and because of this contradiction, Shedroff’s most basic suppositions supporting his position are called into question.

That Shedroff is attempting to provide an overview which is based upon somewhat dubious grounding is further suggested when he begins to present a transcendental hierarchy for differentiating the topic he is attempting to address. We are told that:

“Information is also not the end of the continuum of understanding. Just as data can be transformed into meaningful information, so information can be transformed into knowledge and then, further, into wisdom” (Shedroff, pg. 271).

This position is further explicated when we are told:

“Knowledge is gained through a process of integration, in both the presentation and the mind of the audience. Information forms the stimulus of an experience, while wisdom is to deeper understanding of the message that can be gained through the experience” (Shedroff, pg. 273).

Some problems here: first of all, Shedroff assumes that audience members all share an identical mindset and are all equally receptive to the “information” they are to be fed — another indication that this paper was written from within a world view defined by broadcasting. More disturbing, though, is the conceptual use here of what Jacques Derrida characterized as ‘the pit and the pyramid metaphor of understanding’: that we “dig deeper” as we build toward the apex of  the highest form that thought can take — as if thinking could be equated to digging a hole and piling the dirt beside it. Here, the ‘producer’ digs the hole and the ‘consumer’ rises on the resulting pile of dirt “through a process of integration, in both the presentation and the mind of the audience” (Shedroff, pg. 273).

One would have to say that in fact there is no such continuum as Shedroff describes, since any of the positions he describes — data, information, knowledge, and wisdom — can occur with any of the others at any time and in any combination. And it isn’t difficult to see where Shedroff goes wrong here — this clearly show right in his own words:

“Data is useful to producers, or to anyone playing a production roll… But data are not meant for consumers… Many providers even brag of the amount of meaningless, contextless data they throw at their customers. CNN, for example, actually calls its bits of data “factoids” and slides them in between other, meaningful presentations” (Shedroff, pg. 272).

The problem here is made obvious a few pages later, when Shedroff again contradicts himself by saying:

“Productivity is another spectrum that can coincide with other interactivity spectrums. Creative experiences allow a user/creator/participant to make, or share in making, something. Some experiences can be used more productively than others (as opposed to being merely entertaining), and productivity is traditionally more valued in business products than in entertainment devices. Nonetheless, most people find creating and producing something interesting, entertaining, and fulfilling — even in leisure activities” (Shedroff, pg. 284).

Data is for producers, not consumers; and it is the job of producers to convert data to information, thereby relaying knowledge to consumers that imparts wisdom to them. Except that, consumers in fact prefer the role of producers — throwing the whole data / information / knowledge / wisdom hierarchy into question as something that could ever be and therefore is provided in a pre-processed form to consumers. Indeed, the entire edifice that Shedroff excavates and compiles is shaken by one very telling aside he casually passes by with a quizzical mention:

“Curiously enough, even though current pornography uses interactive technologies particularly poorly, the market thrives. There seems to be an overlap between sexual curiosity and technology” (Shedroff, pg. 288).

What Shedroff accidentally happens upon (and then walks away from) is something which forms a conceptually fundamental part of post-structural philosophy: that, in contrast to the basic tenants of Freudian psychology, desire does not occur through the lack of something which is missing; but rather, desire occurs through the production of something which one wants. This is the key component that Shedroff is missing in his analysis: that production is characteristic of desire, and is integral to all human activity. Shedroff’s emphasis upon the consumer, upon consumption, is contingent upon the ideal that desire is determined by lack — a position which displaces production and alienates desire through a politics of identity that provides objects to be consumed, rather than materials which allow for the production of something different than that which is currently the case. We can see this succinctly illustrated in Shedroff’s thought when he says:

“Designing an interface for any audience experience, whether technological, physical, or conceptual, begins with the creation of meaning and the development of an appropriate type of interactivity” (Shedroff, pg. 291).

And there we have it: the interfaces that Shedroff envisions are composed of constituted meaning, which audiences are tasked with grasping through the means they are supplied with for that purpose. This is a singularly outmoded approach to conceptualizing thought, one which would make of the mind a little theater in which each individual patiently watches an internalized play of predetermined meaning that is being represented — rather than a model of thought which would make of the mind more a factory — geared to functionality — where ideas are actively produced. 

