Visualizing the Weird and the Eerie

TL;DR

This paper explores how data visualization can evoke feelings of the weird and eerie to enhance viewer engagement and awareness of unseen forces, especially amid ecological and economic crises.

Contribution

It applies Mark Fisher's concepts of the weird and eerie to data visualization, proposing design strategies to evoke these impressions and foster critical engagement.

Findings

Visualization can evoke feelings of uncertainty and suspicion.

Eliciting the weird and eerie enhances viewer awareness of unseen forces.

Such visualizations are especially relevant during ecological and economic disruptions.

Abstract

In this brief essay, I reflect on how Mark Fisher's definitions of the weird and the eerie could be applied in communicative data visualization. I ask how visualization designers might elicit these two impressions when a viewer is engaging with multimodal representations of data. I argue that there are situations in which viewers should feel uncertain or suspicious of unseen forces that account for the presence or absence of audiovisual patterns. Finally, I conclude that the ability to appreciate the weird and the eerie in data is particularly important at this moment in history, one marked by significant ecological and economic disruption.