Trevor van Gorp works at Affective Design. He presented at the iA Summit 2010, a conference sponsored and run by ASIS&T, the American Society for Information Science and Technology.
In this presentation, Trevor discusses concepts such as emotion, attention, and arousal, the differences between novice and experienced users, differences in goals, such as experiential, goal-directed, how stress affects arousal and performance, and other topics, accompanied by clear examples, of ways to incorporate "emotion and flow" principles into web and information design.
It should be noted that "emotion and flow" strategies have been consciously implemented in video games by designers/developers for a long time, and these concept most likely have value across various digital domains, such as multimedia journalism, interactive television, and interactive surface or large display applications.
Below are the references from the presentation, as posted on SlideShare:
References
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. (1990). Flow - the Psychology of Optimal Experience . New York: Harper Perennial.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. (1990). Flow – the Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper Perennial.
Desmet, Pieter, R. (2002). Designing Emotions . Pieter Desmet. Delft.
Russell, J.A. (1980). “A circumplex model of affect”. In Journal of Personality and Social
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2008). Creativity, Fulfillment and Flow, TED talk. 2008
Fehrman, Kenneth R. and Cherie Fehrman. (2000). Color - The Secret Influence . New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc.
King, Andrew B. “Chapter 2 – Flow in Web Design.” 2003. http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/2/ accessed on January 21/2007.
Hoffman, D.L, Novak, T (1996), “Marketing in hypermedia computer-mediated environments: conceptual foundations’”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 60 pp. 50-68.
Novak, T.P, Hoffman, D.L (1997), “Measuring the flow experience among Web users,” Interval Research Corporation.
Novak, T, Hoffman, D, Young, Y (1998), “Measuring the flow construct in online environments: a structural modeling approach”, Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University, working paper.
Novak, T. P., Hoffman, D. L., and Yung, Y. 2000. Measuring the Customer Experience in Online Environments: A Structural Modeling Approach. Marketing Science 19, 1 (Jan. 2000), 22-42
Rettie, R., (2001), An Exploration of Flow during Internet Use, Internet Research, 11(2), 103 – 113.
Simon, H. A. (1971), “Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World”, in Martin Greenberger, Computers, Communication, and the Public Interest, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, ISBN 0-8018-1135-X. pp. 40-41.
van Gorp, Trevor, J. (2006). Emotion, Arousal, Attention and Flow: Chaining Emotional States to Improve Human-Computer Interaction. University of Calgary, Faculty of Environmental Design, Master’s Degree Project
When I return to graduate school (hopefully I'll have the means to attend full-time), I want to flesh out my ideas for a "interactive multi-dimensional multi-media multi-user timeline" for use on interactive multi-touch/gesture tables and displays. Although I've limited my work to a prototype of a template, I know that this concept won't work unless the application can incorporate an efficient means of handling large volumes of data, as well as data in various formats.
I want this template to be useful to people in a variety of contexts, such as students studying world history and humanities, education administrators looking at educational data over time, producers and viewers of interactive documentary programs (think interactive TV), the health industry, urban planners, the military, serious games, etc.
One of my stumbling blocks is how all of the data would be stored and analysed. What I learned a few years ago in my computer classes simply won't work.
So now what?! I think that Roger Magoulas, the director of research at O'Reilly, has some good things to say about the critical problem of handling what he calls "Big Data". Here are a few videos that I think are worth watching.
The Future of Work
Part One
Next Device (SmartPhones, netbooks, creation & consumption factors - supporting usability in multiple contexts)
You Tube Series: O'Reilly Media
Big Data: Technologies & Techniques for Large-Scale Data (Emphasis on experimental approach) Part I
Part II (Discusses new forms of databases and the user of parallel processors to handle Big Data)
Part III Key Technology Dimensions
Part IV, Focus on hardware- Solid state disks, new data structure called "triadic continuum" which handles real-time data and ongoing probability estimates of data.
I would be happy to hear from anyone who is working on a project similar to the one I'm working on as a "hobby".
RELATED
Triadic Continuum "Phaneron, KStore, Knowledge store, or simply K, is a dynamic data model that is based on the cognitive theory of C. S. Peirce. Phaneron efficiently organizes data into a unique, compact, interconnected, and fully-related data model. Phaneron is constructed using the Triadic Continuum."
