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TechArt: Journal of Arts and Imaging Science, Vol. 1, No. 2, May 2014
Data Iconology
Hyoyoung Kim and Jin Wan Park*
GSAIM, Chung-Ang University/Seoul, Rep. of Korea
*Corresponding Author ([email protected])
Abstract: Today, data can be used as materials for creating artworks and stimulating creativity. Data visualization
results can assume diverse forms, from simple charts showing numbers and information to artistic visualizations
created by artists. Data visualization aims to grasp hidden trends in data, discover patterns in data, and gain
insights that enable new storytelling. Thus, data visualization creates effective results by visually expressing large
volumes of abstract data rather than creating beautiful visual expression elements. In this regard, all scientists
and artists who want to better understand data should study data iconology.
Keywords: Data visualization, information visualization, and visualization
Received Apr. 21, 2014; revised manuscript received Jun. 10, 2014; accepted for publication Jun. 11, 2014; published online
Jun. 30, 2014; DOI: 10.15323/techart.2014.05.1.2.1 / ISSN: 2288-9248.
by focusing on their images. The ultimate goal of
iconography is to discover the comprehensive content of
1. Introduction
artwork from different perspectives and determine the
underlying meaning of an artwork using different
There are two possible approaches to analyzing artworks.
interpretations and analyses. To determine the most
One is to analyze style, and the other is to analyze meaning
desirable direction for data visualization, this paper applies
and content. Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968) defined
iconography to data visualization since both focus on
iconology as not the structure of forms and styles but that of
different ways of viewing and interpreting artworks.
subject matter [1].
Traditionally, artwork reflected the everyday routines
and conventions of the time it was created. In the era of “big
data,” when everything is data, one can find almost
2. Iconology in Visual Art
unlimited data on the Internet. Today, data can be used as
Iconography is the branch of art history that studies the
materials for creating artwork and stimulating creativity.
identification, description, and interpretation of the content
Therefore, data visualization results assume diverse forms,
of images—the subjects depicted, the compositions and
from simple charts showing numbers and information to
details used to do so, and other elements that are distinct
artistic work created by artists. In this sense, it is quite
from artistic style. In art history, “an iconography” may also
difficult for the general public to tell the difference between
mean a particular depiction of a subject in terms of the
data visualization and “information visualization” or
content of the image, such as the number of figures used and
“infographics.”
their placement and gestures.
It is the “form” and “content” that distinguish data
In early twentieth-century Germany, Aby Warburg
visualization from information visualization or infographics.
(1866-1929) and his followers Fritz Saxl (1890-1948) and
Regarding information visualization and infographics, the
Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968) elaborated the practice of
main goal of visual expression is to show the information
identifying and classifying motifs in images for the purpose
clearly and precisely. It is not important whether they are
of using iconography to understand meaning [2]. Panofsky
visualizing information or data; the most important thing is
codified an influential approach to iconography in Studies
to deliver the content in intuitive and effective ways.
in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the
Naturally, the representation format of visual expression is
Renaissance (1962), where he defined it as “the branch of
a major factor. In other words, the visualization process
the history of art which concerns itself with the subject
should be reasonably designed from a formalist standpoint.
matter or meaning of works of art, as opposed to form” [1].
On the other hand, data visualization aims to grasp hidden
For Panofsky, the study of art objects and images can be
trends in data, discover certain patterns in data, and gain
systematized into three levels.
insights that enable new storytelling. Thus, data
The first involves simple identification through
visualization creates effective visualization results by
familiarity. Looking at a painting of a historic battle scene,
visually expressing large volumes of abstract data rather
for example, we can only identify weapons with which we
than producing beautiful visual expression elements.
are familiar, such as crossbows, although we can readily
Iconography is an approach based on the various possible
understand the expressions of pain and anguish on the faces
avenues for analyzing visual artwork. As a methodology,
of wounded soldiers. Panofsky explained such divisions as
iconography aims to understand different styles in different
factual and expressional. Factual and expressional
formats and interpret the subjects and meanings of artworks
H. Kim et al.: Data Iconology
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apprehension will vary greatly depending on experience.
