Landscapes of Feeling, Arenas of Action: Information Visualization as Art Practice

Abstract

Discussing his recent artworks alongside those by Abigail Reynolds, Lucy Kimbell and Christian Nold, the author examines emerging phenomena in the digital and wider fine arts whereby information visualization practices are approached as creative media. By laying bare points of convergence and divergence between artistic and scientific approaches, the article develops a number of arguments that show how the pictures produced by information visualization may be reframed within wider aesthetic and critical frameworks. Thus the author explores how models of image production derived from processes of scientific inquiry expand possibilities for the visual arts to develop new types of hybrid images that consist of data grounded both in material realities and in symbolic and aesthetic elements.

Visualizing the News: Mutant Barcodes and Geographies of Conflict

“…As we have written elsewhere [4] by being sensitive to the role affective experience can play in design of visualization, practices in this area can be aligned with the more generalized discursive and critical functions commonly found in the visual and wider arts, and in doing so can show how they can function to generate new or alternative narratives and perceptions of the world beyond their normative cognitive roles. In this work we show that these methods can be applied more broadly to scrutinize media reports through time or, put another way, to use visualization to tell stories about the storytellers.…”

Data-driven visibility

“…However, as suggested by Corby (2008) artist-led explorations of data may invoke questions of the limits of such representation and the perceived knowledge that can be generated from it. In his own work Maxima-Minima (2015) a complete dataset for the project The Northern Polar Studies (2015) is printed out and piled meticulously on tables in the gallery space, revealing the sheer volume of data accumulated in the project.…”

Data visualization as creative art practice

“…More specifically, aesthetics has become a vital dimension of data visualization. In digital art practices, data visualization has been used as a creative approach, especially since the late 1990s (Corby, 2008). Research has explored the benefits of data visualization in contemporary visual arts practice and the production of creative artifacts.…”