For those of you who like visual representations of geeky-techy concepts, here a few visuals and related descriptions of KStore fundamentals from the Triadic Continuum website:
"The KStore data model is constructed using the basic triad. For example, the event sequence 'cat' would be recorded as shown in 'a sequence' below. A new level of nodes is created above a lower level of nodes as a result of the triadic process. In this case the lower level of nodes contains a node for each character of the alpha-numeric character set and the new nodes reference the lower level nodes to record the sequence 'cat'. Each sequence is initialize with a reference to a BOT (beginning of thought) and terminated with an EOT (end of thought) reference."
"The data set above was used to create the K structure below with the lowest level that contains the alpha-numeric character set, the second level is created to record sequences that represent the field variables. Then a third level is created using the field variables of the second level to record the record sequences. Records recorded in this K structure reuse the field variable nodes so that these field variable sequences never have to be recorded more than once. This is just one of the attributes of a K structure that makes it very efficient." -Triadic-conintuum.com
Personal Note: Due to the economic downturn and its impact on my family (two kids in college), I returned to work full time in mid 2008. I have a very busy day job as a school psychologist, working at two high schools as well as a program for students with multiple, severe disabilities, including autism. This has limited my ability to work on my project.
"...So it works out more cost effective for the films to actually have someone put the graphics on the screens for real. It also greatly enhances the performance of the actors. You only have to watch any of the Star Wars Eps 1-3 to see how wooden acting is when you don’t actually know what is in front of you. Actors love to be able push buttons and bang touch screens during their scenes. Having to actually do it in a certain order can stretch their capabilities mind you, and I am pretty gob smacked at how absolutely computer illiterate some of them are. Don’t they use email?
Anyway, due to this diminished ability to hit and bang things in any certain order, it is our job to make it impossible to mess things up. That’s why they are all genius typers. We make it so they can type any old thing and the letters still come out the way they are meant to each time. We also put little locking codes into our programming so they can’t accidentally escape the graphic mid job. It’s amazing how many of them can type the Esc button when they are meant to be spelling LOGIN."
Thanks, Tim!
SOMEWHAT RELATED
Coincidentally, when I was visiting the NUI-Group forums this morning, I came across a link to Jakob Nielsen's "Usability in the Movies -- Top 10 Bloopers", which are worth taking a look at. I've posted the list, but you'll need to go to Nielson's web page to read the descriptions. You'll smile.
1. The Hero Can Immediately Use Any UI
2. Time Travelers Can Use Current Designs
3. The 3D UI
4. Integration is Easy, Data Interoperates
5. Access Denied/Access Granted
6. Big Fonts
7. Star Trek's Talking Computer
8. Remote Manipulators (Waldo Controls)
9. You've Got Mail is Always Good News
10."This is Unix, It's Easy"
How it works: Information from a true case, from the Virtual Autopsy Table website. "A living patient was treated for cerebral hemorrhaging. X-rays sent through the body during computed tomography grow weaker according to the density of the tissue through which they pass. By assigning density values with varying degrees of transparency and identifying colors, a sort of palette can be created by the computer to use in the imaging process. It becomes possible, for example, to remove clothing, skin or blood vessels. In this case the patient has been operated for a ruptured aneurysm in a small brain vessel. A metal clips has been added that can be seen in the image. "
RELATED
The Norrkopings Visualization Center "The installation is financed within the framework of the Visualization program and developed by Norrköping Vi sualization Center in cooperation with CMIV (Center for Medical Image Science and Visualization)."
"With a client list that includes Red Bull, you know these guys aren’t messing around. Multitouch Barcelona designs "experiences that merge real and digital into a creative environment where people are invited to touch, play, move, feel as they do in the real world." Clearly enjoying a tongue-in-cheek methodology, the group’s philosophy seems to grow out of an affinity for natural interaction. The recent work showcased at Offf (a festival for, um, "post-digital creation culture") perfectly shows both their whimsy and tech chops. For example, the Human Interface, a person you use as a computer by asking him to carry out tasks such as email using a keyboard made from cardboard and tubes that carry email around. Nothing short of hilarious and yet strangely alarming." -Grand designers: the world's best design work Paul Armstrong, Wired UK, 8/17/09
I love Multitouch Barcelona. Especially their Space Invaders project.
(I posted this video previously, but I like it so much I decided to post it again!)
