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Visualization and Rhetorics

Visualization and Rhetorics. Amitabh Varshney Department of Computer Science University of Maryland at College Park. Rhetorics. Rhetoric is the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion – Aristotle (Book I)

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Visualization and Rhetorics

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  1. Visualization and Rhetorics Amitabh Varshney Department of Computer Science University of Maryland at College Park

  2. Rhetorics • Rhetoric is the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion • – Aristotle (Book I) • Aristotle assumed that the agent of persuasion is the orator and the medium of persuasion is the language • Vast number of elements in any discussion • Rhetor’s ultimate goal, whenever possible, is to make the most relevant object, concept, or value fill the audience’s entire “field of consciousness”. • Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, 1971

  3. Communication – Language vs Visual • Language: linear, apprehended slowly, systematic processing • Images: Comprehended wholistically, instantaneously, emotional processing • Images (or image-evoking language) are powerful, precisely because they provide a rhetor superior opportunities to dominate the field of consciousness

  4. Visual Rhetorics in Aid Appeals More than one billion children, half of the world's population of children, suffer from poverty, violent conflict and the scourge of AIDS. UNICEF’s Annual Report 2004

  5. Visual Attention A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing – a focus on object A involves a neglect of object B Kenneth Burke • Where we look has significant implications for: • what we perceive • how we interpret • how we act • Visual attention is the primary filter by which we can cope with our immense sensory bandwidth • Retinal information is too vast and most of it has no survival value • Eye-tracking can quantify overt visual attention

  6. What Controls Visual Attention Bottom-up Image Properties (task independent) Top-down Semantics and Task-driven Properties Images from Yarbus 1967

  7. Visual Rhetorics in Art The Feast of Belshazzar, Rembrandt, 1635

  8. Visual Rhetorics in Photography Photograph by Thomas Franklin

  9. Visual Rhetorics in Photography Washington Post, April 16, 2007

  10. Intelligence Amplification • Independently proposed by Ashby, Licklider, and Engelbart (late 50’s, early 60’s) • Coupling of Humans and Computers to synergistically complement each other’s strengths • How can we enhance visualization systems to give users an edge in visual understanding? • Computers: searching, filtering, prioritizing, and rendering • Humans: visual understanding

  11. Transfer Functions Saliency Enhancement Enhancement Operators Emphasis Field Computed Saliency Field by User Input Saliency-enhanced Volume Rendering Validation by eye-tracking device Towards Visualization Rhetorics • Lighting: Inconsistent lighting can show features that might otherwise be missed [Lee and VarshneyVis04], [Rusinkiewicz et al. SIGGRAPH 06] • Luminous and Chromatic contrast: Methods to use and enhance luminous and chromatic contrast to persuade and guide visual attention [Rheingans&Ebert Vis00],[Kim and VarshneyVis06]

  12. Towards Visualization Rhetorics • Transfer Functions: Modulate opacity/transfer functions [Groeller et al. TVCG 04 –VisSym 07] • Geometry: Computational model of mesh saliency [Lee, Jacobs, Varshney, SIGGRAPH 2005] • Geometric Visual Persuasion:[Kim and Varshney submitted to TVCG]

  13. Towards Visualization Rhetorics • Data is always sacrosanct but visualization is never neutral • View location, view orientation, lighting (number, and types), reflectance, transfer functions, … • Every communication has a message • And every voxel a default importance • Every communication genre employs its distinct rhetorics • Movies vs documentaries • Posters vs newspapers • Photography vs art • Possible elements of a Language for Visualization Rhetorics • Data: nouns • Visual Salience: adjectives (color, illumination, transfer fn, geometry) • Visual Persuasion: verbs • Could be the beginnings of a new and rich genre of 3D visual communication Or it could go the way of personal air cars …

  14. Acknowledgements David Dao Youngmin Kim Chang Ha Lee Rob Patro Derek Juba Joseph Ja’Ja’ Dianne O’Leary David Jacobs National Science Foundation NOAA DARPA DTO-IARPA Army Research Labs

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