Approaching Landscape: Cognition, Visualization and

Animation

Marco Ruocco

Department of Geography

University of California at Santa Barbara

Advisor: Dan Montello

Outline

• Approaching landscape• The cognition of landscape• Landscape visualization and animation• Information landscapes• GUIs for information spaces• Future directions

Approaching landscape: a personal note

• Early interest in landscape visualization and computer graphics

• The physical landscape: GIS and terrain modeling• From the physical-objective to the cognitive-

subjective landscape, mediated by the human mind

• Landscape is also a suitable context to study cognition, visualization and aesthetics in general

Perceptual landscapes

• Origins of term “landscape” rooted in the perceptual concept of region visible from a point of view

• Granö (1929): egocentric and perceptual partitioning of geographic space in which landscape is defined by a perceptual range

• Landscape as an environment characterized by a determined scale and "bounded" by perceptual parameters: the range of vision and/or the view frame through which observation occurs (e.g. the frame of a painting or a camera)

Landscape information

• Landscape information is the environmental invariants contained in a landscape

• Dual nature: perspective and invariant-field, epistemology and ontology

• Affordances• Arguably information is the base of our

“experience” of landscape

Landscape aesthetics

• Not the study of beauty in art, but the study of an appreciative and evaluative relationship with landscape

• Landscape aesthetics considered by some a primary form of aesthetics

• Adopting an information-based view of aesthetics, rooted in evolutionary and environmental psychology

Landscape aesthetics (2)

• Kaplan (1975): the four informational factors of landscape aesthetics

Understanding Exploration

Immediate Coherence Complexity

Inferred or Predicted

Legibility Mystery

Spatial knowledge

• Knowledge of the environment obtained from environmental information pick-up

• Includes spatial elements (landmarks, routes, etc.) and form characteristics of land surface

• Completes the concept of “experience”• Cognitive maps vs. higher order perception

Landscape visualization and animation

• Landscape visualization and animation used to build “surrogates” of real world landscapes

• Landscape modeling is the process by which the landscape model is constructed

• Animation design is the process by which the method of exploration of landscape is designed

• Focus here is on animation design: i.e. trajectories and specific instances of landscape exploration

Purpose of research

• Main aim is to consider how people respond to landscape through landscape visualizations

• Study provides an insight into how to manage the ability of landscape visualizations to affect people’s emotions

• Knowledge of emotional implications of landscape visualization will help make better landscape visual products

• Research about landscape through visualization, not only about landscape visualization

Research framework

• What is the linkage between landscape information and landscape “experience”?

• Answer researched in a low-level analysis of landscape cognition

• Landscape visualization provides an environment to study specific conditions

• Now considering several independent variables influencing landscape information: trajectory, profile, landscape complexity, etc.

Pilot study 1- trajectories

• Does a different camera trajectory elicit different landscape “experiences”?

• “experience” = spatial knowledge, aesthetics, sense of place

• Design: between-subject, N=14• Stimuli: two landscape animations crossing the

system of canyons of Santa Catalina Island at different altitudes (CA - USA)

• Instruments: self-report sketch maps (plan and profile views), Likert-scale questions about "experience"

Visualization of Santa Catalina Island

• Developed in World Construction Set v3

• Original island DEM • Simple, 3-ecosystem

vegetation model (woodland, bush, grass) distributed according to elevation

Trajectory 1 – terrain following

• Low altitude (25 m), terrain following, no trajectory smoothing

• 3 main ridges, 4 valleys• 660 frames (22 sec)

Trajectory 1 - Animation

Trajectory 2 – High altitude

• High elevation (reference 550 m), no terrain following, maximum trajectory smoothing, same fly-over area as trajectory 1

• 660 frames (22 sec)

Trajectory 2 - Animation

Pilot study 1 - results

• Due to small sample size, only suggestive• Great variability in sketch maps, but participants

able to record complex environmental stimuli• Significance testing: participants in High

Elevation trajectory condition had a stronger impression of knowledge (layout view) and were more curious (expected novelty) than participants in the Terrain Following condition

• Trajectory suggested as influencing landscape “experience”. Viable testing strategy

Pilot study 2 - topography

• Still ongoing• From visualization design and exploration to

landscape study• Considers a specific landform and monitors

“experience” along a single trajectory over it• The idea is to experimentally control landscape

information and explore its link to “experience”

Pilot study 2 - landscape

• Catalina dataset, terrain vertical exaggeration 1.5X

• For increased experimental control, single ecosystem with uniform distribution of grass, bush and rock textures

Pilot study 2 - trajectory

• Single Terrain Following trajectory (elevation 20m). • Broad subdivision in Climb, Top and Descent (see next)

Pilot Experiment 2 - Animation

Vista - Transition• From ideas in ecological psychology, the concept of subdividing animation

sequences in segments, based on differences in the “perspective structure” of the images

Vista Transition Vista

Summary of landscape visualization research

• Basic research on human responses to landscape• Possible application in areas where detailed

knowledge is required or would be useful (e.g. interface design)

• Useful topic to learn about cognition and visualization in combination

• Not much research done in this area

Information landscapes

• Landscape and information visualization• Landscape as something we have evolved to

perceive: information collections seen as landscapes might be easier to navigate and understand

• The Spacecast project: Sara Fabrikant, Dan Montello, Richard Middleton, Marco Ruocco

• Landscape last step of a research process starting from basic 2D graphic principles: points, lines, areas, colors.

• Towards testing 3D landscape metaphors

Spacecast studies

• Spacecast as interface design: fundamental design principles investigated before their application to actual interfaces

• Testing conducted on the effect of visual metaphors (points, networks, regions) and visual variables (color, arrangement, etc.) on the evaluation of similarity in information spaces

• For example, ability of networks to override participants’ evaluations of similarity based on straight-line distance

Example: network-metric effect

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GUI design for information spaces

• Within Spacecast, GUIs (Graphical User Interface) have been developed for navigating information spaces and making testing interfaces. Programming effort coupled with testing methodologies.

• Interfaces based on ArcMap/Visual Basic • User Testing strategies, Cognitive Walkthroughs,

Think-Aloud Protocols• Example: in an interface to navigate information

spaces subjects were tested on the ability to navigate (i.e. to replicate a paper display)

Future directions

• Interest in landscape from many perspectives: – Basic (perceptual and cognitive foundations) – Applied (landscape visualization for planning)– “Technological” (visualization tools/interfaces)– Humanities (geographer’s cultural landscape)– Art (visual media: Cinema, Media Arts)

Future directions (2)• However, those interests might converge on a common

goal. Example: idea of landscape “documentation”– World Heritage Sites and Landscapes– Convergence of media, theories and tools to better

know and convey to people the global resource of landscape and its past, present and future status

– In practical terms, the development of a method to systematically support the process of definition and conservation of heritage landscapes by means of visualization

Future directions (3)

• Visualization tools and interfaces– Specific needs from landscape animation– Possible applications to design algorithms that

define trajectories based on aesthetics– Design interfaces with better control on

trajectory and with “servo” methods for adapting trajectories to topographic characteristics

– “Assisted” real-time interfaces

Questions?

Thank You!