A common understanding considers information design to be a clear and immediate transfer of information, in which the author disappears to make the data emerge with utmost clarity. This idea of infographics as a transparent and objective... more
A common understanding considers information design to be a clear and immediate transfer of information, in which the author disappears to make the data emerge with utmost clarity.
This idea of infographics as a transparent and objective medium is questioned by several scholars and practitioners who consider visualization not just as a representation of numbers, but as an interpretative device. In this essay, we will review these positions, with special regard to the use of the semiotic concept of enunciation, which is also beginning to be used in critical design theory and digital humanities.
This concept allows us to detect the traces of the act of enunciation in the visual artefact. In particular, we will deal with the recognition of visualization as an act of interpretation, the visual calibration and distancing from one’s statement in journalism and scientific communication and the visual reference to the production process in graphic design.
This idea of infographics as a transparent and objective medium is questioned by several scholars and practitioners who consider visualization not just as a representation of numbers, but as an interpretative device. In this essay, we will review these positions, with special regard to the use of the semiotic concept of enunciation, which is also beginning to be used in critical design theory and digital humanities.
This concept allows us to detect the traces of the act of enunciation in the visual artefact. In particular, we will deal with the recognition of visualization as an act of interpretation, the visual calibration and distancing from one’s statement in journalism and scientific communication and the visual reference to the production process in graphic design.
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Starting from the local announcement of the Brenner border restoration by the Austrian government, that risks to turn South Tyrol/Alto Adige, Italy, into another symbol of the EU disintegration, Europa Dreaming is an online project that... more
Starting from the local announcement of the Brenner border restoration by the Austrian government, that risks to turn South Tyrol/Alto Adige, Italy, into another symbol of the EU disintegration, Europa Dreaming is an online project that adds its own re ections to the European debate generated by the migrant crisis. What happens to the European dream when it meets the migrants dream ? Is this the Europe we dreamt of ? Is the Schengen Agreement the way to the European dream ? Probably not. Through the statements made in the 1995 by the European politician Alexander Langer during the blocking of movement of Bosnian migrants at the Ventimiglia border (between France and Italy on the Mediterranean coast), the project reveals that not much has changed after 20 years of implementation of the Schengen Agreement, when, again in 2015, African migrants have been blocked, again, at the same border. Since 1995, the European Union lacks a shared asylum and migrant-related policies and conditions, because « the Schengen Agreement remains an agreement between police forces and of police ef ciency that doesn't seem the best European model » (A.Langer,1995). Through an interdisciplinary team composed by a journalist, an anthro- pologist, an ethnoarcheologist, a photographer and a designer based in South Tyrol, Europa Dreaming repositions the actual migrant crisis on a wider timescale and, through the media coverage of some European media outlets, it reveals the complete lack of migration policies to a wider European audience. Working with an transciplinary team for one year on the topic, it has been possible to produce an historical research archive on European newspapers, a series of data visualization of the 2015 asylum seekers, and qualitative interviews of the migrants who have tried to cross the Brenner pass, in order to depict the story from different points of view. This more correctly re ects the actual complexity of phenomena, in which there are no simple solutions.
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Rapid Response Collecting is part of the collecting activities of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The curators of this project select objects that are apparently banal and not very meaningful and exhibit them in a special... more
Rapid Response Collecting is part of the collecting activities of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The curators of this project select objects that are apparently banal and not very meaningful and exhibit them in a special section of the museum, which is nevertheless part of the Contemporary Product Design area. Their aim is to recall media events from the next past. The exhibition design is a mise-en-recit activating both personal and collective narratives through the exhibits. Moreover, it demands the viewer to observe an everyday object through an alienated sight as if it belonged to another culture. This case-study is the point of departure to reflect on the semiotic status of the exhibit in a design museum: most times, this is a sample of an object produced in series, becoming the trigger for a reflection on technological and social innovation. Thus, the object shows a “specific identity” connecting the sample to a model (Goodman 1976, Prieto 1988). In other cases, tho...
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The outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic in 2020 led to an immediate and unprecedented media coverage of scientific and health issues. Experts and scientists were called upon to urgently communicate to citizens the extent of the danger and... more
The outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic in 2020 led to an immediate and
unprecedented media coverage of scientific and health issues. Experts and
scientists were called upon to urgently communicate to citizens the extent
of the danger and the measures required to contain it. They thus conceived
and developed visual artifacts which could efficiently communicate scientific content to a wider public.
