Frame That Spam! Data-Crunching Artists Transform the World of Information, an interactive piece on wired.com, showcases several beautiful examples of art generated from data. The usual crew are well-represented — Aaron Koblin, Casey Reas — plus some names that were new to me.
Many of the pieces are more artsy and less “design-y” than the work we do at DMI, simply because the visualizations are intended to be more emotional than practical. I define practical as interpretable, meaning the data values could be extracted from the visual elements. A bar chart is easily interpretable: the height of each bar (y) represents a number, and its horizontal position (x) reflects another value (time or some other grouping). Waves and waves of technicolor text, in contrast, may be beautiful and evoke a general sense of the data involved, but is probably not easily interpreted, except by the algorithm that drew it.
I keep struggling with this artificial distinction between art and design, wondering why emotional pieces are labeled art, while more ostensibly functional pieces are considered design. Doesn’t good design evoke an emotional response? And can’t artwork be functional, too? I usually identify more as a designer than an artist, but I am beginning to question the usefulness of both of those terms. Traditionally, art was more purely expressive, and design more data-driven, but now that we have “fine artists” doing intensively data-driven work, the distinction is starting to feel outdated.
Image credit: Detail from Textour by Tim Walter.
