ABSTRACT
The artefacts of biological field work offer an interesting opportunity for design, science and the role of visualisations. Early representatives of scientific research all used analogue notebooks that scientists would fill with visualisations, like illustrations, sketches, prototypes and organic artefacts among others during their work. Collaboration between design, with its expertise in visualisation practices, and the practice of large scale visualisations in natural sciences can be fruitful. Other means of visualisations can enable a “thick description of nature” that helps to question the dominant paradigms and that can serve as an alternative representational format. The difference between the primary notations and the final visualisations thus lies in the information they carry and the functions they fulfil. In order to process the visual information that they collect with their eyes, they have to translate it onto transportable means, such as field notebooks that enable them to store, fixate and transport it.
