Dear friends, Alberto here. Today we’re launching the 16th course in the Open Visualization Academy, ‘Visualizing Loss and Tragedy' by Alyssa Fowers. Here’s its introduction:
Data visualization makes numbers feel real. It can help make the people behind those numbers--and their absence--feel real too. In this course, we'll analyze the work of journalists and artists to understand the principles and techniques behind visualizations that bring a reader face to face with the human impact of violence and tragedy. You'll learn to think about your own goals for visualizing suffering, what techniques will help you connect with your audience, and how to take care of yourself when handling painful subjects.
I love all lectures and tutorials we’ve published so far—and the ones we’re editing these days; we have 16 at different stages of production or editing—but Alyssa’s course, similarly to Lauren & Catherine’s or Frank’s, has a special place in my heart because it exemplifies my original vision for the OVA; I’ve always wanted this project to become not merely a library of practical tutorials, but a place to prompt designers to think about our craft differently, deeply, and critically.
Alyssa does exactly that in her lecture because she’s a true polymath, someone with the mind of a scientist and a humanist. The examples she showcases and discusses at length try to address what Scott and Paul Slovic called psychological (quantitative) numbing in their book Numbers and Nerves, which is related to the old saying “the death of one man is a tragedy, a the death of a million is a statistic”. How do we overcome that numbness? To quote Alyssa, there are ways to “bridge the empathic gap" between abstract numbers and the suffering and loss they sometimes represent.
I hope you’ll enjoy her course. Let me rephrase that: I’m sure you will.
