What is Emergent Meaning

One visualization in Diné philosophy is four small dots arranged in a circular sequence at 90°, 0°, 270°, and 180°. Each position is associated with a time of day, a season, a color, a type of stone, a time in the lifecycle, and a process of living and learning. I use Conceptual Blending Theory to explore this complex information space of small spatial stories that combine to form an “information system of information systems.” This approach to visual analytics uses reduction to human scale, which easily adapts itself to automated analysis and data configuration. This process reveals a previously unseen world and contributes new ideas to understanding both the creation of new visualizations and the decomposition of existing visualizations. This verifiable methodology can validate the steps in the decomposition process itself and also be used to predict the content of missing data.