When Professor Himpele asked each of us why we decided to take this class, I was struck by the amount of people who were interested in the data visualization aspect of this course. To be perfectly honest, I was more drawn to the “culture/media” elements of this course, as data visualization was something that I wasn’t exactly familiar with and so I didn’t give much attention to it. When Professor Himpele instructed each of us to go into our breakout rooms to make a simple visualization of the relationship between Culture, Media, and Data, I honestly had no idea what he meant by that/what to expect. Other than making simple venn-diagrams or scientific charts/tables in my early science fair projects, this was something brand new to me.  I found these three terms to be such general qualitative entities, and I could not possibly wrap my head around explaining them and their relation to one and other in such a small visual diagram. 

Yet, as our group began to discuss our thoughts on the relationship between these terms and started to map out these abstract concepts (and the relationship among them), it was like a switch in my brain turned on. Suddenly I was thinking in a much more “big picture” way. I was really asking myself —what do these terms really mean? How does one term fall into the other? how does one term use another term to express something? How does one concept lead to another? What does one term mean in the context of another? 

Actually mapping this all out visually twisted my mind — it was a completely different way of thinking than I was used to, and I felt as if I was using a different part of my brain, entirely. I was so used to using concrete words to communicate ideas, or even as a musician, using sounds to tell stories or communicate/draw out one’s feelings. This type of thinking was something very new to me, however. As a result of this newfound type of thinking, I began to ask myself a few questions such as — is there an optimal way to communicate abstract concepts? Are visualizations a more effective tool in communicating relationships between abstract concepts than could be communicated through writing or auditory communication? What can visualizations of concepts and their relations communicate that other methods of communication cannot? Is there a limit to what can be communicated visually? How much of one’s own life and experiences can affect the way in which they interpret visualizations? To be honest, it is still taking me a while to wrap my head around this way of thinking, but I am looking forward to continuing to think in this way as we move along in this course and really getting to dig into what data visualization can look like within the context of the culture and media of today.