Highlights from the IEEE VIS 2014 Arts Program (VISAP’14): Part 3

This special section highlights presentations and artworks from the IEEE VIS Arts Program, or VISAP, which includes both an art exhibition and peer-reviewed papers sessions. Together they provide a forum that encourages dialogue about the relationship between aesthetics and visualization and for discussing the potential roles of artists, humanities scholars and designers in foundational research in information visualization.

The theme for VISAP’14 was Art+Interpretation. In the visualization community, significant emphasis has recently been placed on notions such as indicating uncertainty, accurately portraying data provenance and using narrative techniques to aid in transmitting information more effectively. Visualization systems not only provide a representation of data collections but also, wittingly or unwittingly, provide an interpretation of that data. Hence, potential areas of overlap between art and research practices are becoming more discernible, which raises the following key questions: Can artistic practice offer insight into thinking about the effective interpretability of complex data? Conversely, can visualization research offer quantifiable methods to artists seeking to investigate and represent cultural phenomena? Featured in this special section are a selection of the VISAP’14 artists and authors, each of whom approached the theme of Art+Interpretation in a compelling way, presenting novel work that investigates relationships between research and practice and emphasizes the interpretative or narrative aspects of scientific or cultural exploration.

VISAP’14 took place 9–14 November in Paris, France. It was co-chaired by Angus Forbes and Fanny Chevalier, with Lauren Thorson serving as design chair. More information about VISAP’14, including the exhibition catalog and the online proceedings, can be found at <http://visap.uic.edu/2014>.

In this issue:

Shannon C. McMullen and Fabian Winkler: Soybots: Mobile Micro-Gardens	507
Patricio Dávila et al.: Expressive Cartography, Boundary Objects and the Aesthetics of Public Visualization	509
Till Nagel and Benedikt Gross: Shanghai Metro Flow: Multiple Perspectives into a Subway System	511
Daria Tsoupikova et al.: Hearts and Minds: The Interrogations Project	513

Previously published in Leonardo Vol. 50, No. 2 (2017):

George Legrady and Angus Graeme Forbes: Data in Context: Conceptualizing Site-Specific Visualization Projects

Chao Feng, Lyn Bartram and Diane Gromala: Beyond Data: Abstract Motionscapes as Affective Visualization

Margaret Dolinsky and Roger P. Hangarter: The Living Canvas: Interactive Chloroplasts

Kim Albrecht, Marian Dörk and Boris Müller: Culturegraphy