Staging Data Visualization Installations in Site-Specific Situations George Legrady * Media Arts & Technology Program University of California, Santa Barbara Angus Graeme Forbes † Department of Computer Science University of Illinois at Chicago ABSTRACT Five public artworks are presented that feature data visualization situated in site-specific installations, each with distinct conditions of data collection, data analysis, audience interaction, and data archiving. This paper describes unique features of these projects and notes solutions to issues related especially to the staging of visual representation. Based on an examination of these issues, ob- served in different settings throughout the last decade, the paper concludes with an overview of key considerations specific to pre- senting data visualization in site-specific locations. 1 I NTRODUCTION The field of data visualization explores the creation and analysis of visual representations of information. In most cases data visualiza- tion projects translate abstract data into a visual form that makes it easier to perceive relationships in the data [20]. Representing data in visual form is a complex practice that is similar in approach to the structuring of language through rules of syntax and gram- mar where discrete units such as characters and words are com- bined to create meaning. Through the ordering of visual primitives, such as form, space, color, line, dimensions, scale, balance, tex- ture, direction, and motion, visual representation similarly involves a construction of meaning [1]. Kosara’s discussion of visualization criticism underscores that visualization is both context and goal de- pendent, and that intention determines a visualization’s emphasis on communication clarity and/or visual impact [6]. Data visualiza- tion, which began as a critical tool in scientific inquiry and other disciplines necessitating the statistical mapping of data, has in the past decade crossed-over into the arts, becoming a new hybridized artform [4, 15]. This new genre explores visual form through com- putational means, and has led to more abstracted outcomes with an emphasis on aesthetic exploration. Standard delivery of data visualization results are normally pre- sented in print or on screens. Interaction is usually limited to con- ventional keyboard and mouse use mediated by a graphical user interface. In most cases, the visualization is independent of the context within which it is presented. Public presentation of data vi- sualization can take either of two approaches. In the first approach, the content has no connection to the site where it is presented. For example, the location of a billboard is usually predetermined and the lifespan of each particular advertisement it displays is usually brief. In the second approach, the visual display has specific func- tionality or relationship that creates an engagement with the site where it is located, perhaps featuring visualized content that origi- nates or reflects back onto the site. Signage that overtly announces a building’s function and that has a direct indexical relation to its location is one example of this. A site-specific location, such as Times Square, may impose visual elements that, by virtue of it’s location, function symbolically to signify spectacle. * e-mail: legrady@mat.ucsb.edu † e-mail: aforbes@uic.edu In the early 1970s, the architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown published “Learning from Las Vegas,” a challenging, seminal book about the role of spectacle signage, commercial bill- boards, and electronic signs that illuminate the Las Vegas urban landscape [18]. Their analysis acknowledged that the billboards, generally considered as an aesthetic detriment to the landscape, were in fact significant, integrated architectural elements, and that it was necessary to acknowledge their impact in the scenery. In the same time period, the artworld began to expand its ac- tivities beyond exhibiting artworks in the enclosed spaces charac- teristic of galleries and museums to creations in the environment and other sites considered public or outside the traditional context of artistic and visual experiences [8]. This new direction in art, to some degree stimulated by public commissions, set in motion a research-style approach to analyzing the information layers of site- specificity. It implied that artworks needed to be created so as to take into consideration the impact of where they were situated, and how an artistic intervention would transform the site. Such an ap- proach is well exemplified by the artist John Roloff’s statement de- scribing what his planning methodology involves: “strategies em- ploying inversions, intrusions, displacements, assemblages and ex- tended analogies/metaphors, often in geologic parlance, of existing, often predictable, ecological beliefs and systems in order to disrupt, re-cast and extrapolate their epistemological, ontological and asso- ciative potential” [14]. Figure 1: A photo showing a gallery visitor contributing data to the Pockets Full of Memories installation. The conceptual development of temporary and permanent site- specific data visualization projects involves extensive study of the contexts within which the work is to exist. This is similar to the preliminary studies necessary for the planning of an architectural work. These include: a review of the function of the space; what information is generated within the space and the use of the space; what kinds of human circulation take place during what time peri- ods; what are the lighting and acoustic conditions; and what may be best locations where to situate the space, among other consider- ations. 85 Proceedings of the IEEE VIS 2014 Arts Program, VISAP'14: Art+Interpretation, Paris, France, November 9th-14th 2014