Drawing as information mapping and data visualisation

An old out of date image of the Internet

To go with the image above here is some data: The image above is of a partial map of the Internet based on the January 15, 2005 data found on opte.org. Each line is drawn between two nodes, representing two IP addresses. The length of the lines are indicative of the delay between those two nodes. This graph represents less than 30% of the Class C networks reachable by the data collection program in early 2005. Lines are color-coded according to their corresponding RFC 1918 allocation as follows: Dark blue: net, ca, us Green: com, org Red: mil, gov, edu Yellow: jp, cn, tw, au, de Magenta: uk, it, pl, fr Gold: br, kr, nl White: unknown. 
Notice how quickly we find ourselves having to research around the information just to get a basic handle on what is going on. For instance if I want to find out what is the RFC 1918 allocation? This is the answer:

Request for Comment 1918 (RFC 1918), “Address Allocation for Private Internets,” is the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) memorandum on methods of assigning of private IP addresses on TCP/IP networks. Along with NAT (network address tunneling), RFC 1918 facilitates expansion of the usable number of IP addresses available under IPV4, as a stopgap solution to prevent the exhaustion of public IPs available before the adoption of IPV6. It’s not necessary to register private IPs with a Regional Internet Registry (RIR), which simplifies setting up private networks. RFC 1918 was used to create the standards by which networking equipment assigns IP addresses in a private network. A private network can use a single public IP address. The RFC reserves the following ranges of IP addresses that cannot be routed on the Internet:

• 10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255 (10/8 prefix)
• 172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255 (172.16/12 prefix)
• 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255 (192.168/16 prefix)

IP addresses within these ranges can be assigned within a private network; each address will be unique on that network but not outside of it. Private IP addresses can't be communicated with directly by external computers because they are not globally unique and, as such, not addressable on the public Internet.
Computers on the inside of the network can communicate with the Internet through NAT. NAT translates an IP address used within one network to a different IP address known within another network. Typically, a company maps its local inside network addresses to one or more global outside IP addresses and unmaps the global IP addresses on incoming packets back into local IP addresses.

From: https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/RFC-1918 

Each element of the explanation has another area of information attached or linked to it, so that if I wanted to I could mine more and more information and have more and more data available to me. But in doing this do I actually 'know' anything more?

The image that accompanies the text is a now archaic map of only part of what was then the Internet. But it was already so complex that it began to resemble the way both a brain is interconnected and the way that a fungal network can connect a forest into its soil system.  

How a fungal network works.

As complexity increases there are underlying mathematical laws that will direct the maximum number of connections possible within a given possible space. This means that certain forms will become apparent when certain types of processes are in evidence. Data mapping is central to our ideas of connectivity and the forms that data mapping take are reflections of how we organise information. Timothy Morton calls these huge complex things when they get too big to hold in the head, 'hyper-objects' and reminds us that even though these things are too big to understand we can grasp certain bits of them as they open out into our small area of action, so do not despair, there will always be things we can act upon.

How interesting that these forms are often similar to an animal's central nervous system. The body is again a reference point and we are reminded that whether we are looking at how brain synapses communicate or how the Internet develops complexity, there will be an underlying mathematical beauty. 

The way that data quickly makes things appear as if they are lost in a network of connections was something Mark Lombardi found fascinating and he was excited by the challenge of how to reveal what lay behind the complexity.

Mark Lombardi, Bill Clinton, The Lippo Group, and Jackson Stephens of Little Rock, Arkansas (5th Version), 1999 (found at artcritical.com)

Mark Lombardi highlighted the way that data could be both informative and aesthetically beautiful. Lombardi, who died in 2000, researched and then diagrammed the interrelationships that he found existed between those murky international agents and financial institutions that we sort of know are somehow linked up, but have never had the time or energy to find out for ourselves. His drawings trace out the complex paths of shadowy deals and transactions between the world’s power brokers. Part-data visualisation/part-investigative reporting, Lombardi’s practice illuminated the networks that often lie hidden but which facilitate the operation of complex aspects of human society. Just as mycorrhizal fungal networks are necessary for the facilitation of natural ecosystems, certain types of financial game players are necessary for the construction of Capitalist systems. By looking at Lombardi's drawings as if they are 'not just human' i.e. a result of a particular set of interactions, you can read them as an aspect of the material semiotic, and question notions of intentionality. So instead of worrying about global conspiracy theories, you could read his drawings as complex networks of human and nonhuman agents. (This way of thinking about his work allows us to link his work to the theories of people like Karen Barad and other object orientated ontological theorists) As Meredith Kooi states; 'Barad writes in Meeting the Universe Halfway that “the very nature of intentionality needs to be rethought” because “intentions are not pre-existing determinate mental states of individual human beings”. Rather, we need to see that “intentionality might better be understood as attributable to a complex network of human and nonhuman agents”.  See Kooi's full article here.

