Response to the Readings

LANGUAGE TO BE LOOKED AT AND/OR THINGS TO BE READ

Robert Smithson's essay details the way that written language is made up of indicators of things other than what they are, which is words. Placed in different contexts, words take on different meanings and interpretations to different people. In most cases we're not reading words, but rather recognizing them and associating them with the object which they represent to us. For example, we see the word "cat" and chances are that we think of the animal. But if someone who doesn't read or understand English, seeing the word "cat" brings up no association with a cat. The letters used in a word can also change the meaning of that word depending on how they are used. Letterscale, boldfaces, and italics can all give the same word multiple meanings.

THE GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS

This story is relevant to the subject of interactive design today in that it explores the subject of choices being made and the subsequent results of those decisions, much in the same way that clicking one of multiple links on any given webpage will take you to a destination that the others, in most cases, will not. At the end of the story, the character of Albert discusses a dizzying net of divergent, convergent, and parallel times - a description which is easily linked to the capabilities and function of the internet. He speaks of multiple simultaneous realities in which people play different roles in different dimensions, much in the same way that the innumerable number of sites on the web exist simultaneously linked together in some way or another and are in a constant state of dynamic change.

AESTHETICS AND TECHNIQUE IN DATA GRAPHICAL DESIGN

Unlike the other two readings, this piece is more of a "how to" in terms of communicating data properly and in ways to convey that information to a reader in the easiest manner. It covers methods of sorting out information and staging it in such a way that it can be conveniently navigated and interpreted. It gives direction in terms of how words and images should coexist in information design, proper methods for organizing tables and charts of data, and how to handle the shapes and lines incorporated into a given piece.