This paper specifically examines the scientific chart that dominated the
political and national health discourse particularly during the two weeks
between March 8th and 21st 2020, and was linked to the slogan “Flatten the curve”. Long circulating in the narrow field of epidemiology, the diagram suddenly spread across the Internet and spilled over onto other media, subject to the progressive variations that made it less ambiguous and increasingly comprehensible to a wider audience. Its evolution, acceptance and circulation on the social networks offer an opportunity to observe how public opinion was formed around constellations of scientists working actively online. It furthermore makes it possible to observe the development of a language that oscillates dynamically between the verbal and the visual, building a common imagery that was used to support the rhetoric of political language. The scientific image is thus observed as effective, to the extent to which it prompts not only knowledge, but action as well, acquiring a performativity that projects it into a strategic-political dimension.
unprecedented media coverage of scientific and health issues. Experts and
scientists were called upon to urgently communicate to citizens the extent
of the danger and the measures required to contain it. They thus conceived
and developed visual artifacts which could efficiently communicate scientific content to a wider public.
This paper specifically examines the scientific chart that dominated the
political and national health discourse particularly during the two weeks
between March 8th and 21st 2020, and was linked to the slogan “Flatten the curve”. Long circulating in the narrow field of epidemiology, the diagram suddenly spread across the Internet and spilled over onto other media, subject to the progressive variations that made it less ambiguous and increasingly comprehensible to a wider audience. Its evolution, acceptance and circulation on the social networks offer an opportunity to observe how public opinion was formed around constellations of scientists working actively online. It furthermore makes it possible to observe the development of a language that oscillates dynamically between the verbal and the visual, building a common imagery that was used to support the rhetoric of political language. The scientific image is thus observed as effective, to the extent to which it prompts not only knowledge, but action as well, acquiring a performativity that projects it into a strategic-political dimension.
Research Interests:
The frontier space builds hybrid and plural identities, which can be projected onto a larger scale to suggest new forms of coexistence and mixing. In the transition from speculative abstraction and graphic representation to application on... more
The frontier space builds hybrid and plural identities, which can be projected onto a larger scale to suggest new forms of coexistence and mixing. In the transition from speculative abstraction and graphic representation to application on the territory, borders mobilize, multiply and disintegrate to become frontiers: places of transformation, where the game of intercultural translation may be played. For cultural semiotics, borders and peripheries are zones of increased semiotic activities where the generation of new meanings is accelerated. This essay focuses on the historically contended and bilingual geographic area of South Tyrol as the object of ideological, political and legal discourse. A certain way of narrating it through a double understanding of frontier, as a space of conquest and place of cultural hybridization, makes it particularly suited as a source for stories about the construction and denial of a united Europe.
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The timeframe of scientific research into climate change deals with a recent past that departs from the longer timespans that have preceded it to speculate on future developments. This essay analyses the graphic form of time series used... more
The timeframe of scientific research into climate change deals with a recent past that departs from the longer timespans that have preceded it to speculate on future developments. This essay analyses the graphic form of time series used to communicate this phenomenon, with a focus on trendlines and fork graphs. These configurations are used to express, on a quantitative basis, the risks and escape routes from the imminent catastrophe. These images represent the future in the form of possibilities, and, in their simplified shape, they serve to convince public opinion. As a support for speculative and design work, diagrams on climate change provide the basis for inventing scenarios, narrative forms the purpose of which is to orient their reader towards their realization.
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The myth of transparency and truthfulness is the foundation for contemporary theories of information design. Avoiding distortion and ambiguity is the moral imperative of an upstanding data visualizer. Sometimes, though, data that is... more
The myth of transparency and truthfulness is the foundation for
contemporary theories of information design. Avoiding distortion and ambiguity is the moral imperative of an upstanding data visualizer. Sometimes, though, data that is collected is not accurate enough and the sources use indirect indicators to approach a phenomenon: what to do then, if the need to graphically represent a phenomenon is urgent and necessary? Should the designer wait to have the exact data, or should he indicate a trend, expressing the hypothetical status of his statement? Can data visualization be designed to express doubt rather than to inform about facts? This essay will deal with the forms of expression of uncertainty in infographics. It will consider the designer as both an observer and a translator, whose position of neutrality is only one of the possible realms of discourse. In general, it will focus on the forms of visual expression of a self-criticizing mood in quantitative research today and it will explore the ways in which data that is not meaningful in statistical terms can become meaningful in semiotic terms.
