Reading is Like Wandering Through a City

The idea of a passive readership has undergone numerous challenges. Amongst them, French cultural theorist Michel de Certeau argues that reading is a misunderstood activity, more akin to “poaching” than it is to “receiving.” This presumption, located in the ideology of the Enlightenment, is based on the notion that reading is a perfunctory activity in which the reader is the receiver of text and is informed and transformed by its content. On the contrary, according to de Certeau, we actually do the opposite: “to read is to wander through an imposed system.” It is an activity analogous to walking in the city or temporarily inhabiting another’s apartment. Every reader modifies the text, making use of the system of linguistic signs as a reservoir of forms from which to give a meaning, and invents something other than what the author intended. To read against the grain of imposed meaning is ultimately a political activity; it is, like other “everyday practices” identified by de Certeau, an act of resistance against the dominant economic order. The reader takes neither the position of the author nor an author’s position. He invents in the texts something different from what they “intended.” He detaches them from their (lost or accessory) origin. He combines their fragments and creates something un-known in the space organized by their capacity for allowing an indefinite plurality of meanings.

      -- Kathleen Ritter in Fillip

The Hedgehog's Dilemma

Today's Wikipedia Entry-of-the-Day: the Hedgehog's Dilemma — a way of summarizing the core problem of human relationships.

The Case for Same Sex Marriage

There it is. For a more in-depth look at the recent California District Court's ruling against Prop 8, have a read of the full text of the ruling. Page 7 summarizes the flimsy case against gay marriage, and starting on page 60 is a point-by-point description of dozens arguments both for and against. (Amazing to think that this decision came from a judge appointed by Ronald Reagan.)

Prop 8 never had a leg to stand on.

Park Spark

Matthew Mazzotta, an alumnus of my graduate program, has just finished an ambitious public artwork here in Cambridge: Park Spark. His sculpture is, essentially, a large anaerobic digester that turns dog waste into methane to fuel a lamp in this popular dog park. Part green engineering, part provocation, Matthew's work successfully traversed difficult funding, regulatory and construction hurdles to produce a thing somewhere between absurdist shock art and a serious meditation on sustainable technology.

I'm told it really doesn't smell bad at all.

What Sorting Algorithms Sound Like

These two videos by a YouTube user named andrut are simply too cool not to post.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8g-iYGHpEA


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXAjiDQbPSw

BESA: Muslims who Saved Jews in WWII

BESA: Muslims who Saved Jews in WWII is an important traveling exhibition organized by the Hebrew Union College. It is currently on show at the Teck Gallery in Vancouver at Simon Fraser University.

Holocaust Survivors Postwar Journeys to Poland

This lecture by Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum is a moving account of a number of survivors' returns to Poland after the war, as uncovered through her research of Yizkor Books.

Towards the end of her lecture she quotes a section of Julian Tuwim's text We Polish Jews... whose sentiment I found particularly striking:

There was a Star of David painted on the armbands, which you wore in the ghetto. I believe in a future Poland, in which that star, that one from the armbands, will become one of the highest awards granted to the most courageous of Polish soldiers and officers. They will wear it with pride on their chests next to the ancient Virtuti Militari. Thus, there will be the Cross - of the Ghetto - a name that is deeply symbolic. There will be the Order of the Yellow Patch- more regarded than most other trinkets existing currently. There will stand - in Warsaw, and in every other Polish city, a remaining, permanent and conserved fragment of the ghetto in an unchanged form, just as we find it in all its horror of smoldering embers and destruction. We will surround this monument to the infamy of our enemies, and the glory of our martyred heroes with chains, chains cast from captured Hitlerite artillery, and each day we shall plait fresh, living flowers into the iron links, so that future generations shall have a memory of the massacred nation that remains fresh and alive for all eternity, and as a sign that our anguish over it remains always living and fresh.

Nuclear Blasts 1945-1998

This remarkable video by Isao Hashimoto renders visible and audible the patterns of nuclear blasts by various nation states over the course of 53 years. The blast radii are grossly exaggerated for explanatory purposes, but it still leaves me wondering how much of global warming can be attributed to these explosions.

The Future of Transportation

Dave Jordano

Predators

I saw the new Predators movie last night. Here are a few things I noticed:

- they've got pets
- they've got drones
- they've got equal opportunity problems

- the good guys are, in descending order of goodness:
   - IDF
   - ex Black Ops mercenary with keffiyeh
   - Yakuza
   - Russian Spetznaz
   - a Predator
   - Warlord from Sierra Leone
   - Mexican drug cartel enforcer
   - Death Row serial killer
   - Lawrence Fishburne
   - A nice doctor guy

Also:
   - beheadings are really popular these days
   - the ending was all about Iraq

Visualizing the History of Ideas

I've just finished my poster for SIGGRAPH, a survey of old and new techniques for visualizing knowledge:

Kieślowski's Talking Heads

My Maternal Grandmother

Both of my grandmothers passed away this last year.

My earliest memory of my maternal grandmother, Alexandra Żaryn or "Babcia Olenka" as we called her, was of her apartment in the old Mokotów district of Warsaw. The socialist housing block that she lived in was a grey, bleak edifice typical of so many neighborhoods across the Soviet world, affectionately called "bloki" by Varsovians. Warsaw, having been almost completely raised by Hitler after the Uprising, had been largely reconstructed after the war in this style.


The door to each apartment was as solid and brutal as the front of the building—a massive slab that seemed designed to keep people in as much as others out. And getting into the elevator was quite the experience for this young Canadian. Its lack of an inner door meant that you would stand next to the moving wall of the elevator shaft as you went up or down. This didn't seem to phase the inhabitants, but to me it seemed a horrific meat grinder of a machine.

"Stand back."

The undecorated corridors of my grandmother's apartment block were formed out of plaster and concrete. Sounds echoed within them in a kind of ceramic interiority that was always been, for me, an immersive synonym of the social repression of the Soviet era. If someone closed their door firmly on the top floor, you would likely hear it on the ground floor. And I'll never forget the smell of those old buildings — like old earth. It's hard to describe. Just yesterday I reencountered that same smell, as one does with smells and memories, in a completely unexpected place: the stairwell of Building 7 here at MIT. Perhaps I'll bottle it.

But from the coldness of the building, I will always remember the contrast of my grandmother's apartment door opening and walking into a world that seemed plucked right out of a 19th century salon. My grandmother was born into a family with aristocratic lineage—her French was impeccable and classic, and in later years when I would return to visit her she and I would switch with ease back and forth from Polish as I searched to fill my spotty vocabulary.