If you are interested in keeping up with ways various disciplines are converging, take the time to learn about the process behind the Synchronous Objects, One Flat Thing, Reproduced project.
This project was a product of a collaboration between choreographer William Forsythe and a multi-disciplinary group of researchers from Ohio State University's Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD).
The online installation of this project is an interactive website. The site demonstrates how the project's team members explored "discipline-specific and cross-disciplinary ways of seeing."and focused on "visualizing choreographic structure from dance to data to objects".
Synchronous Objects Interactive Site "...the project presents an original collection of screen-based visualizations (video, digital artwork, animation, and interactive graphics) that reveal interlocking systems of organization in the choreography. The project aims to appeal to a broad public from diverse fields including but not limited to dance. Forsythe explains, “The project starts from the recognition that choreography is an organizational practice that employs fundamental creative strategies relevant to many other domains.”(The link above leads to the website- be sure to watch the video introduction before entering the site.) Overview/Teamwork
Each discipline involved in the project discussed what they saw in the dance.. Their contributions to the project were amazing. For example, a geographer took data from the dance and translated it into a geographical plane, to describe the use of space:
William Forsythe's Essay:Choreographic Objects "When the blind mathematician Bernard Morin was asked where the imaging of the process of everting a sphere existed in his imagination, he famously replied: "Nowhere and everywhere at the same time." And so it is with the choreographic object: it is a model of potential transition from one state to another in any space imaginable." Project Team Member's Quotes Video Introduction All Credits: Synchronous Objects Project, The Ohio State University and The Forsythe Company RELATED
"The main focus of Synchronous Objects is to develop a set of data visualization tools for capturing, analyzing and presenting the underlying choreographic structures and components of Forsythe's "One Flat Thing, reproduced" (OFTr), which premiered in 2000. These visualizations in the form of information graphics, 2D and 3D animations and visual dance scores will provide audiences, students and researchers with new approaches to thinking about and studying Forsythe's intricate, counter-point work." - Doug Fox, Great Dance
Transcript of the Teamwork video:
Chuck Helm: Bill received the Wexner Prize in 2002. One of the intents of the Wexner Prize was that this not just be a one-time occasion, that these might be people who would come back to OSU and have further involvement with both the Wexner Center and with campus, and in this case, it's really borne fruit.
We're doing this exhibition of Bill's installation and his video-related work that show his idea of how he's extending choreographic thinking into new forms such as video as well as a sculptural installation and also a performance installation as well as a whole section devoted to the new web project he developed at OSU as well as material that relates to the evolution of that web project.
Maria Palazzi: We have had this opportunity with the Synchronous Objects project to bring together a group of students who come from different disciplines like computer science, design, dance, art, working together to understand what their disciplines bring to a project like this but also to come to an understanding of what other disciplines might bring to their work.
Norah Zuniga Shaw: For dancers, we'd like to communicate better about what we do, so we feel it's important to make ourselves more readable. But I also think knowing about how motion works, knowing about complex event perception, analyzing the complexity in this dance is relevant for thinking critically about visual literacy in this new century that we're in.
Palazzi: When we started to talk to Bill about the project we said, "Who is audience?" and the answer was "Everybody." So we thought about what it was we needed to do to communicate with everybody and I think this idea of solving a lot of this communication through visuals, using algorithmic techniques, using computer graphics, using animation. These are very contemporary ways in which young people are used to seeing information and they're very effective ways to take lots of information and translate it so they're understandable.
William Forsythe: This is research into a kind of a proto literature for dance, where other people could look at a dance as it plays out on a video and with these annotations overlaid upon them, could we understand very quickly what this dance was or how it was organized and what they're thinking about it, so that dance wasn't so frightening. Which is where you hear people going, "Oh, I don't want to go to see the dance, I don't understand dance." And we're like, "You just don't know how to look at it. Of course you understand it." And we've had the wonderful experience now showing people these annotations and people say literally within second, "Oh, I get it," and you're going, like, "Voila."
Helm: This has been the first time that there's been a significant showing of Bill's installation works in this country, and particularly a body of his work that can be shown at a place like OSU, which is also sponsoring the development of this new web project. So it kind of shows the important resources that a major university can bring for an artist like Bill. It's not everyplace you go to that can say, "Yes, we can do this full range of activity."
