Quarry Hill lies to the east of Leeds city centre and assembles educational institutions, working places and entertainment venues. Back in the Victorian era, it was once a residential area rich in back-to-back houses that accommodated a considerable number of working-class citizens. Due to the crowdedness as well as the severe sanitary condition in the area, Quarry Hill was classified as “unhealthy” and faced the pressing need for rectification.
In the following parts, the theory on data fiction, semiotics and social semiotics will be applied to clarify what Quarry Hill was and what it is.
Data and narrative are correlating with each other (Dourish and Gómez Cruz, 2018). “The transformation of social action into online quantified data” can be achieved through the process of datafication and provides possibility for “predicative analysis” (van Dijck, 2014, p.198). Similar to the emphasis on the symbolic processes based on data, “data fiction” deals with the “the imaginaries that instruct the production, processing and distribution of data” (Nadim, 2016, no pagination) and emphasises the subjectivity brought about by data, for instance, the preferences and purposes when coping with data (Dourish and GómezCruz, 2018).
In the midst of investigating how Quarry Hill was defined as “unhealthy”, no accurate or quantified standards have been found. The only possible clue was some generalised descriptions of the unhealthiness of Leeds in The Working Classes DwellingsAct (1890).In comparison, a relatively well-established standard, Health Index Scores, which includes approximately 70 indicators, has been formulated (Office for National Statistics, 2022). A broader concept has been applied to the indicators, including health outcomes, health-related behaviours, personal circumstances, as well as other extensive determinants of health tied to people's places of residence (Office for National Statistics, 2022). It can be inferred from the increasing accuracy and specification of health standards, that the number of indicators and components may grow from 70 to 140, 200, or even thousands as humans develop new methods for collecting ever more detailed data. This underscores the idea that data are always mediated by people and miscellaneous narratives which can act as either a carrier or an extension of data (Dourish and Gómez Cruz, 2018). As such, it is crucial to acknowledge the role of narrative in shaping data interpretation and to consider the limitations and impacts of narrative in data-driven analysis.
Apart from data fiction, semiotics also plays a vital part in understanding the healthiness of Quarry Hill. Semiotics focuses on the way in which meaning is constructed and can be deemed as “the study of anything that can be taken as a sign” (Aiello and Parry, 2020, p.44). For Ferdinand de Saussure, a sign is constituted by a signifier, the “physical form”, and a signified, the “mental form” (Danesi, 2017). And under his framework, the signs and connotative meanings conveyed through the signifiers will be identified (Danesi, 2017). In contrast, Charles Peirce views meaning not as the "quality of signs,"but as "intrinsically a process" that can be influenced by personal opinions within specific social and cultural contexts (Hodge & Kress, 1988,p.20). His theory on index, icon and symbol also stresses the idea that“specific sensory-affective ways” in which people subjectively hope to adopt are included in the process of creating a sign (Danesi, 2017, p.4). Unlike a fixed manner of meaning in traditional semiotics, from a social semiotic perspective, “meaning is always negotiating in the semiotic process” (Hodge and Kress, 1988, p.12). From a social semiotics perspective, unlike traditional semiotics, meaning is constantly being negotiated in the semiotic process (Hodge and Kress, 1988, p.12).
As for QuarryHill, the descriptions of ashpits, stables, and crowded living conditions among the residents in Quarry Hill unhealthy area, 1900: book of reference (v.4)conveyed a sense of unhealthiness which was attached to the area from then on, due to both the physical characteristics and people's perception of Quarry Hillas an unhealthy place. To illustrate this point, we attempt to demonstrate the process of how the connoted meanings of signs can be understood by presenting the AI-generated images and the interactive classification of healthy and unhealthy elements, which reminds people that the conventional way of perceiving the world through various signs may lead them away from the truth.
Reference:
Aiello, G. and Parry,K. 2020. Visual communication: understanding images in media culture. LosAngeles: SAGE.
Danesi, M. 2017. VisualRhetoric and Semiotic. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. [Online].[Accessed 23 April 2023]. Available from: https://oxfordre.com/communication/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228613-e-43
Dourish, P. andGómez Cruz, E. 2018. Datafication and Data Fiction: Narrating Data andNarrating with Data. Big Data & Society. 5 (2), [no pagination].
G. KressHalliday, M. A. K.1978. Language as social semiotic: the social interpretation of language and meaning. London: Edward Arnold.
Hodge, R. and G. Kress. 1988. Social Semiotics. Cambridge: Polity.
Office for National Statistics. 2022. Health in England: 2015 to 2020. [Online]. [Accessed 12 April 2023]. Available from: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandwellbeing/bulletins/healthinengland/2015to2020
van Dijck, J. 2014.Datafication, dataism and dataveillance: Big Data between scientific paradigm and ideology. Surveillance & Society. 12(2), pp. 197-208.