More recent visits to her apartment always involved long conversations over tea as I would try and translate my life in Canada into words and concepts that be meaningful to her. Being in Poland always involved recounting my studies and my life plans to numerous relatives, but it was Babcia Olenka who always took the most earnest interest in my deliberations. I would sit in the living room and sip tea and nibble on the stale biscuits while she asked me questions from the kitchen. My answers would stumble out in broken Polonaise while I scanned the room, taking in the oil paintings of old relatives, etchings of street scenes, the lace curtains, the plastic radio tuned to Radio Maryja, the beautiful old silver sugar box on the table—de rigeur in all cultured Polish homes.

There was something about speaking Polish (and French) with my grandmother that always provided me with a space to philosophize and reflect upon my life: where I was and where I was going. She would hear me out as I tried to explain to her why I was studying something. She was patient with me while I struggled to find the words and cogent thoughts in a language that, despite the best efforts of my Saturday morning Polish tutor, I was not fluent in. Those long afternoon tea sessions were for me not only a glimpse at the pace of life long before the distractions and conveniences of the 20th century, but also richly satisfying conversations with someone who took a deep interest in what I was trying to say. She would consider our conversation over the course of a few days and we would pick up the next time we met, or sometimes she would finish a thought by sending a postcard to me in Canada (along with some scolding at not having written her.)

It wasn't until later in my twenties that I started to take a greater interest in the history of Poland. In fact, I don't think I had really considered the meaning of the WWII and the peculiar place that the Holocaust has in Polish consciousness until after I learned that Babcia Olenka had been recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among Nations.

My grandmother and grandfather (and her sister and sister's husband) had helped shelter a Jewish couple who had escaped the Lvov ghetto in 1943. Harboring Jews during the occupation in Poland usually had mortal consequences, hence the special recognition. I have copied an account of the story in which my grandmother played a part here:

The Jewish couple Lazar, and Irena E. escaped from the Lvov ghetto in 1943 warned by the Gestapo man, Kramer, that the end of the Jews approached. There were only 500 of them left in the ghetto. The couple reached Warsaw and learned that Mother Matylda Getter, superior of the congregation of St. Mary's Family, was helping Jews. Irena E. went to her and told her that she was a Jew and got work through her as a maid at the estate of Szeligi II near Warsaw. Its owner was Kazimiera Jawornicki who died shortly after her arrival. The manager of the estate was her son, Count Wladyslaw Olizar and his wife Jadwiga, née Jankowski. There lived also Jadwiga's sister Alexandra, married to the engineer Stanislaw Zaryn (q.v.). Both couples had children, some of which were in their teens. All of them knew that Irena was Jewish and treated her very well. When they realized that the maid's work was too hard for her, they proposed to Irena that she become the governess of Alexandra's children [among them, my mother]. Wladyslaw found a place for Irena's husband on a nearby farm. The housekeeper of the owners of the farm, Halina Pesko, took part in helping in the care of the Jewish couple. A delegation of the estate workers asked the count to get rid of Irena, feeling that their safety was compromised by the presence of a Jewish person. The count refused, telling them "I alone will be responsible for what will happen". They accepted his words, and kept quiet. Irena stayed with them till January 20, 1944, when both families were forced to leave the estate due to the agricultural reform imposed by the new Communist regime in Poland. Irena E. and her husband maintained heartfelt contacts with the Olizars couple via letters and thoughtful, meaningful gifts. Yad Vashem recognized the Olizars and the Żaryns as "Righteous among the Nations" on January 29, 1998. However, only Jadwiga Olizar, ill and in her 80's- could come to the ceremony in Warsaw honoring the four of them on Jan 14, 1999. Case No. 7521, started in 1995.

In my visits to Poland after learning of my grandmother's recognition I by Yad Vashem, I began reading more historical accounts of the country, I began visiting more monuments, I visited Auschwitz. I started to really formulate a relationship between what I was learning, what I was hearing around me and how I felt as a Pole, as a foreigner, and as this particular student of history.

More on that another time.

America's Pursuit of Graphiness

According to the Pulse of the Nation project at Northeastern & Harvard, the above is a graph of American happiness over the course of an average week, gleaned from the mood of many tweets.

No surprises here.

Israel & Apartheid

Given the rise is popularity of the apartheid analogy with Israel, I thought it would be worthwhile to highlight the ways in which this analogy simply does not hold. The following text is from the Wikipedia article on the topic:

Academic Susie Jacobs states that the apartheid analogy is "inadequate", and that it is a rhetoric which skims over substantive differences. She points out that Apartheid was a great deal more than segregation, instead it was a society almost wholly based on racial criteria.

StandWithUs, a pro-Israel advocacy organization, argues that apartheid in the Republic of South Africa was an official policy of discrimination against blacks enforced through police violence, based on minority control over a majority population who could not vote. They point out that in contrast, Israel is a majority-rule democracy with equal rights for all citizens including Arab citizens of Israel who vote freely. Israel contends with prejudice in its population as all societies do, but such prejudices are opposed by law. They also point out that Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are not governed by Israel but by the Palestinian Authority.

Unlike South Africa, where Apartheid prevented Black majority rule, within Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip—the territory Israel controls—there are currently more Jews than Palestinians, although Jews are only 48% of the population as a whole. However, most of the West Bank and all of Gaza are not expected to be controlled by Israel after a final settlement.

Benjamin Pogrund, author and member of the Israeli delegation to the United Nations World Conference against Racism, has argued that the petty apartheid which characterized apartheid-era South Africa does not exist within Israel:

"The difference between the current Israeli situation and apartheid South Africa is emphasized at a very human level: Jewish and Arab babies are born in the same delivery room, with the same facilities, attended by the same doctors and nurses, with the mothers recovering in adjoining beds in a ward. Two years ago I had major surgery in a Jerusalem hospital: the surgeon was Jewish, the anaesthetist was Arab, the doctors and nurses who looked after me were Jews and Arabs. Jews and Arabs share meals in restaurants and travel on the same trains, buses and taxis, and visit each other’s homes. Could any of this possibly have happened under apartheid? Of course not."

In response to increasing inequality between the Jewish and Arab populations, the Israeli government established a committee to consider, among other issues, policies of affirmative action for housing Arab citizens. According to Israel advocacy group, Stand With Us, the city of Jerusalem gives Arab residents free professional advice to assist with the housing permit process and structural regulations, advice which is not available to Jewish residents on the same terms.

