Data, Data Everywhere, Not a Lot in Sync: Reconciling Visual Meaning with Data

This study approaches two sets of questions. Firstly, what is visual data; how is it converted into useful information; and where should we look for it? Secondly, is data causing a mismatch between mind and environment? Data has emerged as our modern zeitgeist. Up to 100 billion devices will be seeking to visually map out our existence over the internet by 2020 (UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser 2014). Information provides meaning to human and non-human data in two ways. One way is in how humans convert data into information to understand inanimate objects. But inanimate objects also convert data. Humans now also exist as inanimate constructs; as data points. Both as prey and predator. The second way is in how humans and inanimate objects are both virtual actants: humans as subconscious beings; and inanimate objects as digital constructs. These similarities highlight the allure of data to the individual and vice-versa. Meaning drives us to “discover where the real power lies” (Appleyard 1979, 146) and the power that data possesses appears to be problematic as it is perceived to increasingly blur life’s boundaries. This paper is theoretical; and empirical examples are intended only to illustrate a philosophically driven point highlighting how, to be visually sustainable, our world depends on data. It suggests that data is an unseen and unspent force struggling to meaningfully sync with our visual world. It is centred on the premise that philosophy, not technology underpins visual sustainability. Lastly, it adds to the conversation by exploring three conceptual studies around past, present, and future states of data production; and introducing three new categories: data we get from data; data produced from objects; and how objects can now be produced from data. And what this all might mean for how we are sustained by our visual world

Buildings, faces, songs of alienation: how interiority transforms the meaning out there.

This paper presents a theoretical framework that explores visual meaning in the design and use of interior space. It is comprised of three main parts. The first outlines the framework and draws on several key theories. The second introduces three very different constructs as case studies; that influence (or are a product of) spatial quality, namely: buildings, faces, and songs of alienation. The third part is a discussion about how each of these three constructs are linked to each other as well as to the idea of interiority. While architectural forms are containers of meaning, the way in which interior space is curated is driven by a deeper meaning. One that transcends form and function because people ultimately produce the meaning. And because each person is different, the conditions of interiority (in this case, the meaning that resides within each person) drives the meaning of external constructs (buildings and their interiors) that act as enclosures of meaning. The findings are that mind and body can be projected beyond the façade and into the spaces contained in the buildings we occupy. The role of technology is also important because changes in technology help mediate the process linking the meaning inside with the meaning out there

Second chance or community chest? Spatial monopoly in an urban of uncertainty vs risk

In the urban, our visual world may be compared to a game of Monopoly. In thinking about the game and what it represents both physically and as an abstraction, there is a growing sense of an emergent dialogue between an unlikely pair of constructs. Constructs that inherit substantial indefinable characteristics; and yet both, when combined, create the magic in our urban we so cherish and often take for granted. This paper explores our visual world for similarities and affordances that may be present in two of today’s less well frequented theoretical frameworks. Tacit knowing and heuristics. Heuristics, however, with a modern twist. As we hover over the Monopoly board, saturated in a fetish of light-hearted greed, how does our behaviour of extending meaning differ in the real world? This study is a theoretical exploration. It looks at conceptual relationships, rather than data scraping or solicitation of surveys and case studies, to make a point. The focus is on three main issues. Firstly, how we orient ourselves in the urban. Secondly, the role tacit knowing and heuristics play in orienting us. And lastly, the potential that orienting and heuristics hold as conceptual frameworks. The aim is to provide a lens through which a concept of visual sustainability can find traction in the discourse of modern-day sustainability. One desperately needed in today’s melee of visual uncertainty. As we continue to click and gaze our way into new levels of unsustainability

The urban boogie: a heuristic dance to transcend alienation in High Streets

In the context of visual relationships that we hold dear to our surroundings, we «need theory to direct us to significant relationships and networks» (Beauregard 2016, 00:40:00 ). We also need to understand more about the role of heuristics in our urban. This study focuses on how the transaction of an intangible service or product may be compared to how we experience the urban; that through interaction we neutralize alienation because «the things we make make us» (Berleant, 1997, p. 11). There is something to be said for how we transact and consume surrounding visual elements. An urban boogie is a dance of heuristics that transcends conditions of urban alienation. We must understand more empirically about how our urban functions; through physical and digital transactions in everyday assemblage if we are to understand the thing that we make, called a high street

