"A visualization or map goes beyond being an object that represents data - it also works to aggregate, simplify and distil. It is a tool that performs a function that helps us think through data. It is not passive, but actively engages our cognition. In this sense, visualizations have a given agency - they can affect how we perceive the world." (Peter A Hall & Patricio Dávila, "Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data", 2022)
"Aesthetics plays an important part in the process of visualization. One dimension of aesthetics is in terms of beauty, elegance and desirability. These are important attributes for the rhetorical function of visualization." (Peter A Hall & Patricio Dávila, "Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data", 2022)
"As designers working in visualization, we often take data for granted. The visualization of data creates powerful representations of measurements and categories which themselves were created much earlier in the process and often in a context different from that of the designer. While this may mean that how the data is created is outside of the control of the designer, we are still responsible for using this data and reiterating and amplifying its status as a factual representation of reality. For this reason, as critical designers of visualizations, we need to pay attention to the conditions of production of these important components of our projects." (Peter A Hall & Patricio Dávila, "Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data", 2022)
"Cartographers employed a minimalist visual language and the simplicity of lines and geometry to lend an air of objectivity, universality and clarity. The sparse treatment of visuals suggests a more direct correspondence between the data and the representation, and less human involvement. It communicates that the image has been reduced to its bare minimum. It has been polished through successive passes to remove the unnecessary and the contingent. And in doing so, it indicates something essential and closer to a transcendent type, or perhaps an ideal." (Peter A Hall & Patricio Dávila, "Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data", 2022)
"Data is a term that conjures ideas of a resource to be exploited or a material to be manipulated." (Peter A Hall & Patricio Dávila, "Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data", 2022)
"Data generation is part of knowledge production. It is the generation of material that can help frame a debate or dispel a myth. As designers of visualizations, we choose what data and which stories are amplified through our work. As critical visualization designers, we assume a responsibility for producing those stories and for the ways they were produced." (Peter A Hall & Patricio Dávila, "Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data", 2022)
"Data visualizations also gain power through how they juxtapose different data sets to draw out a relationship between different phenomena." (Peter A Hall & Patricio Dávila, "Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data", 2022)
"Every time we decide to use a particular data set in a project, we vouch forits accuracy and precision - we help reproduce its authority. One might ask why is it problematic to reproduce this authority if the data is not false, but instead accurate and precise? Part of the problem lies in the unintentional affirmation we as designers may perform. We affirm the validity of the data and prioritize this data and the reading of this data over other data. Despite our best efforts, what we do is never truly neutral, nor purely objective." (Peter A Hall & Patricio Dávila, "Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data", 2022)
"Representing data in visual form is a powerful rhetorical device precisely because it can collapse a complex array of data into a single strong and persuasive image. Visualizations, especially those that give a strong shape to the data, tend to have the effect of erasing the work that led to the making of the visualization." (Peter A Hall & Patricio Dávila, "Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data", 2022)
"The hubris around data is propelled by technological advances in storage and networked devices, as well as the increase in online social life and the corporate strategies to track all transactions. With this enthusiasm for the potential of data to increase profits, there is also an enthusiasm to use data to inform decisions in business, government, research, etc. Visualization, along with other strategies, is used to aid in the analysis, or to represent the analysis, of important data." (Peter A Hall & Patricio Dávila, "Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data", 2022)
"The narrative in the map offers a linear, spatial and rhizomatic organization. Readers can follow a temporal structure by following the sequence of numbers and dates, but they can also go to parts of the map that are most relevant to their own interests. Ultimately, the reader can follow a variety of narrative paths that at times follow linear time, contours of the land and water, or intensity of information." (Peter A Hall & Patricio Dávila, "Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data", 2022)
"[...] the production of data is an important aspect of critical practice precisely because of the lack of attention normally accorded to it by designers. What is made invisible, in this case, the production of data, is often one of the most important aspects for a critical thinker to focus on. What becomes standardized, routine and efficient has become naturalized, and therefore unquestioned. But it is there, in the unquestioned areas, that so many ideologically, politically, culturally framed decisions have been made." (Peter A Hall & Patricio Dávila, "Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data", 2022)
"The production of scientific data is often challenged on the basis of methodology - that is, on the procedures and protocols used to assure the validity of basic research." (Peter A Hall & Patricio Dávila, "Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data", 2022)
"Visualization performs a paradoxical role of making visible selected aspects of data drawn from our reality, while simultaneously making invisible the way the data was produced. How this dual role of giving voice and silencing is ethically carried out is part of the mandate of a critical visualization practitioner. In addition, the designer translates the data into a visual treatment that makes shapes in the data easier to see and imbues specific connotations." (Peter A Hall & Patricio Dávila, "Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data", 2022)
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