"The equivalence simply isn't true. Israel is not an apartheid state. Israel's human rights record in the occupied territories, its settlement policy, and its firm responses to terror may sometimes warrant criticism. And Prime Minister Ehud Olmert himself recently warned that Israel could face an apartheid-style struggle if it did not reach a deal with the Palestinians and end the occupation in the West Bank. But racism and discrimination do not form the rationale for Israel's policies and actions. Arab citizens of Israel can vote and serve in the Knesset; black South Africans could not vote until 1994. There are no laws in Israel that discriminate against Arab citizens or separate them from Jews. Unlike the United Kingdom, Greece, and Norway, Israel has no state religion, and it recognizes Arabic as one of its official languages."

—Kadalie, Rhoda and Julia Bertelsmann, black South Africans whose families fought against apartheid

Ulalume

The skies they were ashen and sober;
    The leaves they were crisped and sere—
    The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
    Of my most immemorial year:
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
    In the misty mid region of Weir—
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
    In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Here once, through an alley Titanic,
    Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul—
    Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
These were days when my heart was volcanic
    As the scoriac rivers that roll—
    As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
    In the ultimate climes of the pole—
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
    In the realms of the boreal pole.

Our talk had been serious and sober,
    But our thoughts they were palsied and sere—
    Our memories were treacherous and sere,—
For we knew not the month was October,
    And we marked not the night of the year
    (Ah, night of all nights in the year!)—
We noted not the dim lake of Auber
    (Though once we had journeyed down here)—
Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
    Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

And now, as the night was senescent
    And star-dials pointed to morn—
    As the star-dials hinted of morn—
At the end of our path a liquescent
    And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
    Arose with a duplicate horn—
Astarte's bediamonded crescent
    Distinct with its duplicate horn.

And I said: "She is warmer than Dian;
    She rolls through an ether of sighs—
    She revels in a region of sighs:
She has seen that the tears are not dry on
    These cheeks, where the worm never dies,
And has come past the stars of the Lion
    To point us the path to the skies—
    To the Lethean peace of the skies—
Come up, in despite of the Lion,
    To shine on us with her bright eyes—
Come up through the lair of the Lion,
    With love in her luminous eyes."

But Psyche, uplifting her finger,
    Said: "Sadly this star I mistrust—
    Her pallor I strangely mistrust:
Ah, hasten! -ah, let us not linger!
    Ah, fly! -let us fly! -for we must."
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
    Wings until they trailed in the dust—
In agony sobbed, letting sink her
    Plumes till they trailed in the dust—
    Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.

I replied: "This is nothing but dreaming:
    Let us on by this tremulous light!
    Let us bathe in this crystalline light!
Its Sybilic splendour is beaming
    With Hope and in Beauty tonight!—
See! -it flickers up the sky through the night!
    Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,
    And be sure it will lead us aright—
We safely may trust to a gleaming,
    That cannot but guide us aright,
    Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
    And tempted her out of her gloom—
    And conquered her scruples and gloom;
And we passed to the end of the vista,
    But were stopped by the door of a tomb—
    By the door of a legended tomb;
And I said: "What is written, sweet sister,
    On the door of this legended tomb?"
She replied: "Ulalume -Ulalume—
    'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
    As the leaves that were crisped and sere—
    As the leaves that were withering and sere;
And I cried: "It was surely October
    On this very night of last year
    That I journeyed -I journeyed down here!—
    That I brought a dread burden down here—
    On this night of all nights in the year,
Ah, what demon hath tempted me here?
    Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber
    This misty mid region of Weir—
Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."

(Said we, then — the two, then —" Ah, can it
    Have been that the woodlandish ghouls —
    The pitiful, the merciful ghouls —
To bar up our way and to ban it
    From the secret that lies in these wolds —
    From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds —
Had drawn up the spectre of a planet
    From the limbo of lunary souls —
This sinfully scintillant planet
    From the Hell of the planetary souls ?")

— Edgar Allan Poe, 1847

On Algorithms and Apparatuses

I recently sat down with Niko Vicario to talk about The Betweeners. Below is the conversation we had about the work and its relation to notions of friendship, the importance of algorithms and Agamben's notion of the "apparatus."

NV: So tell me a little about the project.

IW: So this project is the second incarnation of a work that I did a few years back for a group show in New York at the Flux Factory. Let me find you a link to the image so you can look while I type...

NV: Great.



IW: So, that show was organized as a massive collaborative scale model of New York in homage to the Panorama at the Queens Museum of Art, built in 1964. The show, NYNYNY, involved over 90 artists each of whom built a scale model of their favourite place in New York (real or imaginary). The final work was assembled over a few days. So my proposal involved wanting to highlight a person instead of architecture. I thought it would be interesting to write a piece of software to find the most influential, unknown New Yorker and create a portrait of them for the show.

NV: How did you find them?

IW: I wrote some software to scan all New Yorkers on Facebook, looking for people who had very few friends, but the friends that they did have would have many friends. So I imagined a type of person for whom there really wasn't a word. Instead of a word, I created an algorithm. (An algorithm is a logical machine for manipulating information in a particular way.)

NV: But is this concept of “betweenness” some of the ways towards a terminology?

IW: ”Betweenness" is something that I came across later when I started the second version of this project while here at MIT. I was given a chance to exhibit a solo show in Montreal, and I decided that it would be a lot of fun to restage that New York project, but this time make it a photographic project, well-finished. With more gloss. After talking to some Media Labbers, I got turned onto this notion of "Betweenness Centrality," which is an algorithm used by researchers who are interested in studying networks. (And networks, these days, and "network science" is used to study things as diverse as economics, disease growth and neurology.)

NV: Because the first iteration (in New York) was claymation, a pretty low tech translation of the "logical machine" of an algorithm — so why gloss now?

IW: Gloss? Well if you look at the work that I did for the NYNYNY show it was pretty rough. It doesn't look finished. I feel like I needed to make more art that has a high degree of finish. Maybe "gloss" is the wrong word.

NV: The Media Lab sets the bar high for sheen.

IW: I can get sloppy once I've been making well finished work for a while.

NV: But I do think it's interesting that your project takes the algorithm and turns it into an opportunity for what seems like a potentially intimate encounter, face to face with someone on a social networking site who then becomes the subject not for a "profile pic" but for a staged photograph with a fancy, heavy old camera to be displayed in a gallery.

IW: Yeah, that's true. Although I wasn't really thinking about the intimacy of it at first. I like to think of the project as an intersection between an algorithm and a city.

NV: And I know you're working on mapping the network positions, in a form that could be compared to a map of urban space for instance.

NV: Any stories of the people you met whose social networking positions best embodied this betweenness algorithm? Did they have good social skills, as their betweenness status would suggest? Or was that just their avatar's trait?

IW: They varied in their social skills, and it did seem to vary with their betweenness, yes. But I'm hesitant to draw too many conclusions.

NV: Data!

IW: As an enthographic study, this project was very cursory — not very rigorous. I think the project, should it continue, would probably want to start developing more as a social science work along with the finesse of the photographic work.

