
The Line Between Data Vis and Data Art - sebg
http://lisacharlotterost.github.io/
======
abathur
I think Lisa's post may be conflating the task of the critic with the task of
the artist or designer. I don't think we'd try to argue that a band is
responsible for making clear to a critic whether they're trying to be punk-pop
or power-pop or whatever.

It's the critic's "job" to determine what sort of axes or factors are
important to the work at hand, define categories, and make cases for
membership.

"I can't tell whether this is data vis or data art" is a perfectly fine
response to someone's work, and if the artist/designer was trying to
accomplish or convey something that didn't come through, they'll probably take
that feedback to heart and work on it.

I suppose "Please make this clearly either data vis or data art so I can
comfortably evaluate/interpret it" is a fine response as well, but it's one
that seems to ignore the fact that the work can (and may deserve to) be
interpreted or criticized based on its own merits, and not how well it fits
into one category or another.

~~~
knowuh
It doesn't seem like you read her article. Or you don't understand the
distinction between fine art and design.

Lisa is stating that art and design serve different functions. "Design needs
to be functional" she sates. Art has different constraints and
responsibilities.

The artist or designer should know their intention, and audience. They are
producing a piece for either PS1 or the NYT.

Its not for the critic to work out the intentions of the artist / designer.

~~~
boomlinde
_> It doesn't seem like you read her article. Or you don't understand the
distinction between fine art and design._

Is this just a very convoluted way of saying that you disagree? The parent
post addresses a point made in the article, and I don't see anything in it
tackling the distinction between art and design in such a way that you could
possibly infer the parent's grasp of it.

 _> Its not for the critic to work out the intentions of the artist /
designer._

Yes it is, if the critic thinks that it is an important merit in judging the
work. Sometimes in galleries the artist will write a blurb about their ideas
and motivations or general background, and most designers work under
circumstances where they have to justify their design choices to someone else,
and if not, the critic might ask the artist/designer what they intended or
suppose an intention. In both cases the intentions may as well be irrelevant
if the work produces the desired effect.

The point that the parent post is making is that letting the intentions be
knows is purely for the benefit of those interested in judging a work on other
merits than those conveyed by the work itself. In design, that is usually
totally beside the point. The purpose of a visual design is to convey some
sort of information, and that information usually isn't the intention itself
(a classic counter-example is that of a button that says "Click here!"). As a
designer I might produce a cluttered, ugly looking chart to convey the idea
that the underlying data is really complex. As a work to be judged, that might
be interesting to know, but as a design it might as well have fulfilled its
purpose perfectly without ever explicitly mentioning it.

------
dahart
> tl;dr:I believe that the field of data vis would benefit from a clear line
> between art and design. I believe that we need that boundary to judge both
> forms according to different criteria and therefore more fairly.

Personally, I consider most data art to be pretty bad art, and furthermore if
it doesn't function as a decent data vis, then it is usually also meaningless
as art. There's far too much of images being made intentionally confusing to
convey the idea that the data is complex, rather than working to simplify. The
"art" examples in the article fall into this category, IMO.

Of course, this depends on the image we're talking about, and it depends on
what the artist or scientist was trying to achieve, but my own gut reaction is
that trying to separate vis from art more carefully isn't something I think
would help a lot.

"Design" is the name for the middle ground between form and function, and a
good design for a data-vis-art image, or anything else, is usually defined as
something that scores highly for both form and function. Personally, I would
like to see both data art and data vis evaluated on a design scale by default,
unless there are good reasons not to. Good data vis _should_ be aesthetic, and
good data art _should_ be meaningful.

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cwal37
I was actually thinking about this yesterday when the first draft of a graph I
was making looked nifty, so I removed the numbers and saved a clean copy[1].
There are plenty of issues data-wise: the colors repeat, lines appear and
disappear for no reason, without numbers of labels you can't draw much of
anything from it, but I found it to be inherently pretty despite the failure
to communicate much of anything effectively. I had to tweak it quite a bit[2]
to get across the information I wanted, and it definitely loses most of the
visual appeal (at least to me, I also accidentally have 2015 in the legend on
that revision despite not having 2015 data on the graph).

That's not to say you can't mingle art and information, I just think it's much
more difficult than producing either on its own.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/CWal37/status/676810362918977536](https://twitter.com/CWal37/status/676810362918977536)

[2]
[https://twitter.com/CWal37/status/676848722173698050](https://twitter.com/CWal37/status/676848722173698050)

------
stared
I came from scientific background (but turned into data science). From that
perspective, I've benefited a lot from the "design" site of data
visualization. I got a lot of inspiration by D3.js (even the color choice).
Another example is ggplot2 in R - while many plots can be done with the base
library, it's much more pleasant to create aesthetically appealing plots.

Sure, it is important to distinguish between goals. But to me "arts" and "vis"
are rather two axes, than categories. And I enjoy (and benefit from) the cross
pollination between these disciplines. (In this line "the only benefit" is to
me far more important than the urge to label things.)

------
stared
Actual link to this blog post (not just the blog) is:
[http://lisacharlotterost.github.io/2015/12/14/The-Line-
betwe...](http://lisacharlotterost.github.io/2015/12/14/The-Line-between-Data-
Vis-And-Data-Art/) (in any case, a nice reading!)

------
glxc
> ... I tried to make my students ask constantly: “What does it communicate
> me?”

I am pretty sure there is a word missing here, but am still letting it sink
in, with regards to the rest of the article :)

Great article though that makes a strong point