Click on image to enlarge

Lombardi's diagrams rarely if ever include non human actants. They reflect the fact that as Timothy Morton puts it, "Quite a long time ago humans severed their social, philosophical and psychic ties with non-humans." (Being Ecological, p.67) 

Above and below ground

Similar to the diagram immediately above, Lombardi's work reveals what we suspect must be there but that we don't really 'see'. We are ourselves interconnected in very complex ways, but our place within everything else is exponentially more complexly interconnected. 

 

Much of Lombardi’s practice was research-based, with the information he sourced written down on index cards. There is an overlap therefore between work of this sort and artwork that is focused on documentation. The frayed edges between different disciplines and approaches to art making perhaps being where the real 'friction' and 'heat' is being generated by contemporary artists. 

As an artist that uses narrative I also like the fact that Lombardi’s drawings are “narrative structures” each network drawn conveying a story. The gallerist Deven Golden had this to say about how Lombardi got started:

[He was] talking to a friend of his, a lawyer, in California. Mark was telling him about a couple of banks that had closed in Texas, and the lawyer said, “Yeah, and because of that, these Savings and Loans closed in California.” And his friend proceeded to tell him how a series of byzantine corporate connections tied the various financial institutions together. It was very convoluted, and so Mark made some notes—he obviously was predisposed to thinking about this sort of thing. As Mark told it to me, it was kind of like how some artists . . . do the New York Times crossword puzzle in their studios to help them clear their minds. Anyway, every couple of days, after going over his notes and diagrams, he would call his friend back and ask him more questions, which would lead him to make more diagrams. Then, one day, after what I understood to be a couple of months of working on these diagrams to “relax,” Mark had this “aha!” moment . . . The diagrams were more visually interesting than his paintings. And, perhaps just as importantly, they pulled together everything Mark was interested in—drawing, social/commercial interactions and their hierarchies, and politics—into a single pursuit.

I really liked this quote, because it reaffirmed for myself how many things begin simply by having a chance conversation with someone. The difference of course is that Lombardi was both prepared to put time into making the initial diagrams and had enough experience to recognise that what he was doing was more interesting than the paintings he was making.

Click on image to enlarge

Lombardi developed his work in a time before computer generated imagery became the norm. We now have a heightened awareness of how data is mined and shaped in order to manipulate us. I have suggested a few times above that the complexity that really exists lies far beyond how humans interact with each other but how to demonstrate this in the form of made objects is much harder. I will therefore end this post with looking at one example of building complexity from a very simple starting point and ask you to think about the implications of using this type of approach to visualising your own research.

Michael Hansmeyer

Architect and programmer Michael Hansmeyer has made beautiful complex columns that can be laser cut from stacked cardboard sheets. Although this project is now several years old, (it was from back in 2011), the implications of making forms based on growing complexity in a similar way are still relevant. His project was centred on the conception and visualisation of a new architectural column order based on subdivision processes. What interested me was first of all his choice of a column. The column is central to the architectural imagination and identifying types of columns were one of the ways that you could identify the ages of buildings.

Classical column types

However the first columns would have been trees cut down to make buildings and their memory is still engrained in the forms taken by the stone carvings. This interrelationship between biology and architecture being at one time something that would have been vital and now I believe being something that we need to revisit if we are to remind ourselves how interconnected we are with everything. 

The backbone column

Our backbone allows us to stand and takes huge strains in doing so. It has evolved over millions of years and in its own internal structure reveals how complexity can evolve out of simple divisions. 

Internal structure of bone

Hansmeyer's work creates images that both work as columns and work as triggers for our imaginations, reminding us of how we are like columns too, as well as showing how complexity can be arrived at simply by creating subdivisions. 