So instead of watching a pit of meaning being dug down below me as the dirt piles up underneath where I am sitting, I would much rather be out on a extended plane of differential encounter, collecting of my own experience the things I need to create my own life as I live it; and because of this, I really don’t see much in Shedroff’s paper that I would be able to put to use — not without taking it all apart and rebuilding into something which would have actual functionality for me, in the context of the variable contingency through which reality always asserts itself.  

Retooling the ideas used by Shedroff would, to my mind, be a huge waste of time and effort — particularly when I could instead be exploring Chapter 5 in Robert Jacobson’s Information Design: Romedi Passini’s “Sign-Posting Information Design”.

Passini begins from a very stable position, which can be successfully updated (with a bit of effort) to the context of our present day:

“Graphic design over the last few decades test tended to emphasize appearance and give expression to certain contemporary aesthetic values. The profession, as it is still talked and practiced, has its roots in the early twentieth-century Art Deco style, and, to a lesser extent, in Dadaism (Kinross 1992). Information design, on the other hand emphasizes communication and is as concerned with content as it is with form (Sless 1994a). It has its roots in a variety of disciplines — including information theory and the cognitive sciences — and brings together design and research.”

“Whenever people set goals and use information to attain those goals in novel conditions, they engage in a mental activity that can be conceptualized as problem-solving” (Passini, pg. 85).

 From this initial position, for example, we can immediately invoke the most recent findings regarding the neurological processes we all utilize when determining spatial position:

“The medial entorhenal cortex and the hippocampus are part of the brain’s neural map of external space. Multiple functional cell types contribute to this representation. The first spatial cell type to be discovered was the place cell. Place cells are hippocampal cells that fire selectively when animals are at specific locations in the environment. The description of place cells in the 1970s was followed, more than 30 years later, by the discovery of grid cells, one synapse upstream of place cells, in the medial entorhenal cortex. Grid cells are place-selective cells that fire at multiple discrete and regularly spaced locations. These firing locations form a hexagonal pattern that tiles the entire space that is available to the animal. Whereas ensembles of place cells change unpredictably from one environment to the next, the positional relationship between grid cells is maintained, reflecting the structure of space independently of the contextual details of individual environments. The rigid structure of the grid map, along with its spatial periodicity, points to grid cells as a part of the brain’s metric for local space.” (Moser, Pg. 466).

Now we find ourselves working directly with the functionality of our own neurological processes, which come into play as we localize our spatial positions. We can see in this how we could be working in information design with specific spatial localizations, as well as with overall “maps” or “grids” that contextualize specific locations as correlational. 

“Wayfinding is distinguished from other types of problem solving by operating in an architectural, urban, or geographic space. It incorporates the mental representations of large-scale spaces (cognitive maps) that characterizes the older notion of spatial orientation. Cognitive maps, in this context, are part of information processing. They are, in addition to being records of direct environmental perception and cognition, possible sources of information for both making and executing decisions” (Passini, pg. 88–89).

Personally, I find this approach very useful since it nicely integrates with my own preferences in post-structural philosophy. I am intrigued by the idea of wayfinding within philosophy, wherein conceptual structures might mark pathways of thought as they are found through the experience of thinking. For instance, Passini speaks of the linkages found between the decisions made in problem-solving:

“From Information to Information Systems

“Up to this point we have looked at individual decisions and the information required to make them. Decisions, though, are not isolated events. They are linked together, and it is their linkages that give them their full meaning in a problem-solving context”  (Passini, pg. 92).

Similarly, in post-structural philosophy we find that concepts are constituted of intensive ordinates which positionally localize them, compositionally, through fusing them into a state of immanence; and that this process also produces linkages between conceptual structures:

"First, every concept relates back to other concepts, not only in its history but in its becoming or its present connections. Every concept has components that may, in turn, be grasped as concepts (so that the Other Person has the face among its components, but the Face will be considered as a concept with its own components). Concepts, therefore, extend to infinity and, being created, are never created from nothing. Second, what is distinctive about the concept is that it renders components inseparable within itself. Components, or what defines the consistency of the concept, its endoconsistency, are distinct, heterogeneous, and yet not separable. The point is that each partially overlaps, has a neighborhood, or threshold of indiscernability, with one another...Components remain distinct, but something passes from one to the other, something that is undecidable between them. There is an area ab that belongs to both a and b, where a and b "become" indiscernable. These zones, thresholds, or becomings, this inseparability define the internal consistency of the concept. But the concept also has exoconsistency with other concepts, when their respective creation implies the construction of a bridge on the same plane. Zones and bridges are the joints of the concept. 