contemporary theories of information design. Avoiding distortion and ambiguity is the moral imperative of an upstanding data visualizer. Sometimes, though, data that is collected is not accurate enough and the sources use indirect indicators to approach a phenomenon: what to do then, if the need to graphically represent a phenomenon is urgent and necessary? Should the designer wait to have the exact data, or should he indicate a trend, expressing the hypothetical status of his statement? Can data visualization be designed to express doubt rather than to inform about facts? This essay will deal with the forms of expression of uncertainty in infographics. It will consider the designer as both an observer and a translator, whose position of neutrality is only one of the possible realms of discourse. In general, it will focus on the forms of visual expression of a self-criticizing mood in quantitative research today and it will explore the ways in which data that is not meaningful in statistical terms can become meaningful in semiotic terms.
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This essay analyses the design process for a visual communication project, the final product of which is a website. Conceived within the sphere of Visual Journalism, the goal of the website is to gather and compare various ways of... more
This essay analyses the design process for a visual communication project, the final product of which is a website. Conceived within the sphere of Visual Journalism, the goal of the website is to gather and compare various ways of understanding the "European dream" by putting together a montage of different media and languages (photography, video, infographics, reusing images from the archives). It thus responds through a kaleidoscope of points of view to the hyper-simplified story of the presumed migrant invasion of Europe and its portrayal as an emergency by the sensationalist press. The choice of a medium such as the web, using the same means as the news we wish to deconstruct, makes it possible to collate different voices, different places, different historical periods, to bring critical scope and depth to the fleeting flash of today's news. The choices of structure, language and genre lend themselves to a plural type of project that coalesces heterogeneous elements around a core of arguments. The authors' point of view attempts a difficult mediation between ex-post analysis and the involvement in the design process, using semiotic tools to motivate the aesthetic, linguistic and structural choices made earlier during the design process.
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What kind of images are data visualizations? Are they mere abstract transformations of numerical data? Should they reduce the phenomenal world into a set of pre-codified shapes? Or can they represent natural phenomena through figurative... more
What kind of images are data visualizations? Are they mere abstract transformations of numerical data? Should they reduce the phenomenal world into a set of pre-codified shapes? Or can they represent natural phenomena through figurative strategies? What is the boundary between useless decoration, narrative illustration and helpful visual metaphors? Through post-design reflections on a visual journalism project, the paper focuses on the context-dependent role of images in data visualization.
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Starting from the local announcement of the Brenner border restoration by the Austrian government, that risks to turn South Tyrol/Alto Adige, Italy, into another symbol of the EU disintegration, Europa Dreaming is an online project that... more
Starting from the local announcement of the Brenner border restoration by the Austrian government, that risks to turn South Tyrol/Alto Adige, Italy, into another symbol of the EU disintegration, Europa Dreaming is an online project that adds its own reflections to the European debate generated by the migrant crisis. What happens to the European dream when it meets the migrants dream ? Is this the Europe we dreamt of ? Is the Schengen Agreement the way to the European dream ? Probably not. Through the statements made in the 1995 by the European politician Alexander Langer during the blocking of movement of Bosnian migrants at the Ventimiglia border (between France and Italy on the Mediterranean coast), the project reveals that not much has changed after 20 years of implementation of the Schengen Agreement, when, again in 2015, African migrants have been blocked, again, at the same border. Since 1995, the European Union lacks a shared asylum and migrant-related policies and conditions, because « the Schengen Agreement remains an agreement between police forces and of police efficiency that doesn't seem the best European model » (A.Langer,1995).
Through an interdisciplinary team composed by a journalist, an anthro- pologist, an ethnoarcheologist, a photographer and a designer based in South Tyrol, Europa Dreaming repositions the actual migrant crisis on a wider timescale and, through the media coverage of some European media outlets, it reveals the complete lack of migration policies to a wider European audience. Working with an transciplinary team for one year on the topic, it has been possible to produce an historical research archive on European newspapers, a series of data visualization of the 2015 asylum seekers, and qualitative interviews of the migrants who have tried to cross the Brenner pass, in order to depict the story from different points of view. This more correctly reflects the actual complexity of phenomena, in which there are no simple solutions.