Palazzi: I think he was attracted to ACCAD and the Department of Dance because of this unique collaboration that we have between our research center and dance. I think that is one of the advantages of a big university like Ohio State: We have lots of expertise on our campus. One of the things that ACCAD serves as, is an umbrella or a gathering place for multidisciplinary approaches to problems.
Forsythe: OSU is a no brainer because the Dance Department and ACCAD are connected. I don't know where else that exists. It turned out OSU had everything in place that I needed. So, what's very interesting is that it's this issue of research is that no one was trying to define the way things should be, everyone's saying, "Well, what else could this look like?" So there was this wonderful feeling of a palate of opportunities that's being offered. That was very, very relaxing.
I first learned about Christopher Baker when I was taking an information visualization class. I was impressed by his work, My Map: A Self Portrait, which was created from his archive of 60,000 e-mails:
Baker's Murmur Study is a live visualization/archive of Twitter:
"One might describe these messages as a kind of digital small talk. But unlike water-cooler conversations, these fleeting thoughts are accumulated, archived and digitally-indexed by corporations. While the future of these archives remains to be seen, the sheer volume of publicly accessible personal — often emotional — expression should give us pause." -Baker
"HPVS (Human Phantom Vibration Syndrome) is a kinetic sculpture that considers the subtle, often-subconscious ways that mobile communication technologies shape our senses. The title references the recently discovered Human Phantom Vibration Syndrome -- a syndrome wherein mobile phone users become hyper-attentive to their mobile devices, often experiencing phantom ringing sensations even in the absence of incoming calls or messages. This work carefully orchestrates the vibrations of a collection of mobile phones to produce a familiar yet quietly-disturbing cacophony."
Hello World! or: How I Learned to Stop Listening and Love the Noise"An immersive video installation featuring over 5000 video diaries found on the internet."
"Hello World! is a large-scale audio visual installation comprised of thousands of unique video diaries gathered from the internet. The project is a meditation on the contemporary plight of democratic, participative media and the fundamental human desire to be heard." -Christopher Baker
"Christopher Baker is an artist whose work engages the rich collection of social, technological and ideological networks present in the urban landscape. He creates artifacts and situations that reveal and generate relationships within and between these networks. Baker recently completed his Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Media Arts at the University of Minnesota. He is now the senior artist-in-residence at the Kitchen Budapest, an experimental media arts lab in Hungary. In his previous life as a scientist, Christopher worked to develop brain-computer interfaces at the University of Minnesota and UCLA." (taken from Christopher Baker's website)
Christopher Baker's Artist's Statement:
"My work is fundamentally concerned with the complex relationship between society and its technologies. Trained first as a scientist and only recently as an artist, my practice represents an uneasy balance of eager technological optimism, analytical processes, deep-rooted skepticism and intuitive engagement. Much of this practice is inspired by the interconnectivities – visible and invisible – present in the modern urban landscape. I am energized by the diversity of human expression that continuously activates our vast communication networks. I am awed by the scale and varied histories of the built environment and urban infrastructure. As technologists make daily promises to improve our lives by uniting these physical and digital worlds, I attempt to make work that examines the practical implications of our increasingly networked lifestyles. Primary to this task is an exploration of the ways we imagine and represent ourselves before (potentially massive) audiences and the ways we navigate and abide in public space. Thus, architecture and place figure heavily into my often site-specific practice. With these interests at heart, large-scale video projections allow me to create works that fuse existing physical spaces with more ephemeral digital elements, resulting in revelatory and sometimes disorienting forms."
Christopher Baker is currently a resident artist at Kitchen Budapest.
What is Kitchen Budapest?
"The spicy innovation lab Kitchen Budapest, opened in June 2007, is a new media lab for young researchers who are interested in the convergence of mobile communication, online communities and urban space and are passionate about creating experimental projects in cross-disciplinary teams"
"Research fields What happens to the net once it meets the urban space? How does private space relate to the saturating wireless networks? Where does user created content gain authority? How does our use of cities alter as we get more and more real time feedback of its dynamics? What makes a home smart? Street-smart?"
"We would like to rethink and remix the possibilities of new media in our everyday lives and to argument connections between new technologies and our society."
I am happy to live in a world where experimental artists can find places and spaces to grow and thrive!