“Third, each concept will therefore be considered as the point of coincidence, condensation, or accumulation of its own components, rising and falling within them. In this sense, each component is an intensive feature, an intensive ordinate, which must be understood not as a general or particular but as a pure and simple singularity - "a" possible world, "a" face, "some" words - that is particularized or generalized depending upon whether it is given variable values or a constant function. But, unlike the position in science, there is neither constant nor variable in the concept, and we no more pick out a variable species for a constant genus than we do a constant species for variable individuals...The concept of a bird is found not in its genus or species but in the composition of its postures, colors, and songs...The concept is in a state of survey in relation to its components, endlessly traversing them according to an order without distance. It is immediately co-present to all its components or variations, at no distance from them, passing back and forth through them..." (Deleuze and Guattari, pgs. 19-20-21). 

The idea of “survey” found here plays an important role in the approaches pioneered by Deleuze and Guattari (one aspect of which, interestingly enough, they term “Geophilosophy”). It can’t be stressed too strongly that an actual empirical survey of the material under consideration is a necessary starting point — and this stricture is entirely consistent with information design, which inevitably begins with a gathering of data points. In post-structural philosophy, however, it is concepts that are being constructed (rather than data points being gathered) by a process of survey as undertaken upon the plane of immanence; and in this we are dealing with experiential, contingent encounters with the real which constitute ordinate intensities, as compiled from concurrences of composition:

"The plane of immanence is like a section of chaos and acts like a sieve. In fact, chaos is characterized less by the absence of determinations than by the infinite speed with which they take shape and vanish. This is not a movement from one determination to the other but, on the contrary, the impossibility of a connection between them, since one does not appear without the other having already disappeared, and one appears as disappearance when the other disappears as outline. Chaos is not an inert or stationary state, nor is it a chance mixture. Chaos makes chaotic and undoes every consistency in the infinite. The problem of philosophy is to acquire a consistency without losing the infinite into which thought plunges (in this respect chaos has as much a mental as a physical existence). To give consistency without losing anything of the infinite is very different from the problem of science, which seeks to provide chaos with reference points, on condition of renouncing infinite movements and speeds and of carrying out a limitation of speed first of all. Light, or the relative horizon, is primary in science. Philosophy, on the other hand, proceeds by presupposing or by instituting the plane of immanence: it is the plane's variable curves that retain the infinite movements that turn back on themselves in incessant exchange, but which also continually free other movements which are retained. The concepts can then  mark out the intensive ordinates of these infinite movements, as movements which are themselves finite which form, at infinite speed, variable contours inscribed on the plane. By making a section of chaos, the plane of immanence requires a creation of concepts." (Deleuze and Guattari, pg. 42). 

It should be noted, however, that the neurology which processes events, as located in the lateral entorhenal cortex, differs significantly from that which processes spatial location; and does so to the extent that, documentation of the neurological basis for the processing of temporal events was first published in 2018.

As to how I would employ this approach on my own blog… I would have to say, that is something I would need to think about; but I do not think I would be able to do so before I actually had enough material for my blog to conduct a productive enough survey that I could determine the “wayfinding points” for the conceptual composites that defined my work — and from there, I could well find that the overall context I need to compose a plane of immanence for such work might not take the form of a blog at all. 

References Cited:

 Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari, "What Is Philosophy?", Columbia University Press, New York, 1994; pages 19-20-21. 

Moser, Edvard I, et al. “Grid Cells and Cortical Representation.” Nature Reviews. Neuroscience, vol. 15, no. 7, July 2014, pp. 466–81, doi:10.1038/nrn3766.

Passini, Romedi. “Sign-Posting Information Design.” Information Design, edited by Robert Jacobson. Cambridge: MIT, 2000; pp. 83-98.

Shedroff, Nathan. “Information Interaction Design: A Unified Field Theory of Design”” Information Design, edited by Robert Jacobson. Cambridge: MIT, 2000; pp. 267-292.