In this brief essay, I reflect on how Mark Fisher's definitions of the weird and the eerie could be applied in communicative data visualization. I ask how visualization designers might elicit these two impressions when a viewer is engaging with multimodal representations of data. I argue that there are situations in which viewers should feel uncertain or suspicious of unseen forces that account for the presence or absence of audiovisual patterns. Finally, I conclude that the ability to appreciate the weird and the eerie in data is particularly important at this moment in history, one marked by significant ecological and economic disruption.
翻译:在这篇短文里,我探讨了马克·费舍尔对“奇诡”与“幽冥”的定义如何应用于传播性数据可视化。我提出,当观者与多模态数据表征互动时,可视化设计师如何能够引发这两种印象。我认为,在某些情境下,观者应当对解释视听模式存在与否的潜在力量感到不确定或怀疑。最后,我得出结论:在此历史时刻——一个以重大生态与经济动荡为标志的时代——领悟数据中奇诡与幽冥的能力尤为重要。