Obviously, an expert on ancient weaponry will identify a
great variety of motifs, just as a viewer with battle
experience might react very differently from those without
such experience.
The second level concerns the domain of iconography—
that is, the linking of artistic motifs with themes, concepts,
or conventional meanings. For example, at this level a
Renaissance image of a man struck in the eye with an arrow
from a crossbow might be apprehended beyond its horrific
expressional value as representational of, or an allegory for,
the power of linear perspective. Such recognition could be
made possible using a knowledge of Renaissance treatises
on perspective and similar or related images.
The third and most contentious level of interpretation is
iconological. At this deepest level, the intrinsic meaning or
content of the work is apprehended. It is worth directly
quoting Panofsky's explanation of intrinsic meaning [3]:
1) Act of Interpretation
- Pre-iconographical description
- Iconographical analysis
- Iconological interpretation
2) Object of Interpretation
- Primary or natural subject matter—(A) factual
(B) expressional—constituting the world of
artistic motifs
- Secondary or conventional subject matter,
constituting the world of images, stories and
allegories
- Intrinsic meaning or content, constituting the
world of “symbolical” values
3) Equipment for Interpretation
- Practical experience
- Knowledge of literary sources
- Synthetic intuition
4) Corrective Principle of Interpretation
- History of style
- History of types
History of cultural symptoms or “symbols”
3. Christian
Visualization
Iconology
and
Biblical
Medieval Christian art illustrated stories with deep
themes and rich symbols without using words. Medieval
artists were not interested in realistic depictions. They tried
to convey the meaning and content of the Bible because they
believed reality was a fugitive and vain thing, whereas the
mind of God was eternal. Symbolism was used to convey
biblical stories to viewers. Consequently, iconology—
focusing on images, symbols, and themes to interpret
artworks—flourished. When interpreting medieval
Christian art, it is necessary to understand both the historical
and biblical background of the time.
There is a close affinity between Christian art and the
second commandment, “Thou Shalt Not Make Graven
Images” (Exodus 20:4). A typical example of this affinity is
found in the icons of Byzantine art. Byzantine icons were
strictly controlled for propriety in their representations of
Jesus Christ and the saints. Against this backdrop, medieval
Christian art employed various symbols: grapes for the
blood of Christ, the anchor and cross for hope and salvation,
doves for the Holy Spirit, oak trees for steadfastness, and
olive trees for peace. Images of fish were frequently used as
well since the Greek word for fish, iktus, works nicely as an
acrostic for “Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior.” Clearly, it can
be difficult to understand this artwork without a background
in religion. Understanding Christian history and context is
necessary to interpret the themes and content of the artwork.
Fig. 1. Bible Cross-References (2008) © Chris Harrison
These viewpoints regarding Christian iconology can be
applied to text visualizations of the Bible today. Bible
Cross-References (Fig. 1) [4] is a work by Chris Harrison
that visualizes biblical cross-references with an arc diagram.
Panofsky's three-level iconographic analysis can be
employed to understand Harrison's work.
First level: Pre-iconographic description
- Primary and natural subject matter
- Stage of recognizing formal images
- Constituting the world of expressional and
artistic motifs
→ Bible Cross-References connects cross-references
that appear in the Bible with an arc diagram. The bar graph
on the bottom represents all chapters in the Bible, and the
length of each bar denotes the number of verses in the
chapter. Each of the 63,779 cross-references found in the
Bible is depicted by a single arc, and its color corresponds
to the distance between the two chapters.
Second level: Iconographic analysis
- Conventional subject matter
- Stage of using sources to understand themes and
concepts of the time
- Constituting the world of stories
→ The Bible is religious literature. It repeats certain
sentences many times to emphasize Christian doctrine. The
Bible uses cross-references throughout the Old and New
Testaments regardless of the different genres of each book
or distance between chapters (content correlativity).
