Vism.ag & Creative Maps Blog

Universal Translator

Can you picture it! Well google are probably well on their way developing it, but I want to share more doodles and ideas on this blog more.

Won't it be brilliant to use this as an app on your phone, or automatically detect a langauge from a sender then automatically translate it to the language you understand in their reciever. It cant be far away from development.

There is voice to text search app from google on my android htc, i'm sure there is text to voice that I hear students playing with on the mac with it. I can appreciate it probably takes a lot of servers to manage with the global population wanting to converse and communicate in their own lanaguage to other businessmen.

If you take the shannon and weaver communication model diagram of 1949 was... the noise in the middle would be the server translating and detecting idioms (uk an example would be: dog and bone, or up north: put wood in 'oil) and dialects.

Example:

English Voice to English text - server translate text (like at this site on toolbar) - Japanese Text to Japanese Voice

I admit the text to voice convertor might be limited in its translation of tone of the message from intonation of speech and inflection that comes from the rubato of spoken word. Maybe in time it can measure the pace, the raise in volume, the length of pauses, irony, but for now the nearest we can get to word for word meaning would be excellent.

Free Translator ~ text translate with voice - GAOHUIJUAN (itunes.apple.com)
The Slow Race To A Translating Telephone (techcrunch.com)
Android Apps for Translating Speech to Text (brighthub.com)
3 of the Best Tools to Translate Using Google Translate (makeuseof.com)
Google Translate's Conversation Mode (googlesystem.blogspot.com)

Published on 2010/10/14 1:26 pm.
Filed under: 3g, collaborative, communication, computer mediated, generator, global, gps, gsm, interactive, language, meaning, mobile, narrative, sound, voice

Colour Wheel Associations

colour wheel associations by computer arts mag

brand associations that are connoted by certain colours. great wheel to help have an awareness of what colours mean what.

Published on 2009/06/14 8:33 pm.
Filed under: association, brand, colour, design, emotion, how to, interpret, meaning, money, perception, wheel

Languages Visual

Where did your spoken langauge descend from? Well english came from the germanic group dark blue. A great visualisation of the origins of european languages.

The proto Indo European language is placed at the centre (4000 BCE) and present day Indo European languages on the outside edge of the circle(2000 CE).

The inner space is also divided into rings representing different millennia, where the most significant ancestral languages from which contemporary Indo European languages are descended are placed. Proto Indo European divided into various groups, which then subdividedand evolved independently, giving rise to today's different Indo European languages. That is why the circle is divided into different sections, each of a different colour. Each section corresponds to one of the subdivisions of the family of Indo European languages. Thus, the:

dark blue section represents the Germanic group;

green, the Celtic one;

yellow, the Romance languages;

pink, the Greek group;

brown, the Balkan group;

orange, the Anatoliangroup;

red, the IndoIraniangroup;

purple, the Tocharian group;

sky blue,the Slavic group; and

turquoise, the Baltic group.

found here: http://medialab-prado.es/article/investigacion_para_la_visualizacion_experimental_interactiva_de_conocimientos_etimologicos

Published on 2008/10/16 7:13 pm.
Filed under: colour, geographic, language, mapping, meaning, multidirectional, visualisation, writing

Abstract Cartoon

The picture vocabulary by scott mccloud in his excellant book understanding comics, explaining semiotics it gives a great overview of the different scales of abstraction for cartoon characters.

With 3 sides there are the:

Retinal Edge
Representational Edge
Conceptual Edge

With the retinal edge it polarises the more reality, bottom left. Then going up it abstracts to mary fleener and accross the right to the conceptual edge, meaning becoming more arbitary with words and onomatapaeic words such as 'splash'.

Very good table, although mccloud states that they images included are not necessarily chosen for artistic merit. Makes me think of Rudolf Arnheims abstraction & the grasping of significant form. A scale between function and form as it is between words and images that abstraction will take place until a concept is conceived.

Mcclouds book may be comics content, but very very good, informal, non academic style of understanding semiotics.

Also check out Visible Signs by David Crow, explaining semiotics in great detail.

Published on 2008/09/04 8:21 pm.
Filed under: abstract, form, function, iconic, iconography, illustration, meaning, mimetic, semiotic, shape, sign, symbollic, visual thinking, visualisation, words

Visually Identifying Zombies

The Common Craft Show is a series of short explanatory videos by Lee and Sachi LeFever. Our goal is to fight complexity with simple tools and plain language. We call our format "paperworks" and publish a new video about once a month.

Wonderful visual thinking accompanied by narrative. Zombies in plain english show the subtle humour of the plain english videos. there are ones for Blogs in plain english, RSS, Wikis, Social Networking, Online Photo Sharing. Brilliant.

Published on 2008/05/11 11:19 am.
Filed under: abstract, animation, communication, graphic, how to, illustration, knowledge, language, meaning, narrative, seeing, simple, sketch, strange, visual thinking, visualisation, white space, words

The Whirl - Ways of Meaning

Watch 'The Whirl' clicking here
(video was embeded but but was slow to load)

Why visual language can help us deal with the information age.

He talks about some of the cognitive challenges of the information age, and why visual language is an important tool for dealing with them. Also talking about how information is non linear today, hence visual maps of non-linear information connected in multidirectional, interdisciplinary, 'open' meanings of communication.

Take the cadburys gorilla, is there a meaning?

http://www.davegray.info/2008/04/11/the-whirl/

Published on 2008/04/17 8:36 pm.
Filed under: global, language, meaning, non linear, phonetic, symbollic, visual, visual thinking, ways of working

Visual Communication: Wordless Recipics

http://www.coo.kz/

This is the website Lauren Bugeja has created to house these beautiful visual maps. The visual equivalent of a thesis - work from her final semester in Visual Communications.

She calls these visual maps Recipics, good use of ambiguity in the word pun on recipes. These are great explorations of visually mapping information making it universally accessible. She still uses the paradigm of numbers & arrows, but what I like best is how she uses these & space to depict time & measurements fig. Depicting time in a similar tecnhique to Bradford Paley in Once more around the sun. She uses faded flames contrasted to full colour to depict gas mark, which is admirable technique removing the use of numbers.

She has great experiments between mimetic depictions of food, but creates great iconic characters to represent meats i.e. lamb=sheep, beef=cow & pork=pig, fig.

Bugeja acknowledges the occasional stumbling block: “The ingredients are still a work in progress,” she said. “For example, it’s hard to explain the difference between flour, baking powder, anthrax and cocaine without words.”

A clean sans serif font, & beautiful pastel colours really caps off a great, excellantly executed idea.

Her research map as she calls it, looks at the contrast of word & images, human factors with Human Information Processing with communication. In relation to interaction of the GUI (graphic user interface) she states the same as I have researched with engagement allowing greater playfulness through more challenge, presenter control, and variety in a game for browsing.

What’s most relevant here is the Information Architecture to ‘organise information to create meaning’ through ‘scheme & structure’ i.e. mental schemas and these visual map techniques of brainstorms, spider diagrams etc (Bugeja, 2008, p VC Major project). There are many more beautiful visual maps of all topics linked under diagram diaries on flickr.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurenbugeja/sets/72157594238802216/

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/style/tmagazine/06tdiagram.html?pagewanted=print

Published on 2008/04/08 10:09 am.
Filed under: communication, diagram, engagement, GUI, HCI, iconic, information, mapping, meaning, mimetic, paradigms, playful, puns, spider, universal, visual maps, wordless, words