ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we disassemble representational graphics to look at their parts. By analyzing the graphical and cognitive components of graphics, we try to understand how and why graphs work. Sheena Rogers (1) correctly called veridicality the property exhibited by representational drawings. The extraordinary diversity of graphic applications goes well beyond the pure representational function, however. The diagram presented in Figure 1.1, even if incomplete, offers an overview of this diversity. In this chapter, I survey the different threads of the diagram and their corresponding examples. I begin with thread number 2 and with a set of graphic representations for objects and scenes that are related to veridicality by stronger and weaker connections. These examples demonstrate how veridicality is not an “allor-nothing” quality. Instead, it can possess different gradations, from the strong connection between a real object and its representation that one finds in trompe l’oeil to the absence of any correspondence that one finds in abstract drawing. Next, I discuss thread number 3. In the drawings that belong to this thread, there is no relationship of veridicality between graphic productions and the represented segments of reality. There is, however, a visually compelling correspondence between nonvisual aspects of reality and the graphic symbols used to represent them. These symbols possess an intrinsic potential for communication, based on the functional properties of the visual system, but the communication does not require a correspondence between the drawing and the visible world.