Through an interdisciplinary team composed by a journalist, an anthro- pologist, an ethnoarcheologist, a photographer and a designer based in South Tyrol, Europa Dreaming repositions the actual migrant crisis on a wider timescale and, through the media coverage of some European media outlets, it reveals the complete lack of migration policies to a wider European audience. Working with an transciplinary team for one year on the topic, it has been possible to produce an historical research archive on European newspapers, a series of data visualization of the 2015 asylum seekers, and qualitative interviews of the migrants who have tried to cross the Brenner pass, in order to depict the story from different points of view. This more correctly reflects the actual complexity of phenomena, in which there are no simple solutions.
Research Interests:
Rapid Response Collecting è una forma originale di ampliamento della collezione del Victoria and Albert Museum di Londra. Consiste nel selezionare oggetti apparentemente banali e insignificanti e nell’esporli in una sezione speciale del... more
Rapid Response Collecting è una forma originale di ampliamento della collezione del Victoria and Albert Museum di Londra. Consiste nel selezionare oggetti apparentemente banali e insignificanti e nell’esporli in una sezione speciale del museo, che è comunque parte della collezione di design contemporaneo. Lo scopo è quello di richiamare attraverso gli oggetti eventi che abbiano avuto un certo clamore mediatico internazionale nel passato prossimo. Il design espositivo è una forma di mise-en-récit dell’oggetto piuttosto neutra e informativa che attiva memorie collettive e personali. Lo spettatore è così invitato a osservare un oggetto quotidiano con sguardo straniato, come se appartenesse a una cultura non sua. Il caso di questa strategia espositiva è il punto di partenza per ragionare sullo statuto semiotico dell’oggetto esposto in un museo del design: nelle collezioni permanenti, il più delle volte, questo è esemplare tra i tanti che serve per parlare dell’innovazione tecnologica e sociale introdotta dal modello. In questo senso l’oggetto è dotato di un’identità specifica che lo lega a un particolare modello (Goodman, 1976; Prieto, 1988). In altri casi, l’oggetto, pur restando sempre esemplare prodotto in serie, mostra un legame speciale e materiale con un evento: in questo senso è “oggetto testimone”, perché, toccato dalla storia e dai suoi protagonisti, ne condensa le vicende e ne costruisce il racconto (Fontanille, 2003). L’autenticità, che ha una diversa gradazione a seconda del tipo di oggetto esaminato, diventa una strategia retorica, legata alle forme di veridizione, finalizzata a presentificare l’evento: l’oggetto infatti può essere un semplice pretesto per attivare una narrazione, restando di per sè sostituibile e senza valore, oppure può presentarsi come occorrenza unica che reca le tracce dell’evento, dotandosi così dell’aura di unicità tipica dell’opera d’arte.
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There is a utopian potential in the technique of reverse motion: through reversing the direction of a film, it is possible to invert the natural process going from order to disorder. The reverse gear runs through a revival of media and... more
There is a utopian potential in the technique of reverse motion: through reversing the direction of a film, it is possible to invert the natural process going from order to disorder. The reverse gear runs through a revival of media and icons from the past, representing in particular the prehistory of modernity.
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L’attività di esplorazione e di ricerca di William Kentridge è dedicata agli anni in cui nascevano le macchine della contemporaneità: il cinema, il telegrafo, le radiazioni. Nella sua esplorazione dei media visivi del Novecento, Kentridge... more
L’attività di esplorazione e di ricerca di William Kentridge è dedicata agli anni in cui nascevano le macchine della contemporaneità: il cinema, il telegrafo, le radiazioni. Nella sua esplorazione dei media visivi del Novecento, Kentridge si è concentrato sulla loro capacità di generare senso, così offrendo molti spunti per una riflessione teorica sui linguaggi dell’arte che si basa sulla materialità dei media usati.
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La ricerca riguarda le istituzioni legate al nome di Fortuny a Venezia e si focalizza sulle difficili strategie seguite da chi vuole innovare in aziende caratterizzate da una lunga tradizione storico-artistica.
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Biblioteca de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Base de datos de artículos de revistas, ...
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... Del indicio policial a la reliquia sagrada: el precario monumento a Wael Zuaiter de Emily Jacir. Autores: Valeria Burgio; Localización: Revista de Occidente, ISSN 0034-8635, Nº 325, 2008 , pags. 33-55. © 2001-2010 Universidad de La... more
... Del indicio policial a la reliquia sagrada: el precario monumento a Wael Zuaiter de Emily Jacir. Autores: Valeria Burgio; Localización: Revista de Occidente, ISSN 0034-8635, Nº 325, 2008 , pags. 33-55. © 2001-2010 Universidad de La Rioja · Todos los derechos reservados. ...