An abstracted doric column was used as the input form (data) to the subdivision processes.  Data about the proportions of the the column’s shaft, capital, base fluting and entasis was entered into a computer program. The input forms were tagged to allow the subdivision process to distinguish between individual components. This allowed a diversity to be developed but certain factors such as overall proportions and sizes were kept to ensure an overall coherency and continuity. The ornament developed by controlled subdivision is in a continuous flow, yet it consists of very distinct local formations. The complexity of each column contrasting with the simplicity of the subdivision generative process.

Cutting the layers from cardboard sheets

Each subdivision takes place within a two-dimensional plane which gives a constantly changing drawn cross-section of the evolving column and like a 3D print, as each section is made it can be added to the next in order to create a column. 

2D sections of an evolving column

Once the process begins it reveals the organic nature of branching complexity based on sub-dividing column dimensions, something that we can intuitively understand as being akin to how natural evolution might work. 

Computer visualisations of column possibilities

Finally we have a series of structures not unlike the imaginative organic structures envisioned by Gaudi. 

Gaudi: Sagrada Familia 

Stuttgart airport

The principle of subdivision and the idea of the tree as a column and support structure is seen here again in the biomimicry of the internal construction of Stuttgart airport. 

I'm ending up in a territory between design and fine art and once more I would like to make an appeal for the removal of sharp divisions between disciplines, divisions that I feel strongly are artificial and lead to confusion and the compartmentalisation of experience. If we are to ever repair the severed social, philosophical and psychic ties with non-humans, perhaps we ought to begin with repairing the severed connections between art and design and begin the process of healing the old art and science divide. 

References:

Barad, K (2007) Meeting the universe half-way New York: Duke Press
Morton, T (2018) Being Ecological London: Pelican
Morton, T (2013) Hyperobjects London: University of Minnesota Press


Patricia Goldstone's book Interlock: Art, Conspiracy, and the Shadow Worlds of Mark Lombardi is well worth reading and gives an excellent overview of the implications for work of this sort. 

The rise of the data artist

Data and translation: I have posted on the idea of translation before as well as how musical notation can be visualised. Nathalie Miebach translates weather data into complex sculptures and musical scores and is an interesting artist to explore if you want to look at how information can be a joyful and life affirmative thing.

Information is Beautiful a website devoted to how data can be visualised. 

Michael Hansmeyer talk

See also:

More thoughts on Michael Hansmeyer 

Computer animation

AI

Drawing as data visualisation

Computer generated art and coding

Large scale detailed images

Sometimes as an artist you want to get across a vast amount of detail. Perhaps you need to reflect the complexity of a situation or simply engage your audience with a type of 'Where's Wally?' mass of details. Martin Handford's 'Where's Wally? books for children rely on their success by tapping into our interest in seeking out clues from masses of detail, something that probably goes back to our need in pre-historic times to seek clues of danger or animal presence within dense forests or other difficult terrains. 

Martin Handford: Where's Wally?

In the British Museum print department there is a huge woodcut print made by Durer in 1515, of a Triumphal Arch glorifying the house of Habsburg and emperor Maximilian's military achievements. It was printed from 195 wooden blocks on 36 separate sheets of paper. The ambition and energy that must have gone into making a print of this size is staggering, as as someone who has done a lot of printmaking, I'm very aware of the complexities of organisation this must have involved. What it does do however is demonstrate that sometimes as an artist you need to tackle complexity head on and make something that has the same rich texture as the subject it is trying to deal with. The deeply embedded need we have to study detail now comes into its own and an image of this complexity, added to its subject matter, can be studied with great pleasure and intense involvement for hours at a time. This type of image stands at a far distance from a current age of fast read technology, but I do believe that we still have a need for these types of experiences, hence my reference to Martin Handford's work. Sometimes the pleasures of childhood experiences can be dismissed as unworthy when we get older, but it could be argued that as we get more 'sophisticated' we can actually lose touch with our basic instincts and one of the roles an artist can have, is to remind us of our own natures. 

Durer: Triumphal arch.

