Thursday, January 21, 2010

Re: [Yasmin_discussions] Around Simulation-simulation and visualization

Yes, simulation has a lot of sub-topics, related to many fields. Thank you Roberta for pinpointing the relevance of social (cultural, political, historical...) issues of the simulation, and in particular on visualization. Some days ago I was in Lucerne and in the Planetary I enjoyed the beautiful David McConville's presentation - we could say - of the history of cosmology. All the information - from the medieval and renaissance drawings to the representations of the outer space in false colors - were models built visualizing and summarizing huge amounts of ideas and data (here some images: http://fulldome.ning.com/photo ).

Representations and visualizations aren interpretations, and as any other interpretations are tied to a perspective (cultural, scientiific, political, historical...) as well as to a technique (and to its limits). They are not the truth. But, yes, as you write, it is fascinating see how "making the invisible visible" it works :-)

Pier Luigi


Il giorno 21/gen/2010, alle ore 05.09, r buiani ha scritto:

> hi all,
>
> for this discussion, I am very fascinated by a number of sub-topics. I decided to list them into two categories (for the moment) to get us started. I am introducing them very briefly in 2 separate postings. let's see how much interest there is to discuss them.
>
> the first is simulation in relation to visualization (both scientific and information)
>
> the second is simulation and everyday life (see my following posting)
>
>
>
> I have become interested in the issue of simulation in the context of the processes involved in visualization, a practice fairly popular today. In particular, I am fascinated by scientific and information visualization of the "microscopic" (visualization of viruses or the cerebral cortex) and the "abstract" (visualization of digital networks, social relationships, or the unfolding of computer viruses). We have no clue regarding the appearance of these "substances," as we can't "see" them in "nature" (ie. Through the immediacy of the human eye), unless from invisible and formless, these substances are turned into visually readable objects (and thus, immediately perceivable). The resulting objects that we admire on scientific journals or on pop science magazines are the product of a sum of concatenated simulations involving various technological and methodological processes. During the process of "making the invisible visible," microscopes, data mining and other technological filtering are added to our cultural perception of what these substances are, to our scientific and visual conventions and rules and to what we, as consumers and producers of images imagine these substances. All these aspects, intertwined, make these substances, and the images that illustrate them, simulations of simulations.
>
> roberta buiani
>
>
>
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--
Pier Luigi Capucci
e-mail: plc@noemalab.org
web: http://www.noemalab.org/plc/plc.html
skype: plcapucci

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