NV: That's OK. So why the switch from Facebook to Myspace?

IW: The switch to MySpace was motivated by Facebook's deletion of their city networks. It has become considerably harder to navigate Facebook by geographic region. MySpace, on the other hand, is very open and has geographic data that's easy to parse.

NV: I was having a conversation the other night wondering if people of our generation will still have our Facebook pages when we're elderly even if the youth of that time have moved on, will we always hold onto this format as a means of self-definition and social interaction, do we remember a life without it? Of course plenty of people live their life without it.

IW: I've heard of these people, but I've never met any. Do they really exist? I wish there were more diversity in how people interact with technology. It always seems like there is just one path forward and we all participate in it to various degrees.

NV: Not to mention people without internet access, not to mention those without even electricity, tough to imagine I agree in our Media Lab existence. I wanted to mention that philosopher Agamben who is bringing up Foucault's concept of the apparatus but extending it to cell phones, pencils, basically everything that isn't biologically human and then the "subject" (the individual) is constituted/comes into existence solely through his or her exposure to apparatuses. Before apparatuses, he or she is biologically human but not yet a subject. Is this interesting in regard to your project? It may be fairly negative, fairly apocalyptic. But of course there is no escaping pencils, not to mention iphones.

IW: I love the ball point pen. In particular the bic pen.

NV: What was the process like of using the camera — from the 50s right — after so much algorithming?


IW: I love this camera [1954 Graflex Speed Graphic] because of how it forces me to slow down. There's no computer inside to automatically adjust things. I have to be methodical about focusing, opening and closing the shutter, setting the aperture and shutter speed, loading the film, etc. And the fact that I don't get to see the result for a week or so. It's a kind of denial or deprivation of pleasure that's eventually very satisfying.

NV: This question of speed is interesting. Do we follow the rhythm (or algorithm for that matter) of these up to date apparatuses or inhabit an alternate temporality. Or, in your project, maybe there is a switching back and forth, a translating between these temporalities.

IW: Well yes, digital cameras enable us to reminisce about the last five minutes of our life. It's a very different cognitive experience and much more immediately social. No one would dream of saying, ”Hey Ian, pass that massive camera over so I can take a photo of you.” It just doesn't happen.

NV: There is also that question, made more apparent by social networking technology: What is a friend?

IW: Sure, that's a whole other question. I used to be very picky about who I let in as a "friend" online. But I've stopped worrying about it now and I just accept all friendship requests that come my way.

NV: You mentioned that these individuals with highest betweenness centrality might have been so positioned as the result of the individual being "friends" with particular bands so perhaps they were just fans at the right place at the right time never expecting an artist to pounce.

IW: So let me get back to the MySpace stuff: yes the big difference between it and Facebook is that it's primarily still popular in the music scene. There are tons of indie musicians who use MySpace, and many of their fans too. So it made sense when I met Geneviève Lapointe, the subject with the highest betweenness centrality, and I discovered that she was a huge music fan. In fact, she told me how she doesn't have a cellphone, and hardly uses the internet for anything but checking for concerts on MySpace.

NV: That's funny that she doesn't have a cellphone and that her centrality algorithmically isn't really about an emotional concept of friendship but more fandom.

IW: It was inspiring to meet someone with a very different approach to technology, an approach that was clearly working for her well. She chose her apparatus carefully. I think that online social networks are much less about friendship than they are about celebrity and microcelebrity; if you're not going to post witty entertaining tweets, I simply won't follow you. On Facebook everyone's a celebrity for fifteen minutes, per day. And then there's of course the somewhat creepy sensation of stalking and being stalked while on social networks, something that everyone agrees on, but that only makes it slightly less weird.

NV: You had mentioned to me there was also this link between online social networks and the mapping of social interaction, was it in Iraq?

IW: Well setting aside the knowledge that Facebook was funded very early on by holding companies owned by the CIA, yes: there's a technology that was developed a few years back called the Human Terrain System. It was a kind of military Facebook for Iraq. U.S. soldiers could build profiles of the people around them to help navigate social systems at play; I think the project got cancelled, but I'm sure that the concept lives on in other projects. This one was produced by a military contractor.

NV: So people didn't create their own profiles, they were profiles set up by soldiers representing people. Were people tracked or observed in life and then those observations were fed into an online network illustrating it?

IW: Sorry, mistake: it looks like it was designed by the military and it's still in use: http://humanterrainsystem.army.mil/ A unidirectional military Facebook, a way to perform "social science research" in a warzone. So for the military, people with high "betweenness centrality" in their system would be very important in understanding how information flows, in getting information out to the city as a whole, or for tracking down wanted persons.

NV: Have you seen Avatar?

IW: Yes, I thought it was called Pocahontas the first time around. What part of Avatar are you thinking about?

NV: Well, it's not a perfect match but I am thinking the military in Iraq with this Human Terrain project are making avatars of people in Iraq. People don't make their own avatars, they are made by people attempting to understand them but who may not really understand them.

IW: Perhaps. I think the analogy would be the role of Sigourney Weaver's character.

NV: In Avatar the Westerners use their technology to construct avatars of themselves (disguised as Others) to understand those Others but, of course, the well-meaning Leftist social scientists and scientists are funded by the military who are only interested in the planet for its natural resources to be converted into capital. This isn't so different from the historical link between anthropology and colonialism nor from the ways that certain technologies (like the internet, right?) are developed for the military but then proliferate in modified form in normal civilian life.

IW: Have you seen the final photo from my project?



NV: I like the theatricality of it.

IW: Yes. That has a lot to do with the fact that two of the subjects are performance artists. In fact, they're all artists. One writer, one jewelry designer, one graphic designer, one fashion designer. My aim was to recreate a photo from each person's MySpace catalog. With each subject we chose one of their online photos and restaged it.

NV: I like that they share a space but, in the montage of their reenactments, they don't connect to one another, they remain isolated and aloof even in a tableau.

IW: True. I like to think that this motley bunch could be a new kind of elite.

NV: The composite photo does look a little like one of those "best and brightest" or "ones to watch" magazine layouts.

IW: Oh yeah. Vanity Fair.

NV: Do you know the documentary series "7Up”? It could be interesting to follow these people and see what they do, like the filmmaker does in that series, the 7 year old boy who wants to become Prime Minister who then becomes a janitor, or what have you or the prim and proper girl who becomes a drug addict 14 years later.

IW: I've also been thinking about how I would change this project if I were to do it again in another city. I like the idea of people being information machines and how people in various places in the social graph can have an affect on the system as a whole. Check your email for a few network diagrams. These files show how Geneviève is connected and who she is connected to in 2, 3, 4, 5 degrees distance. I think if I were to recreate this project in a new city, I would work with this effect more than simply betweenness centrality.

NV: Yes, the diagrams are great and you had talked about animating them which sounds great.

IW: Thanks. I'm also interested in my own involvement in these graphs. I could write some software that could introduce me to just the right people in all the right cities. Instead of schmoozing like Andy Warhol, I just follow my software and it keeps me in touch with the world through just the right people.

---

Niko Vicario is a writer, a curator, and a PhD student in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art at MIT. Most recently, he has held curatorial residencies at Program Initiative for Art and Architecture Collaborations (Berlin) and Iaspis (Stockholm); earlier this year he co-edited (with Ute Meta Bauer) Engaged: 20 Years of the MIT Visual Arts Program, a collection of moving image works and documentation of other works interrogating the public sphere; he also participated in the research project and exhibition Living Modern (with Heidrun Holzfeind and Damon Rich), curated by Laura Barlow, at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, where he was Curatorial Fellow in 2008-2009 and a graduate student in 2006-2008.

On Graphing Data

A few weeks ago I sat down with Jean-Baptiste Labrune at the MIT Media Lab to talk about my recent work, The Betweeners. The conversation recorded below ranges though a variety of topics relating to the representation of data and networks in particular, and how these representations do and don't convey meaning.

JBL: Hello. Hi.

IW: Hi. So The Betweeners, is a work of photo portraiture but I like to think that it's also a computational photography piece in the sense that it uses... I wrote a piece of software, which found subjects for the portrait. So, in a sense the image you see can't be divorced from a software process. So in some ways it is a work of digital art, even though the photographic process uses a very old 1950s camera and a chemical film process.



JBL: And there is also image editing...

IW: Right, and image editing and processing was part of the final print. So I used PhotoShop to assemble...

JBL: To compose.

IW: Exactly. To compose. So it was really intentionally going back and forth between using old media and new media and trying to create something that I think is symbolic of how people relate now, more than before, because it piggy-back on online social systems. And how the role of the algorithm plays a significant part in who this group is and what they are all about.

JBL: Yes. So I start, maybe, if I can interrupt you here. I would like to talk about, to reflect already on this idea of the algorithm that selects the people and start to criticize this algorithm itself. I was reading the print-out on your wall that says "edge = link, vertex = node" — this idea of graph theory, SNA (social network analysis), the analizing of centrality. "Betweeners" are linked to this idea of "centrality." It's part of the vocabulary of the graph theory that social network analysis took of representation. It's a model that represents entities that are connected. So connected entities. So it's a topological concept. It relates to what defines a network and what is interesting is that it talks more about the representation itself than these people. For me, this algorithm that is selecting these people is actually selecting entities derived from the model itself. So I think that although they are defining the identity because they have this relationship with people who have never met — actually that have never met each other although they share maybe lots of connections. This might have been one of the criterion to select them. Like they are part of the same graph, that's for sure.

IW: Yes, they're definitely part of the same overall graph, although none of them had actually met each other...

JBL: Because they have a distance between themselves, but they all share the same characteristic: being a hub, being a strong centrality — meaning a strong connectedness to people, correct?

IW: Well, the fine definition of this kind of centrality is worth noting because it's not actually a hub...

JBL: No, it's connects two distinct parts of the graph.

IW: That's right.

JBL: They are actually more connectors between fragmented, dissociated parts of the graph.

IW: Right.

JBL: It's this remarkable visual structure you see when you see this. There's another way to refer to this graph in HCI, in Computer Science called the "spaghetti graph" because at a certain point every 2d projection of the graph (because you never see the graph, you always see one projection in 2d on the screen or on paper...)

IW: Yes.

JBL: You can operate it and see it in 3D, you can variate the representation, but you can never see the whole graph at the same time. It is one of the properties — you are always occluding, seeing different things. One way to represent the graph is by clustering some parts of the connected points, and when you see this cluster some times, you see three clusters connected by a certain point. These points are The Betweeners. This point of centrality, because they are connecting different parts of the graph. Basically it could be like a hub, in a way is connecting also places for planes, you know it's like this junction where everybody has to pass through... Basically it's this: it's this point in a route where if you want to go from one point of the graph to a totally different one, you have to go through this one.

IW: It's like a router on the internet.

JBL: It's an obligatory point of passage. It's this place, where if we cut the graph in this place, then we create many graphs. The graph will not exist anymore as one entity. There is not another part that might link it, to save it, to be still connected.

IW: But the algorithm does measure this in a continuum. But you're right, one of the early ways of calculating the algorithm made use of a technique of removing the nodes in question and measuring the change. So the more central you are, the more the graph will change when you're removed.

JBL: So I'm talking about that because this centrality property is central for me in your research because it is what defines and criticizes the classic selection process of having the casting of a usual art piece where you recruit, enroll people for an artwork. Here it is a machine, an algorithmic process that helped you make the decision, because of course it's not the machine that contacted these people, it's your voice maybe with your cellphone. If the algorithm is selecting 20 people, maybe you decided arbitrarily 6 of them because its easier that they are in Montreal and not Vancouver or whatever — they are now available or not. It's cognitive help. It's a process that helps you as a person to take a decision, so we are really talking about this coupling between a machine and a human doing something together. It's very interesting in this project, for me.

So another thing, more free association, this is my we're having a free conversation with words because its faster than writing things in text for me. This is why I asked you to do that. "Nomos", the rule, the regulated. Deleuze talks about "strident," the things that has stress, the relief, the discrete, the area of the non-continuous, in a way — compared to the "anomos", the analog, what is part of this idea of a seamless surface, "sans-couture", without seams, this thing that has no discriminant. So how to go from this hierarchical property of a surface that is either segmentable, segmented, finite to a more analog thing in the progression of a graph? I think what is interesting is this central point is remarkable, it is a manifest point of differentiation. It is a nomic point, in the sense that it creates significant difference between parts of the network. Why are you interested in these people and not in randomly choosing somebody from the graph, or randomly choosing somebody from a non-central part of the graph? It's because these people are remarkable.

I would like to slow down a little bit the conversation on this idea of defines something remarkable that you might remark. I think that the remarkable in this is what is manifested by the algorithm, the model itself. I think it's remarkable in the epistimological frame of the model itself. I think that the question, and I could talk more with you, and I will in the future, about what are the conditions that let you decide to use this graph or this model of a network. Maybe it's a pure semiotic similarity between the network of people and there are networks between computers and I would like to explore this relationship between these tools we use: Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. I think that the human connectedness, again the network of people is a representation of what it is to be a human. This representation if really really far from what it is to be a human, experiencing and encountering with another human. So it's an analog.