The Urbanization Explorer Touch Tableat UNC-Charlotte (Pictures from the RENCI blog) I wish this multi-touch table was around when I last took a class at UNC-C! With help from the RENCI Europa team, this table that was only a dream was finally built.
The following information was posted on the RENCI Vis Group Multi-Touch Blog: "Jason Coposky and Warren Ginn from RENCI Europa delivered UNC-Charlotte’s Multi-touch Table to the Charlotte Visualization Center last week. Dubbed the Urbanization Explorer Touch Table, the device’s first role will be to display the Urban Growth Model, developed by the Center for Applied Geographic Information Science (CAGIS) and UNC-Charlotte’s Urban Institute. By accessing historical patterns of growth in the region, this application will provide forecasts on how much growth is expected to take place based on these historical patterns. Using satellite imagery for the 24-county region around Mecklenburg, for four time periods: 1976, 1985, 1996 and 2006, the Urban Growth Model tracks the advance of impervious surfaces, a key indicator of development, in expansion across the area since 1976, and estimates the extent of urbanization through 2030. With interfaces developed by collaborators at the Charlotte Visualization Center, multiple users will be able to select areas of interest, zoom, pan, and navigate the colorful, large-format maps using only their fingertips and on-screen digital tools."
"First introduced at North Carolina State University’s Institute for Emerging Issues annual forum this past Februrary, this multi-touch table represents the next leap in performance in touch tracking. As opposed to the previous Direct Illumination (DI) technique employed in the original table, this table employs Diffused Surface Illumination (DSI). By employing a sheet of Cyro Acrylite EndLighten with polished edges and LED Edge-View Ribbon Flex from Environmental Lights, we’ve been able to distribute the IR illumination more evenly."
"Infrared LEDs on a trip from Environmental Lights is applied to the inside perimeter of the frame where the polished Endlighten acrylic sheet will be installed."
I want one to try out my touch-screen experiments!
If you follow this blog because you are interested in emerging multimedia technologies such as multi-touch and gesture-based displays and tables, you probably know that there is a huge void in terms of content -rich applications for these systems.
Most of the demos show how you can zoom, rotate, and resize photographs, sort through your "stuff", or bat things around the surface as a game. There is so much more power behind surface technology that needs to be realized!
Here are some of my reflections...
As I write this post, leaders of the financial industry, large corporations, and governments are in Davos, Switzerland at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. It is interesting to note that all of these bright men and women are struggling to grasp the enormity of the world's financial crisis and come up with strategies that hopefully will work.
The graphic below depicts how much has changed in the world economy between the 2008 annual meeting of the World Economic forum and the present. It lacks the "wow" factor that one would expect for an application running on an interactive display. With some tweaking, it could be transformed into an application that supports two people interacting with the data at the same time.
"On this chart each block represents a year and each column represents a range of return on the S&P index. Over on the right side are those lucky years where the index has soared upward from 50-60%. In the middle are the more typical years, where the market has risen less than 10%.That little box on the far left? Yeah, that's this year..And hey, how many of you knew the S&P had been around since 1825?." - Devilstower of the Daily KOS
I've been thinking about interactive information visualization and how it can support our understanding of the current economic crisis a bit lately, inspired by what I learned in Dr. Robert Kosara's InfoViz class I took last year. In a recent post on the Eager Eyes blog, Dr. Kosara floats the idea of the establishment of a "National Data Agency".
"What we need is a National Data Agency (NDA). This agency would be tasked with collecting data that all other agencies collect and produce, and making it available in a central place and in electronic, machine-readable form. There could and should be a reasonable data presentation on its website, perhaps even a National Data Dashboard (showing data of interest like debt, spending, jobless rate, etc.). But the bulk of data analysis would be left to third parties: analysts, journalists, citizens (and also aliens like me). Easily available data would make for more insightful reporting, more informed decisions, and endless business opportunities."-Robert Kosara
This makes sense.
There simply is too much data to absorb, explore, analyze, understand, and act upon. It is difficult to know if you have all of the data that you need, because some of it is difficult to access. It doesn't matter if you are a banker, a stock broker, a CEO, a CFO, a government leader, an economist, a shareholder, or a student. The current state of world economic affairs is the strongest evidence that our methods simply aren't working.
The work of Hans Gosling provides a good example of how information visualization can help increase our understanding of large quantities of data over time. Hans Gosling is a Swedish professor of development and one of the founders of Gapminder. ("Unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact-based world view".)
