Visualization, Digital Content, and Simulation

Visualization has many meanings. In the 1980s, it indicated the process of visualizing large sets of spatial data, known as scientific visualization. Later on, the domain of visualization was expanded to abstract information, after Robertson, Card, and Mackinlav defined the concept of information visualization. In this context, visualization is a process of transforming information into a visual form, enabling users to observe, understand, and make sense of the information. In addition, the term visualization has been used to refer to imaging techniques and display technology. Yet another meaning for visualization is aligned with more modern concepts of digital content and simulation. Nowadays, digital content consists of more than just audiovisual pieces; it also consists of software and interface devices. Digital content production has become sophisticated simulation work, involving light, motion, physics, and behavior. In building new digital content, the artist can’t be separated from the interface engineer or computer scientist anymore. Furthermore, this process isn’t simply an artist using a new technology or innovative device, but a new synthesis of digital content. Media art, such as the biological feedback by Ulrike Gabriel (see http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/breath) and the large-scale interactive installations by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (see http://www.lozanohemmer.com/eproyecto.html) as shown in Figure 1, represents this synthesis. Simulation is everywhere in digital content production. Digital simulations (such as water simulations and car crashes) are the technological cutting edge in the movie industry, but are also present in low-budget TV productions and short videos (see Figure 2). At the high end of the spectrum, videogames rely on complex, real-time simulations. And creating interactive, digital TV requires more than new multimedia authoring tools, because it’s a complex simulation combining television and gaming techniques. Furthermore, digital content is convergent (computer that is TV, TV that is telephone, videogame that is TV, and so on), ubiquitous (it can be presented on any object, such as a tabletop, a window, and so on), universally accessible (in a planetary scale), niche-oriented (as in the long-tail phenomenon), and interactive (Web, videogames, digital TV, and so on). These characteristics of new digital content can expand the frontiers of multimedia significantly.