Adam Dant is a Jerwood Prize winning British artist. His work deals with the fact that he now lives in London and he seeks to reflect his concerns with living in this teaming metropolis, that has a very well known history. He obviously looks back to artists such as Hogarth for inspiration and has produced a body of work that sits on the edge between illustration and fine art. This is fine by me, but I also realise that many people will bring up the old illustration/fine art argument and argue that his work is by definition weak because of being too close to illustration. I have had to deal with this issue over and over again, because like Dant my work is figurative and deals with stories that arrive directly from my experiences of living in Leeds. I might have an argument with the way he visualises space, (I think he is at times too predictable, perhaps because he has to produce a much higher volume of work than myself and I also have this difficultly with Paul Noble's drawings), but he has ideas about the world and is trying to communicate them using visual means. His language is one of detailed pen and ink drawing and I would argue that this is just as important a language as the 'hard won' image charcoal drawings of the Borough Polytechnic School or the various systematic grid based languages of abstract modernism. 

Adam Dant

Dant looks back to a long tradition of English drawing which includes Rowlandson and Hogarth and when interviewed he always cites Peter Bruegel as the artist that he most admires. However of all the images in the Tate Gallery's collection I suspect it is George Cruikshank's 'The Worship of Bacchus' that lies closest in effect to Dant's work. 

Cruikshank's 'The Worship of Bacchus'

Cruikshank's painting is huge and like Durer's 'Triumphal arch' very difficult to read as an on screen image. Which brings me to an issue that I have had to grapple with myself. If you do make work of this sort it is almost impossible to represent it on a computer or mobile phone screen. This link is my own attempt to solve the problem and is of a recent drawing of mine that will be shown soon at the the Royal Cambrian Academy in Conwy, in 'Imagined Landscapes' an exhibition selected by the artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins. Because most people will see my work on a computer screen I also make work that is about the 'centralised image' and this type of work is so much easier to grasp on screen. (See below)

Eye of the Hayfield

An artist much more in tune with the relationship between the small screen and monumental image making is Emma Stibbon. She is exhibiting at the moment in an excellent printmaking show at the The Zillah Bell Art Gallery in Thirsk, North Yorkshire.

Night Navigation - Intaglio print by Emma Stibbon

The Original Print Show is curated by Norman Ackroyd and is on until until the 14th October. Stibbon often works at a monumental scale, (see earlier post) but instead of trying to put in masses of details and lots of events into her images, carefully selects compositions that will make an impact. I would suggest her way of working is much more appropriate to an age of mobile phones, because the images transfer to screen much easier. However like Martin Handford I still believe there is room for artists that work with masses of surface detail. It might be deeply unfashionable and not mobile friendly, but when an audience is confronted with the reality of the scale and the fact they have to work hard to see all the details, it becomes an experience and in being that, I think an image can be all the more memorable.

Ensor: The entry of Christ into Brussels 1889

This is an old idea and one often disparaged by the Modernists, who saw in these issues the worst aspects of narrative art. However all ideas are meant to be tested and certain aspects of the Modernist canon do not seem to stack up any more. The one thing I think working as a artist for nearly 50 years has taught me is that fashions change and that what was once argued as being the only way forwards, will at some point be seen as a backwards step. I will leave you with two images, Ensor's 'The entry of Christ into Brussels', an image that in many ways ought to be wrong and perhaps given the time when it was painted a backward step. But it in many ways opened the door to Expressionism and is still a painting that people will sit and look at for a long time.

Ensor: The entry of Christ into Brussels 1889

The other image is of Stanley Spenser's painting in the Sandham Memorial Chapel. Again an artist that it could be argued took no account of what was going on in the then current art world, but if you go to look at his paintings they have an ambition and authenticity that transcends fashion and when you visit them in situ, they become experiential and deeply communicative. 

Stanley Spencer: Sandham Memorial Chapel

The current exhibition of Raqib Shaw at the Whitworth in Manchester celebrates this type of approach to making images and if you are at all interested in the type of work pointed to in this post, do go along and have a look.  

Gary Lawrence won this year's Jerwood drawing prize again with another of his very detailed images. 

Gary Lawrence 

The British Museum have commissioned a film about the conservation of Durer's huge Triumphal Arch Print. 

Manabu Ikeda is another artist that has taken on long durational drawing commissions. His 'Rebirth', a 13 x 10 foot very detailed drawing responding to Japan's recovery from earthquake disaster being typical of his work. 

Manabu Ikeda

See also:

The narrative drawing tradition