California Drought Impact: Multimodal Data Representation to Predict the Water Cycle Yoon Chung Han* University of California, Santa Barbara California State University, Fullerton Figure 1: Six data sculptures of California drought from 2011 to 2016 (left) and an interactive audiovisual installation (right) ABSTRACT We present our approach for visualizing and sonifying multivariate data describing California’s drought using physical data sculptures and projection-mapping images with user interactions. We provide an interaction tool to depict the causes and impact of the drought and promote awareness of water consumption. It offers an opportunity to experience a metamorphosis of water and its impact on the drought. Prototypes of an interactive multimodal data visualization and sonification depict the past, present, and future of the drought by altering water morphology (water metamorphosis) which occurs as a result of climate changes. Thus, this multimodal data representation not only provides an aesthetically meaningful visualization but also encourages good environmental stewardship using the hybrid practices of art and design. This data representation also leads to a new media interactive interface utilizing audio synthesis, visualization, and real-time interaction. In this paper, we describe the design process and illustrate how this interface was developed based on environmental issues and can also be applied to other interactive media artwork to visually reveal informative patterns. Keywords: Multimodal data visualization, california drought data, data art, data visualization, data sonification, data sculpture Index Terms: [Arts and Humanities]: Fine Arts, Literature; H.5.m. [Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI)]: Miscellaneous. H.5.2 [Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI)]: User Interfaces. 1 INTRODUCTION California has been experiencing its most severe drought in the past five years [1]. Drought has affected water changes and the ecosystem, which has become an inspiration and great resource to artists and designers because it had a significant impact on the environment. Previous data visualizations using California drought data primarily depicted its impact on the purpose of predictive analysis and scientific investigations (Section 2.2 for more details); however, it has been hard to find aesthetically meaningful visualizations/sonfications or artistic visualizations yet. Because the California drought has been driven from many types of physical data in nature, such as water, soil, or snow records, a new way of data representations might be necessary to deliver the narratives of the data and reflect the our environment much closer. Furthermore, although visual data is capable of surpassing other senses, the eyes are not the only sensory organs to induce perception. Diverse materials, fabrication techniques and multi-sensory interpretations have been used in the field of data visualization in these days. New aesthetics of visualizations driven from the various materials and techniques will have great potential to raise the environmental issues by shifting the data over multiple sensory organs. The primary roles of conventional data visualization are to facilitate the understanding of the data, predict future outcomes, suggest possible solutions for improving the problems, and to raise awareness among the public. Interactive multimodal data representation using user interactions may enhance the roles of the conventional data visualization by developing the complex of environmental data in an innovative perspective. It may also lead to more active participations in taking actions to the drought from the public. These questions and * yoon@mat.ucsb.edu and yohan@fullerton.edu ** shankartiwari@csu.fullerton.edu Shankar Tiwari** California State University, Fullerton 7 Proceedings of the IEEE VIS 2016 Arts Program, VISAP’16: Metamorphoses, Baltimore, Maryland, October 23th-28th, 2016