1. The questions

We are often surprised by the limited visual repertoire used to map the temporal and spatial dynamics of controversies. We asked architectural students in Year Three at the Manchester School of Architecture to explore new ways of presenting the development of the controversies time-spaces and the multilateral relationships of the actors. The architectural students followed and mapped different controversies focussing on the dynamic debates around particular buildings or construction projects ranging from the redevelopment of Manhattan’s Ground Zero to the reform of 1930s modernist high-rise buildings in Sheffield, England. A number of visual innovations will be analysed here in terms of their originality and bearing on the use of multimedia for mapping controversies.

2. Alternative ways of visualising time

Circumventing the traditional modernist understanding of the flight of time, the students attempted to visualise time as unfolding according to the specific dynamics of each controversy. Here are some examples:

I) The time navigator:

• An inside perspective. A very different approach was undertaken by students mapping a controversy focussed on the Cardiff Opera House. Here, the viewer was given the locational perspective of time, and followed the actors through the timeline in 3D space:

Animation 1 - Cardiff Opera House Timeline

The coloured lines represent different actors while this time the nodes are important events along the way. An excellent “video key” is provided which permits users to viewers to understand the timeframes captured along the way. The animation is conceptually impressive, and in a 2D approach would assist in conveying information in a more immediate way by avoiding the nodes and lines approaches, and instead focussing on how actors are reshaped in time.

• An outside perspective. Developing this idea independently was another group focussed on the Acropolis Museum. They placed the viewer outside while showing how expanding coloured lines representing actors converge and diverge at different points in time. Also in 3D, this animation was particularly clear in what it was communicating, with the “outside” perspective more conducive towards the viewer’s comprehension.

Animation 2 - Acropolis Museum Timeline

II) The time maze

• In the case of the Geoffrey Chaucer school controversy the students came out with the idea to visualise the time development of the controversy with a time maze (instead of a timeline). Different types of actors are connected for a certain period of the duration of the controversy and their connections are tracked with different colours in the maze; the beginning and the end of their connections are associated to particular moments in time. This creates a multilayered dynamic space where different story lines are to be tracked and recollected, tracing all together a non-linear time maze where the controversy unfolds. This approach is comprehensive and ensures that a viewer can come away with a full understanding of the debate and the concerns it has generated.

Figure 1 - Geoffrey Chaucer School Case Study - A Timeline

• In the Park Hill controversy case study, students represented the time development through statements, interviews and anecdotal information, as a transversal line departing from the positive attitude of the actors at the time when this housing project was a practical modernist dream to present-day dereliction and dysfunctional communities.

Figure 2 - Park Hill Timeline

3. Rethinking actor diagrams

• Among the thirty-seven student case studies in 1008/2009, many featuring innovative graphics, there are a number of projects, which deserve special mention for their actor-diagrams. A first example provides a timeline that shows who the main actors are at any stage in a chronology using a simple image-based chronology. This allows the viewer to start at one point and discover more about a particular actor or event. It is simple but in informational terms extremely useful for gaining contextual knowledge about the debate. Keeping all the information accessible from the start page, it avoids the book-like approach of many case study websites, where viewers are ushered along a “page down, then next” path until a tidy conclusion is given. From the perspective of mapping controversies, what is important is the wealth of description about the debate and its overall accessibility rather than attempts to give closure.

Figure 3 - Sydney Opera House Case Study - Front page

• A second, highly original, case study concerns the Novartis medical research complex in Basel, Switzerland. Here the students developed a visualisation that connects actors with design concerns through a diagram that recalls an audio spectrum analysis, with bars corresponding to design concerns on the Y axis. The debate website provides an overview of how different people, including an animal researcher and the different architects involved, configured their respective campus building with respect to the concerns given in the diagram.

Figure 4 - Novartis Complex - Basel, Switzerland. Interactive Diagram of Actors and Concerns

• As many of the debates were about particular projects, a number of the websites featured charts mapping positive and negative responses.

Animation 3 - Timeline and response chart of public opinion on the "B of the Bang" sculpture in Manchester

Combining a diffracted time line with actor diagram, this visualisation shows the ‘actors’ involvement in the controversy. It is assumed that their position within the controversy events is a position with a degree of influence - they might affect the nature and direction of the controversy. If this is taken to be correct, then the specific periods of time and the actions in which the actor was involved become an important point of reference. Every moment in time is diffracted as it corresponds to a number of blue/red dots from the upper part of the diagram accounting for positive/negative public reactions and a number of other-colored dots from the lower part of the diagram accounting for different types of actors. The diffracted timeline references public opinion throughout so that any correlation between actor involvement and public opinion can be spotted. The diagram makes an attempt for presenting the connections between actors and events.
While such approaches are highly reductionist, when supplemented by interview data they come to life. The “B of the Bang” controversy, about a bold public sculpture in Manchester, contains videos and recorded interviews with local residents, and thus gives a very rich understanding of the controversy (http://joeprole.com/bofthebang/).

These projects reflect the idea of multiform documentation sources informing controversy studies, while also seeking to capitalise on design skills to visualise the qualitative information they have researched, through media analysis and interviews. They therefore incorporate many different perspectives and note how they reconfigure the object of concern.

For other original actors diagram, see:

1. The Penn Station Controversy website
2. The Grand Zero Controversy website

4. The making of a controversy website

Some presentations were self-reflexive in terms of accounting for the process of mapping and the different steps the students had to undertake to analyse and map a controversy. A mapping of the mapping experience was provided by this team, which tackled the Penn Station Controversy:

Figure 5 - Penn Station Case Study Methodology Page

Albena Yaneva, Liam Heaphy

Attachments of PlatformVisualInnovations

I	Attachment	Action	Size	Date	Who	Comment	Attribute
swf	BoftheBangTimeline.swf	manage	1463.2 K	09 Oct 2009 - 17:13	Liam Heaphy
png	acropolis.png	manage	81.2 K	09 Oct 2009 - 17:07	Liam Heaphy
flv	cardiff.flv	manage	2692.8 K	09 Oct 2009 - 17:13	Liam Heaphy
png	cardiff.png	manage	467.9 K	09 Oct 2009 - 17:51	Liam Heaphy
jpg	novartis_actors.jpg	manage	9.4 K	09 Oct 2009 - 16:37	Liam Heaphy
GIF	pennstation_methodology_full.GIF	manage	55.5 K	09 Oct 2009 - 16:35	Liam Heaphy
png	sydney.png	manage	309.4 K	09 Oct 2009 - 16:36	Liam Heaphy
jpg	timeline_chaucer_full.jpg	manage	370.9 K	09 Oct 2009 - 17:56	Liam Heaphy
jpg	timeline_parkhill.jpg	manage	53.7 K	09 Oct 2009 - 16:36	Liam Heaphy