Combination of Data and Art

Before I attend this meeting, I never thought that art and data can be combined. I used to consider data visualization as a kind of logical and sensible technology which is totally impersonal. So when Dubois said that his data visualization is a kind of art, I was totally stunned and confused. Looking at the video he showed, honestly, I couldn’t understand at all. I mean, I can understand from the aspect of data visualization which is a sensible way to show the hidden information of data, but I couldn’t see anything can be described as aesthetic. And he introduced himself that he is a professor in computer science area, then how could he call that as art?

After his speech, which described his work, I could see the reason why he said that his was making art. He was not only collecting data and analyze them, but also found the most aesthetic but direct way to show people the information of the data and how his way of analyzing data can be practical in our daily life. The “jumping out” words on the screen before the speech began confused me at first, but afterwards, I realized that it is really an amazing program, which can be really useful in our daily life. For example, if you saw someone you had a crush on but you didn’t have a chance to talk with that person, you can just describe that person with some words and use Dubois’ program to find the person highly match with your description. My example may not seem to be significant, but what if we use that into the search engine? Many people complain that the links given by the search engine are not consistent with their input, so with Dubois’ program, it might be much convenient. So where is the aesthetic aspect? After the speech, I went to the exhibition and saw the maps he analyzed. Different places have different popular words. I was with several American friends and they found the results are pretty sensible. The word for Hawaii is Asian because a lot of Asians are living there; the word for Lewisburg is Diligence because Bucknell is here. This kind of mapping tech he used in data visualization is mixed with art.

On the side wall of the exhibition is his data visualization of US president of their frequently used words. From my view, the results he showed on the wall is corresponding to that president. Lincoln’s word is definitely Emancipation, Andrew Jackson’s word is sensibly Bank. (I really hope that I could have this when I was learning U.S. history.)

However, if I’m asked the most impressive thing of Dubois, I would say the data he used is dating profile. I have never heard before that date profile which is not a serious data source can also be used to collect data. And now I realized that the date profile he used is exactly the reason why his mapping is not merely aesthetic from the looking, but also the emotion. On his map, data is not just words or numbers but also something accompanied with people’s emotion. It is really amazing that someone who doesn’t live in US most of the time in the past can make such a unique analyze of words.

Dubois’ experience and achievement makes me think:

  1. Data collection doesn’t mean that as much data resource as possible is good;
  2. Data visualization is being innovated, which is not circumscribed by stacked or line graph, but substituted by wordles or maps.
  3. Data visualization is not just a statistic work but also involves art, just like engineers need to design something not only useful but also good looking.

I really enjoyed Dubois’ speech, especially his answer to Tyler’s question: Admire entrepreneur instead of businessman because entrepreneur trades with creations and innovations. (Sorry I can’t recall the exact words he said.)


Posted

in

by

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *