Visual literacy?
Whereas the turn to empirical research in the age of enlightenment led to the visualization in an attempt to create universal scientific data, visualization today is more complicated. The scientific visualization today might aim to condense large amounts of data which would lose its comprehensibility if just written down, or it might aim to create more accurate depictions made possible by the ever-advancing technological tools. The latter was exemplified by José van Dijck, in his text The Transparent Body: A Cultural Analysis of Medical Imaging (2005), where he in the first chapter gives examples how medicine has benefitted from new imaging technology but also discusses how the presentation and reliability on visual data has affected our view on our health.
Lorraine Daston’s article On Scientific Observation (2008) supports this view by writing not only the subjectivity of the party who chose to visualize information but also stressing the subjectivity of the interpreter of the image. Though it is sometimes easy to think that image is worth a thousand words and anyone who sees it, sees the same thing. This could not be further from the truth. Visual interpretation can require years of rigorous learning and many images can truly be understood by experts in the fields. Using the example by van Dijck, though layperson can understand the general content of an x-ray image only trained doctors and nurses can see the crucial details which inform them of their patients’ health.
Digitalization has changed the creation and presentation of visual information. Though visual interpretation should in most cases be intuitive, it is important to provide, and demand description of data depicted and, in some cases, even instructions on how to interpret it to ensure understanding of the given information. To finish with the reminder of van Dijck’s notion of the subjectivity of presentation as well as interpretation it is important to remain critical towards how and why, is visualized information provided.
Articles mentioned in the text:
- Daston, Lorraine: “On Scientific Observation.” Isis 99.1 (2008): 97–110. Online. Internet. 31 May. 2012.
- Dijck, José van: The transparent body: a cultural analysis of medical imaging. Seattle, Wash: University of Washington Press, 2005. (Chapter 1: Mediated Bodies and the Ideal of Transparency, p. 3-19.)















