Data visualizations are not just "pretty" data!

For this week we had to read Warren Sack's paper on the Aesthetics of Information Visualization. It looks like there are many questions about data visualizations, but perhaps a wrong idea about them would be that their job is to make data look “prettier,” as well easier to understand. There are other concepts like administration, body and language that Sack mentions in his book and help answer the question of Why do we make visualizations?

There are many aspects of conceptual art that are taken into data visualization. Another aspect one should pay attention when looking at a visualization is the administration of it. Whether it is democratic or bureaucratic, which would give a better picture of what the piece is aiming at.

“The art of governance,” or body of a visualization, is a point that I consider one should take in count since it is where exchanges of concepts or ideas between artist (and other people) are pictured.  Then, one should “look at the bodies, that are engaged and how these bodies are articulated, challenged, and represented by the visualizations,” as Sack mentions in his article.

PDPal does a great job on representing the way in which people are linked.

The idea behind PDPal represents the “social network” that sacks mentions, and I believe it works well to represent an art of network since people are able to share their artworks with others and link them together.

In the end, the “user friendly-ness” or "pretty-ness" of a visualization shouldn't be what to look for all the time. Its administration, body and network might give us an understanding of the reason it was made, which could lead to the appreciation of how the people can be joined inside  one big art network, and how each one of them (the bodies) take an important part to create the actual piece!