Power Lines: The Image of Scientific Visualization

An analysis of how Scientific Visualization not only
communicates interpreted scientific data, but more strongly
forms a 'view', an interpretation in its own right. The subject
of the author's criticism is ""not scientific visualization in
itself but how visualization assaults us in the form of its
publicity image... The publicity of computer graphics and
imaging systems brashly reveals important cultural assumptions
at work in visualization. This field manifests in bold terms the
technological imagination in all its social contradictions and
ideologies of dominance. The publicity image connected to
scientific visualization leaves no doubt that the operative term
is power''. The chapter headings reveal the kind of powers
discussed: Omnipotence (Ample Machines for Magical Overviews),
Omnipresence (Simulated Travel), and Omniscience (Control of
Complexity). (See also abstract nr. 017 in P.magazine 41 C.
Burnett : To Mobilize the Mind's Eye - Afterimage 1991, XVIII/7,
Febr. p. 8-9)
Kansas City Museum of Art
Teaching computer and media art


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