IW: Right. It's an analog and it's a real pale comparison to I guess the rich realities of human interaction. In a way, it's a kind of a symbolic simplification of relationships, and this is something that Niko and I talked about for a while. It's an abstraction — an abstraction of this notion of friendship. There's a definition somehow where if you meet someone for ten minutes they qualify as a new Facebook contact, but it's a pale comparison to the more traditional definition of friendship or this... Well, I say "traditional", but before Facebook I found that for me (and it varies for different people) friendship is something that gradually build over time and it is somewhat of a significant label. You don't call everyone "friends." Some people are acquaintances, that sort of thing. So yes, the network graph is a simplification and its a model, an analog, but it had this tremendous blowback — a retroactive effect on people and their definitions of friendship. So it's a significant social force. It's not just an analog, it's not just a symbol.

JBL: It's not just a representation. There is an existing set of relationships between people and we might represent it in this way. It's also shaping the way people might now find their human relationships. It's also a bit like in operant conditioning. Like this idea that it's reciprocity. But it's more this idea of shaping. The idea that things go both ways. That the model that you create is a way to understand what you do, but it might also be an a priori definition of what you might do in the future. The model explains but also defines and persuades you.

IW: Explains and effects.

JBL: Exactly. The map is not the territory, but the map defines the artificial — it redefines the territory.

IW: It produces as much as it...

JBL: Not entirely. It produces, according to me, an artificial addition to the territory. Especially because the territory is not entirely controlled by the humans that created the map. I'm not sure that trees are mapping, but they still grow. But there is definitely this two-way process. Where the abstraction is elevating on top of reality and now is redefining, structuring reality. It's a double movement. It's not only a posture to observe, it's a little bit like the bias of the physics researcher's microscope: that beaming an electron is not only seeing, but modifying. But the representation that is seeking the intention is also affecting. There is a bias here.

So, what is the bias of trying to use this representation when you use a graph? How can you guarantee objectivity and how much actually aren't you talking more about graphs than talking about these people? And this is the provocative point I wanted to say: how much are you celebrating a graph structure in your piece? And by actually putting an icon on top of the nodes of this graph where you could have put actually a lot of different people...

IW: Yeah, like you've said before, it's actually something that's going in multiple directions at once. Part of how I initiated the project was really looking for a way to kind of define something that I felt represents how I operate socially. I am not necessarily concerned about having a lot of friends, but I am concerned about having friends from different social spheres.

JBL: So to confront the perception you have of your own practice with maybe a theory or a model, and to see how reflective it could be for you to see "This is what I think I am at MIT or when I was in Vancouver before. What is my own social graph and how can I confront, compare maybe, oppose this perception of myself to other people." Maybe do a little bit more work on what is this thing and maybe also validate or check or maybe invalidate if I am also corresponding maybe unconsciously to this structure that pertains, pervades in my own perception and practice of meeting people. So, I think it's a salutary — it's very important distantiation to be able to contemplate the model, but you have to be able to criticize it also. Deconstruct it. And it's always a tricky part to try to objectivize the objectification... that's not the correct word... "hypostasis" is this idea of elevating to a degree an abstraction you are actually doing this necessary reduction of reality — of maybe the reality of your perception. You will also create a new kind of diminished reality that you might then ad infinitum criticize. You will create a new graph structure that is your own critique of the graph structure.

[JB looks up definition of "hypostasis."]

"Hypostasis:" an underlying reality or substance as opposed to attributes, or that which lacks substance. "Hypostatic abstraction, also known as hypostasis or subjectal abstraction, is a formal operation that takes an element of information, such as might be expressed in a proposition of the form X is Y, and conceives its information to consist in the relation between a subject and another subject, such as expressed in a proposition of the form X has Y-ness."

So it's talking about... in a way it's an essential operation to try to abstract from some kind of a perceived reality to a kind of definition of what other realities or people experiencing realities could relate to. Okay, so it's like how the graph structure, even if we have never met in our life because we experience the same kind of patterned behaviour in the relationship we have with people might now put us in common... or we could see the situation like this.

I would criticize this a lot because I think that this would be an heritage of logics. This would make us think that logicians, because they can make the graph, might tell us about reality. I think they are telling us a lot about the graph.

IW: [Chuckle.] I see. That is a bit more clear now.

JBL: But this jump from reality to an abstraction is great, it's very creative, but it doesn't doesn't inform us about what is the real. It's another representation. When I look at the sun, I'm afraid and I say "Oh look! It's the sun!" You know, I put a label. I re-present something that is here in a different space. I'm adding something... noise maybe, but I'm not changing the sun. The sun doesn't care about me.

So it's interesting for me to see how much you affect your perception of your own encounter with people and confront this networked representation you have of yourself. Maybe you're asking yourself: "How much does the fact that I'm on the internet, using all these networks, affect my real life of meeting people?" For example. "How much am I normal, or not?" or "Where am I in the graph?" and "Is it important that I situate myself in a graph?" "Is the society I'm living in influenced by formalism? By this kind of operation?"

Maybe as subjects we can escape formalization of exchange. Maybe we are not just actors in a system? This is one way to see each other, but there are lots of other ways.

IW: I don't doubt that and I think that it's certainly true that the logic underlying the piece may not be that sound. And certainly network graphs may tell you something about a hierarchy of importance or a hierarchy of wealth of nodes in a network, but it's also not a highly dynamic model that I was using. It's not like...

JBL: It's a snapshot.

IW: It's a snapshot of a significantly large chunk of time. It's basically the current state of the Montreal MySpace network, from when it started until now. So it builds all these connections between people, but there is no quality to the connection where I incorporate knowledge of what that connection means. It could have been someone that someone worked with five years ago and hasn't talked with since...

JBL: And even if you would know that, it will never be enough because, I would argue, that even to ourselves or to the people who might help you describe the quality of this connection... imagine if you could meet all these people and they would tell you about every person they meet, they would miss lots of details. A big part of what we exchange when we meet a new person escapes from us. Again, it's such a reduction...

IW: Yeah, but I don't think that the opposite, which is this kind of a quest for a totalizing approach to understanding people is worth pursuing either. I think it's much more interesting to take some kind of aspect and explore that, or like I was doing, which was conflating it. Taking this notion, which seems to have become very trendy over the last ten years, which is network science and network graphs and take what is typically a geometric diagram and translate it into something which is more of a kind of rich human portrait or representation.

JBL: I think that the visual representation of its geometry is not the best definition. I think it's more one of the ways to understand being connected, like a set of connected entities with a direction or not...