The following video is Rosling's latest presentation, focused on debunking the myths regarding population growth:
"Gapminder is a non-profit venture promoting sustainable global development and achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by increased use and understanding of statistics and other information about social, economic and environmental development at local, national and global levels. We are a modern “museum” that helps making the world understandable, using Internet."
The visual representation of economic data, if done well, packs a powerful punch. To me, images form a kernel in my memory related to the messages conveyed, and when recalled, also bring up a range of related conceptual details. It is sort of like what happens when I hear the first few notes of a tune from the past.
This doesn't seem to be the case for me when thinking about related text, or even thinking about "boring" charts and graphs.
The world needs effective and efficient data and information analysis and interactive visualization tools in order to solve problems that are on such a colossal scale.
The use of collaborative gesture and multi-touch display systems for data and information visualization is something that I believe will support better methods of decision-making in a variety of fields.Now is the time for the interactive information visualization community and related disciplines such as interactive multimedia and HCI to assist in this effort.
Here are some thoughts:
Those who are coding gesture-based or multi-touch programs need to understand what sort of content people will explore, and make sure that applications provide flexibility in use.
Human-computer interaction specialists will need to continue the study a range of interfaces and interactions in order to determine what supports human cognition of larger amounts of data and information.
Creators of interactive multimedia content, web developers, and others will need to re-examine their work and think about ways their content can support new ways of thinking and problem-solving within the context of "surface" computing.
Computer Supported Cooperative Work researchers will need to figure out what needs to be in place so that information can be effectively shared and analyzed between pairs or teams of people, and how this information can best be communicated to others within a business, agency, or organization, as well as the public.
One of the challenges facing this effort is that few people have an in-depth understanding of what it will take to make it happen. We will need to take an inter-disciplinary effort requiring a much higher level of communication and collaboration between people not accustomed to working within this context.
We will also need to take a "big picture" approach.
Because of the world's economic crisis, I think that interactive information/data visualization applications should target the needs of people who are working to understand the crisis and who have the power to do something constructive about it. This can not happen if they rely on the models and data analysis techniques of our recent past.
At the same time, these tools should be available to the rest of us, via the Internet, so that we may do our part to move us forward.
Back Story:
I started keeping up with the current economic on a more serious level in October. I was becoming numb from information overload. My knowledge about the economic and financial fields was lacking, so I decided to create a blog that I entitled "Economic Sounds and Sights"as my personal on-line repository of searchable content.
The blog has lots of pictures, info-graphics, embedded video clips, and links to a wide range of web-based resources. In my quest for information, I came across interesting quotes, jokes about economists, and tales of greed and scandals. I even found one blogger who has responded to each unfolding event of our economic crisis by re-writing lyrics to popular tunes.
For an example of one of my posts, read "Celestial Economic Sphere, Data Viz for the Finance Biz..." It is my hope that the content I've collected and shared on the blog will become part of an interactive information visualization/timeline designed to support two or more people on a large display or table.
11/4/09: Update: The economic crisis got a bit complicated, so I stopped posting. The blog still remains on-line. Interactive Infoviz for the Health Care Biz will be the topic of an upcoming post.
Via Stephen Few: Example of Horizon Graphs, developed by Panopticon.(Year's worth of prices of 50 stocks in 2005 and comparisons between them, click to enlarge)
Mark Lombardi Take the time to listen to NPR's Lynn Neary's interview with Robert Hobbs, curator of the an exhibit of the late Lombardi's "conspiracy" art/visualizations linking global finance and international terrorism. Lombardi's background as an archivist and reference librarian served him well in his art depicting interesting large-scale networks. Although his art was not interactive, his techniques have inspired the development of computer-based interactive information visualizations.
The examples below are of Lombardi's work connecting the relationships between George W. Bush, Harken Energy, and Jackson Stephens:
George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens
c. 1979-90, 5th Version 1999 Enlarged Version
Close-upof network detail
(missing) Close up depicting a profit made by Bush, 2 weeks before Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait via Frances Richard
"...though he possessed the instincts of a private eye and the acumen of a systems-analyst, Lombardi was of course an artist, and from the raw material of wire-service reports and books by political correspondents, he drew not only chronicles of covert, high-stakes trade, but technically pristine and sensually compelling visual forms"-Frances Richard
