Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data

by Peter Hall; Patricio Dávila

Publisher:

Bloomsbury Visual Arts

, 2022

Overview

Information may be beautiful, but our decisions about the data we choose to represent and how we represent it are never neutral. This insightful history traces how data visualization accompanied modern technologies of war, colonialism and the management of social issues of poverty, health and crime. The discussion is based around examples of visualization, from the ancient Andean information technology of the quipu to contemporary projects that show the fate of our rubbish and take a participatory approach to visualizing cities. This analysis places visualization in its theoretical and cultural contexts, and provides a critical framework for understanding the history of information design with new directions for contemporary practice.

Key Features

A new book by Peter Hall, author of high-profile monographs on the cult art directors Tibor Kalman and Stefan Sagmeister.
The historical and critical discussion is focused around 50 visual examples from the 18th century to the present day.
Data visualisation is a hot topic, and this book takes a fresh approach, pointing out that information design is never a neutral practice.
Illustrated in full colour throughout

Contents

1. An Introduction to Critical Visualization
Defining the field
Looking at Visualization beyond Western Paradigms
Alternative Western perspectives: Distributed Cognition and Humanistic Approaches
2. Disruptive Histories
Positivism and Objectivity
A History of Progress
Critical Cartography: a ’Defining Moment’
A Few Examples: Not a Canon
- Haptic Visualization: the Quipu (1200-1532)
- Plan and Sections of a Slave Ship (1789)
- Polar Area Diagram (1859)
- Great Trigonometrical Survey of India (1802-1875)
- Data Visualization at the Paris Exposition, W.E.B. Du Bois (1900)
- Community-building with Isotype: Otto and Marie Neurath
Conclusion
Focus: Anna Ridler, Myriad (Tulips) 2018
3. Making Data
Qualitative and Quantitative Data
The Role of Categorization
Focus: Data4Change
- Keepiton
- Hear the Blind Spot
- Perceiving Yemen
4. Data and the Self
Taylorism Within?
Comic Critique
What is Normal?
Biometrics and Risk-Profiling
Challenging Norms
The Examined Life
Focus: Margaret Pearce and Michael Hermann, They Would Not Take Me There: People, Places, and Stories from Champlain’s Travels in Canada, 1603-1616
5. Data and the City
Participatory planning: HECTOR
Focus: Heath Bunting: Status Project
6. Aesthetics and Representation
Aesthetics and Representation
Representation as Translation
7. Beyond Critical Visualization Practice

Praise for Critical Visualization

Debunking the idea that data is ever ‘raw’ or unbiased, this book brings information anxiety to a new level as it goes deep into the underlying power structures at play in the assemblage of data and the motivations of those who amass it. Hall and Dávila explain how design’s focus on clarity and statistical accuracy can serve to enhance dominant narratives inherent in the data and challenge designers to activate their agency to visualize the kind of world in which we want to live. This should be required reading in any data visualization or information design curriculum.

Hall and Dávila make a compelling argument for a critical approach to data visualization. Through a comprehensive survey of extant literature, a rereading of canonical images through decolonizing frameworks, and discussion of highly topical debates, they arrive at a rich examination of current projects drawn from a wide array of activities. They address self-quantification, smart cities, emotional cartography, and a whole host of specific and activist interventions in conventional data practices. Ultimately, they argue for visualizations that might create alternatives to dominant conventions and the oppressive power asymmetries of the status quo.

With acuity and depth, Hall and Dávila demonstrate just how much history, culture and context matter for the design and interpretation of data visualization. Their book is timely and important, and will usher in a new era of critical data practice.

Product Details

• Title: Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data
• Authors: Peter Hall, Patricio Dávila
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
• Print Publication Date: 2022
• Logos Release Date: 2024
• Pages: 256
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9781350077256, 9781350077249, 1350077240, 1350077259
• Resource ID: LLS:9781350077256
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T12:06:59Z

About the Authors

Peter A. Hall is Reader in Graphic Design at CCW, University of the Arts London, UK. His publications include Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data, co-authored with Patricio Dávila (Bloomsbury, 2022), Sagmeister: Made You Look (2009), Else/Where: Mapping - New Cartographies of Networks and Territories, co-edited with Janet Abrams (2005) and Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist (2002).

Patricio Dávila is a designer, artist, researcher and educator. He is Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Arts in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design at York University, Canada. He is the editor of Diagrams of Power (2019) based on the international exhibition he curated on critical practice in mapping, and co-author, with Peter A. Hall, of Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data (Bloomsbury, 2022).