IW: Yes, but I'm thinking just in terms of how people understand what a graph is — a network graph. I think that these diagrams of dots connected with lines are very prominent representations.

JBL: I'm not saying that they are not part of the culture, but again to slow down a little bit. The difference that was very very clear for me when I worked in this computer science lab for my Ph.D. that they have a team called AVIS specializing in information visualization, the have a team on graph theory (mainly mathematicians). A graph is a definition of elements that are a part of the same ensemble, the same set. They are connected in some way and the nature of this relationship between the entities is very interesting for theorists. And then, once you define the graph, you can start to observe some of its properties. And the visual representations are infinite. It's a bit like thinking about OpenGL and 3D: there are many ways you can put the camera and you could explre the graph in almost infinite ways.

So every snapshot of this graph would be according to a specific discursive rhetoric point that the configuration of presentation of the graph is already a semiotic moment. It's already a moment of...

IW: Yes, digital information definitely has this property of: you have the model and the view. You have the data and the...

JBL: Sure. The data is immaterial. Like mathematics.

IW: You do have a convention which comes down very strongly in terms of different kind of data are represented. There are conventional visual representations...

JBL: It is not because it is conventional that it is true or meaningful. It's not because it's shared by people that it adds more...

IW: But that shared convention has meaning.

JBL: Yes, but it's a socially constructed meaning. It's not linked with the graph itself. It's not because you know something that everyone knows that it's true. We can all share a totally biased view on something.

One example that I criticize a lot here at the Media Lab (but nobody hears me because I'm adding some amount of itching power to the system) is that, you know, when you have a graph, a connected graph — a spaghetti noodle — it looks scientific. It's serious, right? Like, you know you have all these dots and you have colors and, wow, you put this on a map, you put it on a great science brand like Nature or MIT: that's serious. "This I don't understand because it's not by field, but it must mean something complex." Man, this is a complex set of points like you have a complex Sol LeWitt reenactment, where the algorithmic trigger is, you know, a simple rule that creates a complex structure. But it's not that because this structure is complex that it's linked with complex meaning, maybe you could then resynthesize to the representation itself. A lot of things I see in network science, network theory and representation, lots of what I understand is that they are again and again and again reenacting, re-presenting the properties of what it is to be a graph. Power laws, you know, this kind of verification that everybody does on this graph helps us understand sometimes not to believe that the representation is actually just recreating itself. Just a tautology. You know, "women are women, right?" What does it mean? Instead of being a circular definition of the model by itself representing itself. So the fact of finding connectedness in a connected graph — the fact of finding complexity in a big complex dataset.. Oh my god! Thank you. This is an obvious result.

IW: I think the interesting realm of science which departs from the basic element of asking a question, understanding how to answer it and then following through with an experiment. That classical view of the essence of science seems like almost old-fashioned. We have all these wonderful tools and programs which can help us churn through data and make these artifacts which look scientific...

JBL: Yes, they have scientific style. They are complex. I would define them as hypnotic. They are fascinating. In French you would say they are "ravis," like "ravisseur" — this guy that is kidnapping... it is the same word in French for "ravir" meaning to fill with joy, but also to kidnap. So you are taken from where you were to this space of the graph! And your eyes start to through these names and these nodes and these links. It's like this connectedness where, like a new kind of classic representation of a story in 2D or in 3d invites you to read, meaning to go through the path and does not really invite you to understand. You actually "overstand." Understanding would be to deconstruct the algorithmic construction of the graph. This is not sexy. This is more like logic or mathematics. "You ask me to explain, but it's complex and if you're not from my field I will not take the two months to explain to you how I could build this thing." The deconstruction of it will be very boring, like in law. You know, if you are interested in deconstructing why patents and things work, you know, if you have to spend five years in tribunal to see very piece of evidence in a case... this is boring! I don't want to spend five years. I want instant orgasm. This beautiful, colorful representation of whatever. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. How do I know? I don't have time for that. I have other things to do in my life. I have emails waiting for me.

So this acceleration and this lack of tolerance for understanding complex explanations of how complex representations were crafted. And who has this knowledge? Experts. And then, there is this moment where we have to believe or not. The fact that you can deconstruct the properties of a graph requires knowledge. The epistemology of representing knowledge or information through graphs is a complex science that requires you to know lots of authors that are not very mainstream.

IW: This is one of the wonderful things about being an artist who works with science. You can try and explain stuff to the curators and the galleries, but at a certain point they just take your perspective as defacto truth.

JBL: Especially if you are coming from MIT!

IW: Especially if you are coming from MIT. It's very easy to say pretty much anything and it will be valued and respected.

JBL: [Working on his computer.] I'm looking for an artist in '86 that did a pseudo graph of the internet... a clear, fake and beautiful aestheticized representation of what was the internet... It reminds me of this article you may have read yesterday about the representation of geopolitical configuration with PowerPoint. It was all about PowerPoint reducing our understanding of the reality of people living in places... In the past I would have won an argument with my voice! Now, with the mediatization of trials, you have to be tanned and have white teeth. You might be on TV with a normal voice (because now we have microphones). And maybe now you need a multi-touch infoviz spaghetti noodle dynamics-changing eye-candy graph to create new justifications for your rhetoric. It's visual rhetoric.

I read a quote that in the past people that could not read text could have been a problem in the future of people who could not read images. This is this idea that we went back from a more text-based culture to a more visual culture where it emphasizes more archetypical, more gestalt perceptions and rhetoric. If you can do something that is stylish enough you will win, you will "ravir", you will take me from where I am because I want an emotion. I want to relate with you not just on what you say, because maybe it's too complex and I don't have time, and to to have something with which I can relate: to be a part of your graph.

IW: So I think you're taking the road of the cynic...

JBL: Not cynic. More a sceptic. A little bit different. And I'm not a sceptic, because I love graphs, but I love them for what they are. Not for what they are sold as.

IW: What are they?

JBL: They are the definition of relations between entities that inform us that our perspective on which we can maybe define or construct a perception of reality. But they are one of them.

IW: What are they useful for?

JBL: I think like all structures, they are necessary reductions. They help us to communicate things linked to the spaces they create. So, like language, like verbal language, for me is a necessary reduction. Of course, it is not representing the simultaneity of what happens in my body and my brain, but already it organizes sequentially the transmission of something that maybe would have been kept inside of me. It allows me to externalize something that might be a lie but that is already an operational one. It makes me relate to you and connect to you. So in a way it's a media in both senses of the term. These graph representations are a media in the sense that they connect me, they are connections, but they put us apart at a distance.

IW: So one of the ideas that I was bouncing around earlier on in this project was how the 20th century was characterized by the bell curve, in relation to where we are now, which is much more typified by power laws.

