Resisting Visualizations. A cross-species and cross-field comparative exploration – Part 2

• In Event: Platform Practices and Predictive Seeing 2

Abstract

What does resisting visualization mean and what does it tell us about the meanings of visualizations? Over the past few years, we have embarked in a cross-species and cross-field exploration of visual practices. We have focused on bird-watching and on digital surveillance, where humans, data and animals become the object of visualization. As a step in our journey, our attention is now on resistances to visualization, be it on the part of the potential object of visualization or (here in part 2) on the part of the might-otherwise-be visualizer. Given humans’ tendency to rely on and to produce visual representations, and given the key positions of visualizations in both surveillance and bird-watching, why and how do those active in these fields sometimes resist producing visualizations? From the point of view of those visualized, why and how do those targeted for visualization (sometimes successfully) resist being visualized? Working from a set of examples, we attempt to categorize motivations and techniques of resistance, and to draw implications of these for theories of surveillance and of digital media.

Authors

• Ann Rudinow Saetnan, NTNU

• Rocco Bellanova, University of Amsterdam