A lecture and lab course to explore the aesthetic organization of information. Lectures and readings will focus on a range of conceptual models of data visual mapping as implemented in various disciplines, artistic, statistical and scientific, that are used to represent information visually.

Topics will include: Metadata, systems of classification, algorithmic models, time based linear animation, visual narrative, self-organizing and other mapping and visualization algorithms. Technical lab demonstrations will focus on SQL, PHP, and the Kohonen mapping algorithm. Students will come to the course with the intent to explore and produce visualizations based on data sets of their choice.

Readings will include excerpts from:
“Else/Where: Mapping New cartographies of Networks and Territories”, Abrams/Hall
“Information Visualization”, Robert Spence, ACM Press
“Information Visualization: Perception for Design”, Colin Ware, Morgan Kaufmann
“Aesthetic Computing”, Fishwick, MIT Press
“The Visual Display of Quantitative Information”, Edward Tufte