Abstract
This chapter is historical in two respects. Its first purpose is to enquire how visual representations of historical time can be used to bring out patterns in cultural collections. Such a visual analytics approach raises questions about the proper representation of time and of objects and events within it. It is argued that such chronographics can support both an externalised, objectivising point of view from ‘outside’ time and one which is immersive and gives a sense of the historic moment. These modes are set in their own historical context through original historical research, highlighting the shift to an Enlightenment view of time as a uniform container for events. This in turn prompts new ways of thinking about chronological visualisation, in particular the separation of the ‘ideal’ image of time from contingent, temporary rendered views.
This chapter is an updated and extended version of the following paper, published here with kind permission of the Chartered Institute for IT (BCS) and of EVA London Conferences: Stephen Boyd Davis, et al., “Just in time: defining historical chronographics.” In A. Seal, J. P. Bowen, and K. Ng (eds.). EVA London 2010 Conference Proceedings. Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC), British Computer Society, 2010. http://www.bcs.org/ewic/eva2010 (accessed 26 May 2013).
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Acknowledgments
We are very grateful to Prof. Michael Twyman of Reading University for allowing access to his personal collection of chronographic materials, to Prof. Anthony Grafton at Princeton University for valuable advice, to the staff at Chetham’s Library Manchester and at Princeton University Library especially Stephen Ferguson, Curator of Rare Books, and to Christine North for advice on translation. We gratefully acknowledge the support of System Simulation, London, software developers, and of the Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture at Middlesex University, especially Zoe Hendon, the curator.
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Davis, S.B., Bevan, E., Kudikov, A. (2013). Just in Time: Defining Historical Chronographics. In: Bowen, J., Keene, S., Ng, K. (eds) Electronic Visualisation in Arts and Culture. Springer Series on Cultural Computing. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5406-8_17
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