Third level: Iconological interpretation
- Intrinsic and symbolic meaning
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TechArt: Journal of Arts and Imaging Science, Vol. 1, No. 2, May 2014
-
Stage of interpretation by considering the
country, age, religion, class, and philosophical
belief of the artwork
- Constituting the world of symbolic values
→ Bible Cross-References visualizes cross-references
found in the Bible. However, it does not provide detailed
content or reference information for each sentence. Instead
of providing specific data, Harrison expresses each chapter
using a bar graph. He also expresses cross-referenced data
using an arc diagram with seven colors, creating a
rainbow-like form. By creating the form of a rainbow, which
symbolizes God's promises, this work implies that the
ultimate goal of the more than 6,000 cross-references is to
develop confidence in the “promises” of God.
knowledge and his or her reading of an artist's intention.
Here is another example, Visual Genealogy [5] (Fig. 3) by
Jin Wan Park. This artwork visualizes the Korean genealogy
book (jokbo) for one Korean family.
Fig. 3. Visual Genealogy (2009) © Jin Wan Park
4. Various Possibilities of Interpretation
and Storytelling
Iconological analysis combines cultural, historical and
literary knowledge when interpreting artwork. Various
interpretive approaches can be applied depending on each
viewer's knowledge and interpretive methods.
Fig. 2. Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin and Child with St. Anne, oil on
wood, 168cm x 112cm, 1508.
According to Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Leonardo da
Vinci's (1452-1519) The Virgin and Child with St. Anne (Fig.
2) reveals da Vinci's childhood fantasy. Freud said the
Virgin's garment looks like a vulture, and the vulture
symbolizes da Vinci's mother. He also explained that the tail
of the 'vulture' touching the baby's mouth looks like an
image of a baby sucking the mother's breast. Art historian
Meyer Schapiro (1904-1996) opposed Freud's assertion,
saying the painting was not merely based on the painter's
childhood. Schapiro argued that the Virgin's garment is
more like a hawk than a vulture, referring to a memo by da
Vinci revealing his interests in the flight of hawks. In this
memo, da Vinci made scientific observations about the
flight of this bird. Based on this record, Shapiro said the
image of the bird revealed da Vinci's wish to fly.
As these examples show, there are various possibilities
for interpreting artwork using iconographical ideas.
Interpretations can differ according to each viewer's
Park visualizes the family tree by creating a starburst
diagram with nodes and links brightly defined against a dark
background. It is fair to say this starburst form refers to
God's promise to make Abraham's “descendants as
numerous as the stars in the sky” (Genesis 26:4). As such,
the intention could have been to represent a family tree
abstractly to symbolize the family tree of a blessed family.
There are however, unlinked nodes with no connections
from the inside. Viewers who know Korean history might
assume those unlinked nodes show data for people who died
young from war, poverty, or epidemic and left no
descendants.
Furthermore, knowing about the understating of Korean
culture and history at the time, a new kind of storytelling
becomes possible. The jokbo does not include women's
names in the record. Therefore, the visualization result for
the jokbo reveals simple two-dimensional images rather
than complex forms, implying events such as marriages
between families. Since Korean tradition does not allow
marriage between family members, the names of female
family members who came from other families would have
been visualized in a different shape or color if the names of
female family members had been recorded in the book.
Iconographical approaches can be used to analyze the
results of data visualization and more efficiently find the
potential value in data.
5. Personalizing Metadata
It is not by chance that data visualization carries various
possibilities
for
interpretation
and
storytelling.
Iconographical approaches should be applied from the very
first stage of design. In other words, artists need to grasp the
hidden relationships and patterns in data and choose the
appropriate data, methods, and subjects to use before the
visualization process. This is similar to the painting process.
The same object can be expressed a thousand different
ways depending on the artist. The process of interpreting
objects forms the basis of creation. It is not difficult to find
H. Kim et al.: Data Iconology
examples of different interpretations of the same object (Fig.
