Navigable Graphics

Navigable Graphics is a course I created and first taught at Virignia Commonwealth University. The studio addresses the point-of-view imaging technique that has come to define contemporary interface design. Taking as a point of departure the construction of first-person perspective in the history of cinema, the course goes on to examine the retooling of the controllable, subjective camera view in navigable graphics.

Course, 2022

While varied in their formal grammar, navigable graphics are part of larger interactive systems simulating the movement and vision of an individual in a remote and/or virtual environment. Such interaction suggests an embodied visuality that Donna Haraway lucidly frames “as a becoming-with or being-with, as opposed to surveying-from.” It is in this respect that we will study navigable graphics drawn from a wide-range of sources, among which include crittercam reality TV, photogrammetry driven sleuthing, sandbox video games, and Mars exploration rovers. In analyzing these examples, we will experiment with the possibilities for typographic, auditory, and haptic techniques, alongside hardware like head-mounted displays, in VR and AR applications.

Within the expansive application of navigable graphics, we will also direct our critical analysis towards their presence in tactics of dehumanization, as exemplified by drone warfare VR training and the discriminatory practices of surveillance technologies.

Weekly meetings will be structured around close readings of texts looking not only at the production of navigable graphics but also their social, political, and tactical functions. Through lectures, discussion sections, and a semester-long research project, students will ultimately address the aesthetics, hegemonic structures, and ethical implications in the practices of navigable graphics.