Assignment 7: Documentary Data Visualization Summary

By: Irina Shadyuk

For this assignment I chose to talk about the one of moving images/infographics from the video “Nepal/ China: How Mountains Became Borders,” by Johnny Harris. In this video, a story unravels of a groups of people called the “Bon” whose way of life has been slowly taken away by borders created through some of the tallest mountains in the world. To help viewers understand the relationship between these different countries and boarders Harris uses creative technics, one of which I will be talking about today.

All of the images that I will be using throughout this presentation were made by Johnny Harris and all come from his previously mentioned video, about the borders in China/ Nepal. In this image the viewers are presented with a semi-realistic map of Tibet. The story gets a little bit confusing, so by using just one simple word that only gives away the location, Harris voids the viewers of any other distractions and allows them to focus on the story that is about to be told. Tibet is the origin of Bon people who have settled in the Himalayas 1,200 years ago.

The image begins to zoom out and a moving white line draws the borders of what is now known as China. There are now two key words on this map, and the viewers can see what used to be Tibet was encompassed into the country of China. Again, the simplicity of this infographic is key to the unraveling of this story in a manner that will be easy to understand and see.

The previous image switches the words “Tibet” to the words “Nepal” and allows the viewers to see the transition of the countries.

This image of Nepal zooms in a once again a white line traces the new borders that establish Nepal as separate from China. When comparing the previous images, the audience can see that what used to be Tibet has been replaced with what is now Nepal and China. This brings the spectators to the sad realization of how unfairly the Empire of Tibet was basically taken away by a country with far more power. At this point in the video, the history of the Bon is concluded and the story of their unfortunate present begins.

For this next part, this image and following tie together the ending of this sad story. Previously, there was an invisible border, as shown by the tracing of white, that separated Nepal and China, and the Bon settled in the middle of this border, in the Himalayas, the area highlighted in red. Many of these people relied on their mobility to be able to take the yak and graze in a new place every year, especially across the imaginary boarders.

However, this has now come to an end .In this final image, it is seen that the previously white- tracing of a boarder has now become a solid red, to symbolize the construction of an actual border, which now prevents the yak grazing families from maintaining that way of life.

Though I have separately posted each picture, and added text for description, in the actual video, Johnny Harris uses a different technic. In the video, these images are constantly moving as the lines or boarders are being drawn on, and the words appear and disappear in synchrony to the audio of Johnny Harris, who explains the history and what is happening in each image as they are playing. The history of the Tibetans could have been easily lost in this video, for example through the use of a real map that would have had the names of all countries and cities within it. However, through the use of three simple words for three different countries, and a white tracing to signify boarders, Johnny has allowed this story to be simplified where to where even if he did not talk about each image, the moving images by themselves are enough to explain the story of Bon.