Linda Freyberg Information and Image Science
Linda is working on the project "Restaging Fashion". She is a PhD researcher at Leuphana Universität Lüneburg. Her research areas are Iconicity, Diagrammatic Reasoning, Visualization, Semiotics and Information Theory.
After completing her Magister degree in Library and Information Science and Art History at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2011, she worked in the project “dimekon” at Computer and Media Service at Humboldt-Universität.
From 2014-16 she coordinated the research project “mylibrARy” at the University of Applied Sciences in Potsdam in which the potential of Augmented Reality in libraries was explored and several apps with AR-elements were created. After that she was part of the coordination of the Open Access policy for Brandenburg and coordinated a manual on legal issues in Citizen Science projects at Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin. She is an editor of the Open Access journal LIBREAS.Library ideas.
In 2020 she submitted her PhD thesis “Iconicity in Information”, which deals with the iconic dimension of Knowledge Organization Sytems and the epistemic potential of Iconicity in the realm of digital cultural objects. In an interdisciplinary approach referring to image and sign theories, the practice of visualization as well as recent and historical developments in the theory and modeling of Knowledge Organization Systems are analyzed. By developing a theoretical framework mainly referring to the theories of Charles Sanders Peirce Linda’s research offers an approach for the understanding of visualization.
Projects Contributions
Publications Published Works
Iconicity as Simultaneous Plurality. Beyond the Restraints of Formal Knowledge Organization Systems
In this paper the relevance of Charles Sanders Peirce’s work in the realm of digital knowledge organization (KO) as a contribution to the challenges of the knowledge or information society is demonstrated. In particular his groundbreaking ideas about the diagrammatic aspect of relational logic are crucial and present him as a pioneer of Strukturwissenschaft (Formal Sciences). Following an operational definition of iconicity it is argued that knowledge organization systems (KOS), which formally describe the properties of objects and their relations to each other, always have an iconic dimension that is even more obvious in digital environments. To point out this aspect the development from traditional KOS to digital formal languages is elaborated in order to introduce the area of appliance. The sophisticated metadata structure of the cultural heritage database Europeana as well as simple visualizations including the relations of artists serve as examples in this paper. The leading question is: How can this research facilitate the development of KOS going beyond existing formal constraints? With the logician Sun-Joo Shin it is argued that iconic ambiguity is in fact a simultaneous plurality and does not necessarily end up in contradiction. Referring to Peirce’s Existential Graphs (EGs) Shin proposed a productive differentiation between formal and graphical logic based on the parameters of accuracy and efficiency while Iconicity is enabling the possibility of multiple readings.
Density of Knowledge Organization Systems
In this paper the category of density is introduced as a parameter
for the measurement of the level of semantic contextualization
of Knowledge Organization Systems. Based on previous research
regarding the detailedness of description on a metadata level the
concept of network density and iconicity of a system as an indicator
for the accessibility and usability will be considered. Hence this
approach takes the iconic dimension of Knowledge Organization
Systems (KOS) in addition to their sentential foundation into account.
In particular the metadata structure of the cultural heritage
database Europeana and its diagrammatic dimension serves as an
example. The theoretical foundation of this research is provided
by Charles Sanders Peirce’s concepts of signs and his concept of
iconicity.
Ikonizität als Erkenntnismittel – Vollständigkeit, Verständlichkeit und Kontextualisierung als Grundprinzipien der Visualisierung
Das hohe Aufkommen und die vermehrte Relevanz digitaler Information haben den Bereich der Erschließung, Organisation und Vermittlung von Wissen nachhaltig verändert. Vilém Flusser wies bereits 1978 auf das „Ansteigen der Wichtigkeit von zweidimensionalen Codes“ (Flusser 1998: 22) in unserer Kultur hin, womit er die Kommunikation mittels Oberflächen im Gegensatz zu den linearen Medien der „eindimensionalen Codes“, wie das Alphabet meinte. Diese Oberflächen sind graphisch konstituiert und auch das Web selbst ist ein visuelles Medium auf struktureller Ebene. In diesem Sinne konstatiert auch Horst Bredekamp: „Die hochtechnisierter Gesellschaften durchleben eine Phase der kopernikanischen Wende von der Dominanz der Sprache zur Hegemonie des Bildes.“ (Bredekamp 2000: 102). Die Beschreibung und Analyse des Phänomens Bildlichkeit erfordert eine Bildtheorie, die sowohl in der Lage ist, traditionelle Bildformen als auch digitale Bilder zu adressieren und alle gesellschaftlichen Anwendungsbereiche, von künstlerischen über alltäglichen hin zu wissenschaftlichen Ausdrucksformen einzuschließen oder wie John Michael Krois es formuliert: „Eine Bildtheorie können wir dadurch testen, dass wir nachschauen, ob sie die sonderbarsten Eigenschaften von Bildern verständlich machen kann.“ (Krois 2011: 140)