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... | Ayuda. Ética del polvo: conigrafía de Venecia. Autores: Valeria Burgio; Localización: Revista de Occidente, ISSN 0034-8635, Nº 340, 2009 , pags. 114-124. © 2001-2011 Universidad de La Rioja · Todos los derechos reservados. XHTML... more
... | Ayuda. Ética del polvo: conigrafía de Venecia. Autores: Valeria Burgio; Localización: Revista de Occidente, ISSN 0034-8635, Nº 340, 2009 , pags. 114-124. © 2001-2011 Universidad de La Rioja · Todos los derechos reservados. XHTML 1.0; UTF‑8.
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... Dar sentido al lugar: la función de la escultura según Richard Serra. Autores: ValeriaBurgio; Localización: Revista de Occidente, ISSN 0034-8635, Nº 360, 2011 , págs. 85-102. Fundación Dialnet. Acceso de usuarios registrados. ...
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... Publisher: Università Ca' Foscari Venezia. Issue Date: 24-mar-2006. ???metadata.dc.rights???: ©Valeria Burgio, 2006. ???metadata.dc.degree.name???: Storia dell'architettura e della città, Scienze delle arti,... more
... Publisher: Università Ca' Foscari Venezia. Issue Date: 24-mar-2006. ???metadata.dc.rights???: ©Valeria Burgio, 2006. ???metadata.dc.degree.name???: Storia dell'architettura e della città, Scienze delle arti, Restauro. ???metadata.dc.type???: Doctoral Thesis. ...
... Autores: Valeria Burgio; Localización: Revista de Occidente, ISSN 0034-8635, Nº 316, 2007 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Edward Said: el intelectual como exiliado) , pags. 38-61. © 2001-2010 Universidad de La Rioja · Todos los derechos... more
... Autores: Valeria Burgio; Localización: Revista de Occidente, ISSN 0034-8635, Nº 316, 2007 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Edward Said: el intelectual como exiliado) , pags. 38-61. © 2001-2010 Universidad de La Rioja · Todos los derechos reservados. XHTML 1.0; UTF‑8.
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Il libro indaga in chiave critica il campo dell’infografica, mostrando come i grafici informazionali, lungi dall’essere semplici trasposizioni di dati su un piano cartesiano, siano sempre forme di relazioni tra contenuti tradotte in un... more
Il libro indaga in chiave critica il campo dell’infografica, mostrando come i grafici informazionali, lungi dall’essere semplici trasposizioni di dati su un piano cartesiano, siano sempre forme di relazioni tra contenuti tradotte in un artefatto visivo.Dovendo mediare tra osservazione scientifica e divulgazione della conoscenza, le infografiche possono portare in sé tracce di incertezza e di errore, rimettendo così in discussione il processo stesso di acquisizione del dato e distanziandosi da quel presunto carattere di oggettività e trasparenza che spesso è loro attribuito.Al di là di una funzione informativa e descrittiva, i grafici esprimono punti di vista e agiscono sulla realtà, affermandosi come potenti strumenti di persuasione. Questo loro carattere performativo è emerso in modo evidente durante la pandemia da Covid-19 e permea la comunicazione visiva legata al cambiamento climatico.
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What happens to the European dream when it meets the dream of migrants? Does this Europe, raising external barriers and restoring internal borders, respond to the ideals and values with which it was founded? Is it possible to protect our... more
What happens to the European dream when it meets the dream of migrants? Does this Europe, raising external barriers and restoring internal borders, respond to the ideals and values with which it was founded? Is it possible to protect our achievements - freedom, respect of human rights and welfare - without negating them to those others who come to Europe with the dream of them? With these question in mind, in 2015, an interdisciplinary working group was set up at the Free University of Bolzano to observe from a specific vantage point - the border between Italy and Austria at Brenner - what was happening in Europe. Its aim was to point at the lack of shared migration policies and to reposition the so-called migrant-crisis on a wider timescale. The impression was that the crisis concerned more the institution of Europe itself, its values, principles, and policies than the fortuitous circumstances of protection and relocation of refugees. The results of this observatory are collected in the web-project Europa Dreaming, published online in 2016. This book widens and develops the contents of this visual journalism project and works as a retrospective reflection on the design process behind it.
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"William Kentridge" di Valeria Burgio -
postmedia books 2014 - 112 pp. 55 ill.
isbn 9788874900978
postmedia books 2014 - 112 pp. 55 ill.
isbn 9788874900978