4). With data visualization, however, procedural
computation controls this process. Therefore, algorithm
design should be carefully reviewed. Algorithm design used
to be the domain of scientists, but now it is used to decide
which data should be selected and then visualized. This
means the results of data visualization can be influenced by
artists' tendencies and characteristics from the design stage,
which is why different artworks can be made from the same
data.
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essential as the ability to use computers. Just as
understanding medieval art requires knowledge of Christian
history and the Bible, the ability to visualize data and
understand, analyze, and interpret visualization results is
essential for understanding data. Therefore, this era needs a
new iconology for data—“data iconology.”
Information visualization and infographics involve
visually representing simple and limited information. Data
visualization, however, provides insights with possibilities
for interpretation and storytelling. This is the ultimate goal
and necessity of data visualization. In this respect, all
scientists and artists who want to better understand data
should study data iconology.
Acknowledgement
Fig. 4. Portraits of Madame Ginoux, produced by Vincent Van Gogh
(left) and Paul Gaugin (right)
Let us suppose an artist is creating a landscape painting.
In terms of data visualization, the artist's sight, hearing,
smell, taste, and touch become data entry, and the artist
himself of herself becomes the interpreter equipped with
experiences and viewpoints. However, the input data
constitute a tiny fraction of all the data. Most of the data
comprise a collection of insubstantial and abstract
information objects.
Therefore, the visualization of imperceptible data should
be affected by the artist's intention from the data selection
process to the interpretation process. The first step of data
visualization involves designing rules. Therefore, the
process of choosing specific data traits to use among many
depends solely on the intention of the algorithm designers.
That is why the process of designing metadata is important.
When the data contain excessive information, the
representative traits are extracted by the metadata. A
common example of metadata is the library card catalog,
which displays a book's title, author, publisher, year,
keywords, and genre.
Designing metadata is important because data
visualization cannot visualize all data. For instance, the data
for a family tree could include gender, date of birth, date of
death, and even genomic information for each family
member. However, some works could aim for entirely
different subjects and objects from different perspectives,
such as “descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky” or
“comparison of expansion rates between families.”
According to the goal of visualization, metadata design is
also different. The process of selecting metadata for
visualization is similar to the process of finding traits in
objects for traditional painting.
6. Data Iconology for Data Visualization
We live in an age of big data where everything is data.
The ability to read, understand, and analyze data is as
This work was supported by the National Research
Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean
Government (NRF-2012S1A5A2A01020337).
References
[1] E. Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes
in the Art of the Renaissance, Harper Torchbooks:
New York, 1962, p. 3.
[2] W. E. Kleinbauer and T. Slavens, Research Guide to
the History of Western Art, American Library
Association: Chicago, 1982, pp. 60-72.
[3] E. Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Arts, University of
Chicago Press: Chicago, 1983, pp. 40-41.
[4] C. Harrison, Bible Cross-References, http://
www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Visualizations/Bibl
eViz.
[5] J. W. Park and G. Choe, Visual Genealogy, Proc. ACM
SIGGRAPH 2009 Art Gallery, 2009.
Biographies
Hyoyoung Kim is a PhD candidate at the Graduate
School of Advanced Imaging Science, Multimedia,
and Film at Chung-Ang University in South Korea.
She received her MS in art and technology in 2011
from Chung-Ang University. She has been engaged in
interdisciplinary research projects focusing on humancomputer interaction and data visualization. Her
research interests include user studies of data
visualization and HCI
Jin Wan Park is an associate professor in the Graduate
School of Advanced Imaging Science, Multimedia, and
Film at Chung-Ang University in South Korea. He
received his BS degree in computer science from
Chung-Ang University in 1995 and an MFA in
computer animation and interactive media from the
Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, NY) in 1998. The same year,
his animation BUG was selected for the Electronic Theater Program of the
animation festival at SIGGRAPH (1998). After graduation, he worked as
an art director (CWI, NJ, 1998-2003) before joining the faculty of ChungAng University. As an artist and scientist, he has focused his research on
new forms of artistic expression that are only possible through scientific
research.