JBL: So the bell curve has a centrality also. Very interesting. From the bell curve to the power law. That could be a great name for an article.

IW: The initial image that I had for this exhibition was exactly that: an image of a bell curve and an image of the power law graph and it's amazing how the bell curve really enabled the construction of the notion of the "middle class" and now we have this space of the "long tail" and how it's basically... I hesitate to say that it's rich and poor because there seem to be very convincing statistics coming from UNESCO which shows that by and large as a whole is becoming less and less poor. Meaning that people are living longer, healthier lives, having less children and staying out of poverty, meaning: they have enough money to sustain a relatively good quality of life. And this is a general trend. So in my mind the notion of the long tail is "them" vs. "the rest of us" or it's "us" and "them," depending on where you are in the graph, but there's this massive difference in scale between the top 1% and the rest, and yet at the same time it doesn't seem to be one in which one might go immediately to say that "the world is poor." But in fact there is 1% that is incredibly wealthy an there is this long tail that is simply everything else. And everything else is more or less the same.

JBL: Again, how much is this representation connected to reality? For me this is a big topic of investigation. The lack of quality in the links... because we don't have this qualitative "anomos"... it could be infinite. For me the distance that can separate us could be infinite, in our subjectivities. It is very important to try to understand how much we can still relate when we are so different.

So it's not enough to draw the graph and say "That's it! Look! Look! We are connected. I can show you the graph. I can prove it to you."

So maybe we can finish on this because I started with a cultural studies point. I think that a very hot topic in the sixties and seventies, you know: Foucault, the French cultural studies, lots of people tried to address the critique of the hierarchy, the linearity of it: there is a chief, there are employees, there is a high class, the middle class, the low class. And they tried to replace it with the idea of this rhizomatic, networked... these networks are the children of Deleuze, by the way.

We are now in a moment where maybe we can try to understand how much they became a new rhetorical device, where people can use them to convince others of the complexity of scientificity, the serious — it's honest, you know, because Deleuze said it, right? It's a rhizomatic, blah blah blah whatever...

So, again: this idea that now you don't convince with the hierarchy. It's not the hierarchy of the Church, of a certain order. It's more the hierarchy of these "connected entities:" actors in the Actor Network Theory where now you have groups and they communicate and so what are now the new power places? What are the outliers, what do they mean? THe graph's understanding of the world informs us about the world. I believe that the graph's representation of the world informs us about the graph's representation of the world, first. And of course there are a lot of things that we could know from it, but I'm not sure what they are and I do believe that before understanding what graph representation can give us, we need to understand what is graph representation. Very much.

For example, the fact that the visual representation of a graph structure is not a graph structure. It's a visual representation of it. It's a reduction. It's already taking a part of it and making it preeminent and occluding another part of it. It's very well addressed in InfoVis literature. The way to avoid this is to have multiple representations at the same time, especially through adjacency matrices where you can have the top of the graph being represented through rows and columns and you can permit...

IW: I think, certainly the representation of information still has this legacy of the printed page which cannot change so there's still a primacy given towards illustrations which are fixed in space, which are projections of more complex data. With time this will change as more and more of our experience with media comes through dynamic systems.

JBL: Yes, first it's very interesting to see how it's very difficult to represent actually multivariate systems — dynamic data structures with graphs. You can have the same exact data structures, but every representation will infer something totally different, hence the importance of tools to variate the representation of the graph, to be able to discuss, to debate and maybe to compose and recompose. I'm making a constructionist point here. By building the graph, you might understand a part of it. And it's by confronting your understanding of the part of your problem that you do understand, with other people, that you might then have a more phenomenological understanding of our interpretation and understanding of the complex situation.

You know, in French we say "cerner." It means "going around" like "cerneaux de bois" is a piece of wood that goes around a middle-age garden, where they would put earth at the height of people so they could garden comfortably. You know these medeival gardens? They would use pleaching so the wood would grow around. So one of the phenomenological ways to criticize one truth, to have a perspectivist representation of a complex phenomenon is to multiply the angle of attack. It's a syncretic point. You want to go the summit? There are many roads to get there, and it's maybe in the diversity of the roads that we might approach an understanding, but we will never get there. It is an asymptotic quest, compared to this: "I have a graph and I know the truth and I can predict the future, right?"

So let's just finish on this. So it's very simple, you see: cyclic or acyclic graphs, represented in some time by tiling or non-tiled versions. This one is a bit more complex, so you see the complexity might be one thousand... One of the references that I love is this French cartographer called Jacques Bertin who wrote this famous book called "La Graphique," which tried to be a complete reference of all the various kinds of visual representation you can use to represent data, from the 50s and 60s. He was working in the EHESS (l'École des hautes études en sciences sociales) and he was a specialist of abstraction — how you make maps. He was a very big
inspiration for Edward Tufte.

With one of my colleagues we went to his house one day and I took pictures of one of the devices he made to do these adjacency matrices. [Shows the photos.] So one of the first things you would study would be all the bastard and legitimate children of the Kings of France. These are gigantic matrices. This is a way to put a map into a set of tables that are actually adjacency matrices. The theory here is that if you can build this table, you will remember how to remap the map. So it's an education theory based on a seven year old user. It had amazing results. They would ask children to do maps with all sorts of climates: mountainous, coastal, oceanic, etc. and then to hatch. So it's how having many steps of representation can help you understand and build.

So to answer again your question you asked me "what do you think about graphs and graph structure?" I love representations when they are operated, not just received. Not just persuasive rhetorical devices, but actually tools to build and engage actively in the construction of knowledge. So if you would do the graph with the people you take photos of, I think that would be interesting. Because maybe then you would learn about why they are central. You would start to access this quality of the links.

IW: The work as I have it now has two sides, but this is a welcome departure from Tufte as the authoritative narrator of the assessment of graphs and info visualization. I think these blogs like Information is Beautiful are all trying to his epitome of the most Tufte possible graph.

Ok. Thank you for this conversation.

JBL: Thank you.

---

Jean-Baptiste Labrune is a postdoctoral associate in the Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Lab. His research aims at developing Creativity Research Tools (CRT) that allow artists and scientists to document and explore their own creative processes. He is particularly interested in Exaptive Innovation, Art & Science collaborations and the future of Playful cultures.

Before joining MIT, Jb earned a MS in computer science in Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers (2004), and Phd degree in computer science (HCI) at Université Paris-Sud and INRIA Futurs (2007). He taught in art and design schools in Europe such as the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, Mediamatic in Amsterdam and Les Beaux-Arts in Paris. He also taught in scientific centers such as Paris VI University, the Cité des Sciences and the Institut Pasteur.

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