Printmaking, Puzzles, and Studio Closets: Using Artistic Metaphors to Reimagine the User Interface for Designing Immersive Visualizations

TL;DR

This paper introduces an artistic metaphor-based, web-accessible interface for designing immersive 3D multivariate data visualizations, enabling artists to engage with complex scientific data through familiar creative processes.

Contribution

It presents a novel, artist-friendly visualization interface that combines artistic metaphors with visual programming, facilitating engagement with complex scientific data in VR and AR environments.

Findings

Artists found the interface intuitive and inspiring.

Early feedback indicates increased engagement with scientific data.

The web-based tool enables real-time, immersive visualization design.

Abstract

We, as a society, need artists to help us interpret and explain science, but what does an artist's studio look like when today's science is built upon the language of large, increasingly complex data? This paper presents a data visualization design interface that lifts the barriers for artists to engage with actively studied, 3D multivariate datasets. To accomplish this, the interface must weave together the need for creative artistic processes and the challenging constraints of real-time, data-driven 3D computer graphics. The result is an interface for a technical process, but technical in the way artistic printmaking is technical, not in the sense of computer scripting and programming. Using metaphor, computer graphics algorithms and shader program parameters are reimagined as tools in an artist's printmaking studio. These artistic metaphors and language are merged with a puzzle-piece approach to visual programming and matching iconography. Finally, artists access the interface using a web browser, making it possible to design immersive multivariate data visualizations that can be displayed in VR and AR environments using familiar drawing tablets and touch screens. We report on insights from the interdisciplinary design of the interface and early feedback from artists.