viz.

Image Credit: Associated Press

Via Gothamist

In January’s State of the Union, President Obama called this “our generation’s Sputnik moment.” Since then, I’ve been curious about how the administration would visualize the core message of that speech, which foregrounded science, education, and innovation. Exhibit A: the Beatles-esque tableaux above, from last week’s visit to an NYC science fair.

Image Credit: Screenshot of a drawing by Katie Butler for my E314J class

Last year at about this time, Emily Bloom offered a thoughtful post in which she cautioned against privileging visual literacy at the expense of what she called “auditory literacy,” a crucial component of both analyzing and creating new media productions in the classroom. After assigning a narrated slideshow project this semester, with decidedly mixed aural results: I consider myself schooled.

Image Credit: Drew Berry/The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research

Via The New York Times

On Monday, the science writer Jonah Lehrer, author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist and How We Decide, skyped into my “Literature and Biology” classroom. During his virtual visit, Lehrer shared many smart, engaging ideas (bonus: he’s also rather comely!). However, the take-away was that innovation often comes from those on the periphery of a field, which makes for a compelling, practical reason for openness and conversation across disciplines.

Image Credit: Baba Brinkman

In the spirit of Elizabeth’s “Picturing Poetry” post from a few weeks back, I’ve assembled a few of my favorite DIY science-rap videos. These multimedia productions collectively offer an alternative model for science communication, challenging top-down popularizations by talking-head experts and giving us new images of what it means to learn about and practice science.

Image Credit: Eileen McGinnis

To follow up on this week's review of SoundSlides Plus, here is a brief demo that I made for my "Literature and Biology" students using the software.

Image Credit: Screenshot of my SoundSlides project

Thanks to Alicia Dietrich at the HRC’s Cultural Compass blog, we at viz. learned about this easy-to-use software that allows journalists to create sleek, sophisticated slideshows. But how does SoundSlides translate to the writing classroom? A mixed—but mostly enthusiastic—review after the jump.

Image Credit: Christian Behrens, "Flight & Expulsion"

On the heels of touring the Texas Advanced Computing Center’s visualization lab, I thought I’d highlight a new social-media platform for data visualization. Launched earlier this month by GE and SEED Media Group, visualizing.org is a collaborative space for visualizing complex issues like climate change, human migration, and food insecurity.

Image Credit: TACC H / T to Scott Nelson

In my very first post for viz., I marveled at Ben Fry’s visualization tool The Preservation of Favoured Traces, which helps us to visualize Darwin’s revision of Origin of Species over six editions. With a background in computer science, statistics, and graphic design, Fry had managed to approach the problem of visualizing textual history with striking economy and elegance. In my post, I wondered about the unorthodox solutions (and research questions) we might discover if we engaged in digital collaborations with designers and engineers. This question resurfaced yesterday as I toured the visualization lab at UT’s Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC).

Image Credit: Retrolicious via Bioephemera

Inspired by Elizabeth’s close reading earlier this week, I thought I’d attempt to make sense of my attraction to the digital image above, which has been adorning my desktop for the past month or so. Pictured are Japanese inventor Yasutaro Mitsui and his steel humanoid, circa 1932. Why is this duo so appealing—and arresting? A few speculations after the jump.

Image Credit: Justine Cooper

In Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums, philosopher Stephen Asma argues for natural-history museums as rhetorical spaces, with “deep ideological commitments quietly shaping and editing the sorts of things different cultures and different historical epochs consider to be knowledge.” But what can we learn from the museum’s less public spaces? In her narrated slideshow “Saved by Science,” artist Justine Cooper’s behind-the-scenes photographs evoke an eerie dreamscape at the intersection of scientific collecting and human desire.