The meaning in seeing: visual sustainability in the built environment

Meaning is the luggage, sustainability is the leaving. Visual sustainability is simply the process by which people are sustained and enriched in daily life through the visual relationship they hold dear to their surroundings. Aesthetics in cities is only important if visually rich, which is only important if meaningful. Visual meaning is only important if sustainable. Visual sustainability is only important if it serves human life. Morphology-based claims that 75% of the world’s population will be urbanised by 2050 are compounded by extended urbanisation theories more focused on process. We have created forests full of strange objects that stare back; surrounded by artefacts validating our existence but no longer enriching our lives. Ignoring all warnings of this creeping phenomenon the perpetuation of corruption of meaning and artistic expression continues unabated. As people wrestle with the scientification of their existence, cities increasingly symbolise compression chambers of consciousness, emotion, alienation, and isolation. This study avoids the developmental and environmental bias in modern-day sustainability; focusing instead on absence of meaning. There is more to ‘meaning in seeing’ than visual literacy or visualisation. In bridging theory with practice we must reset priorities, replacing sustainability driven by sustainability, with sustainability driven by pedagogy; through affordance properties “created to support activity” and meaning. We should look beyond a fallacy of ambiguity, towards epistemically objective science of ontologically subjective domains of knowledge. In this study, relational validity of meaning is explored through the lens of direct perception. Now is the time to make the connection that appears to be absent from urban discourse, between visual richness and sustainability; reconciling non-visual planning processes with the concept of sustainable visual meaning. We must promote the effectiveness, for the builders of our cities, of visual sustainability planning — as well as — the importance, for sustainability planners, of building visually responsive cities

Modern-day sustainability: managing the parts or looking beyond to the meaning?

This study looks at ways in which education and practice can find common ground in a concept of visual sustainability. It looks at ways of sifting out the meaning from endless flows of information, to scaffold a theoretical framework from the rhizome-like obstacle of ambiguity and uncertainty. This can be achieved by adjusting our focal length to better see our visual world, and so help better describe the conditions for growth that are so important for sustainable urban development and architectural practice. This study is divided into three parts. Firstly, a declaration of meaning; secondly, how we transact with meaning in everyday assemblages; and lastly, the concept of a spectrum of meaning. It builds on existing discourse around education and practice, with a view to understanding what makes the urban ‘tick’ (Dovey & KTH Media Production, 2017). So that we can discover what makes us ‘tick’ in the urban

Trojans of ambiguity vs resilient regeneration: visual meaning in cities

© 2020 by the author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license.This paper presents a theoretical framework that helps identify visual sustainability in urban projects and evaluates its relevance for the use, design and making of public space. It is aimed at showing how the process of urban regeneration is far more nuanced and sophisticated than much of today’s building industry allows for. The first part of the article provides an outline of this framework, by drawing from the notion of ambiguity and discussing regeneration around a concept of trojans of ambiguity: by which we simply mean that modern-day regeneration projects are often a confusion of meaning. The framework is then applied to two case studies: Heygate, and Sidewalk Labs Toronto. The Heygate regeneration produced a negative emotionally charged process and social displacement. By contrast Sidewalk Labs Toronto exemplifies a technologically clean start for regeneration, on a site with little social vitality or history. The starting points for each ultimately point to two very different outcomes. Visual sustainability represents ‘the technology before the technology’ and future research must recognise how human needs, not technology, provide the meaning into ‘how’ we may create a successful, smart, and sustainable urban environment.Peer reviewe

SDG18 Visual Sustainability: dream or reality?

Visual meaning plays such an important role in our daily lives that as an epistemological concept, visual sustainability is curiously absent from pedagogical and modern-day sustainability. Methods: A theoretical framework firstly unpacks how and why we ‘latch on’ to visual elements. Secondly, the construct of a high street is used to help understand more about visual meaning as urban phenomenon in the context of modern-day sustainability. Results: Simulation techniques, used in conjunction with other methods, can be a useful tool in experimenting with the complex relationship between visual affordance and physical use. Conclusion: Visual sustainability is closely aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDGs 3 and 11. But it does more. It orients us at both ends of life’s spectrum: in basic physiological needs, as well as in self-actualisation

Visual creases in urban topology: high streets as visual markers of our social

As continuously connected surfaces making up “80% of the unbuilt area” in our urban (UN-Habitat & Clos, 2013), streets are self-regulating urban devices for funnelling vehicles. High streets however are artefacts along this predominantly hostile network, that articulate temporal moments of sustainable meaning. In this study our relationship with urban meaning is considered through the analogy between high street and a concept of visual creasing in the landscape. It is a metaphorical representation highlighting how dynamic access points into the social exist at our intersection with high streets. High streets act as change agents of behaviour. They facilitate urban mobility of our senses, beyond the inhospitable agglomeration of autopoietic function. The paper engages philosophically with displaced space, mixed use, visual meaning, and conditions of alienation by referencing previously documented case studies; while simultaneously constructing a case study of its own. The conclusion reached is that there is a sense of visual sustainability evident in the persistence of meaning defined by the social armature that is the high street. The concept of visual creases as visual markers of social territories is an important consideration around future research into functioning aspects of high streets, including but not limited to viability, durability, and maintenance

Visually dissecting sustainability

It has been said that: Architecture is an act of conscious willpower. To create architecture is to put in order. Put what in order? Functions and objects (Le Corbusier, 1991, p.68). This is of course true. But what does this order produce? Well, it might be said that in the final act architecture produces nothing. Except what it asks from us. And what we produce in answer can be conceived to be the very essence of sustainability. The production of meaning then is arguably first conceived in our minds, by mixing architecture with sustainability