respect for the viewer

Interview - Mark C. Taylor in correspondence with Vito Acconci.

Taylor: In making the 'viewer' a participant in the work of art, you often create situations that invovle or imply a certain danger. What lessons does such danger teach?

Acconci: In some early 1970s pieces, I learned that commitment to an idea, to an abstraction, can be frightening. i could be so concerntrated on applying stress to the body that I ignored the ravages that stress was making on my body; I could talk myself into a hypnosis where I probably could have killed somebody. And, gradually, I learned respect for the viewer. Yes, maybe the insertion of real-world everyday fear is a whiff of fresh air into the hothouse of an isolationist art system. But, at the same time, danger only confirms and enhances the victimization of the viewer. Museum-goers are automatically victimized: they're in a building with no windows, as if in a prison - they're ordered 'Do Not Touch'. The art is for the eyes only, and they're in a position of constant desire, hence constant frustration. So, danger to the viewer is unfair; it takes advantages of somebody who's already down. Later, in some of my installations from the late 1970s, where viewers could release a projectile and thereby endanger either themselves or others, I learned that I was cheating. I was depending on, resorting to, the safety mechanism of gallery/museum; I must have known it couldn't happen here, this was a gallery, this wasn't real - I was only making a metaphor, and I thought I hated metaphor.

Edward R. Tufte, Envisioning Information

INTRODUCTION

The world is complex, dynamic, multidimensional; the paper is static, falt. How are we to represent the rich visual world of experience and measurement on mere flatland?

This book celebrates escapes from flatland, rendering several hundred superb displays of complex data. Revealed here are design strategies for enhancing the dimensionality and density of portrayals of inormation.

...

Charts, diagrams, graphs, tables, guides, instructions, directories, and maps compromise an enormous accumulation of material. Once described by Philip Morrison as "cognitive art," it embodies tens of trillions of images created and multiplied the world over every year. Despite the beauty and utility of the best work, design of inofmration has engaged little critical or aesthetic notice: there is no Museumn of Cognitive Art. This book could serve as a partial catalog for such a collection.

...

To envision information -- and what bright and splendid visions can result -- is to work at the intersection of image, word, number, art. The instruments are those of writing and typography, of managing large data sets and statistical analysis, of line and layout and color. And the standards of quality are those derived from visual principles that tell us how to put the right mark in the right place.

...