UT Shield

Art Sci Vis Intersections

Expanded Vocabularies

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

One of the team’s largest focuses is on the concept of “expanded visual vocabularies” for scientific visualization. The rapidly increasing size, density, and complexity of environmental simulation data requires advanced visualization methods that allow scientists and researchers to parse multiple, co-located variables rapidly and intuitively.

Further, as this data is used increasingly to communicate complex concepts to a lay audience, the more aligned with the concepts the data is representing, the more effective.

How can we draw on artistic theory and practice to improve the vocabulary of visualization? Can we move away from sterile, standardized, computer-generated components and toward hand-made artifacts, colors drawn from natural environments, and textures pulled from the real world?

This research thrust investigates these questions and more.

ARTIFACT-BASED RENDERING

Artifact-Based Rendering (ABR) is a framework that includes tools and processes that enable digital visualizations to incorporate physical media. Created with artists and designers in mind, ABR is a technical foundation and the input channel for Sculpting Visualization’s project to enrich the visual vocabulary of scientific visualization through hand-crafted or naturally occurring objects. 

Artifact-Based Rendering is grounded in metaphors of printmaking, connecting our work in complex graphics processes with the practices of the artistic community. ABR layers glyphs, lines, and surfaces with color and shape the way a printmaker might approach image-making in their studio.

The user interface has five primary workable components:

  • Key Data: geometric representations of your data (points, lines, surfaces), loaded from VTK unstructured grid files, each piece of key data has associated scalar & vector variables
  • Data Impressions: Your “layers” of data in the visualization. Apply variables and visual elements to each data impression, and watch as they are composed in real time in your visualization.
  • Data Palette: the panel on the left-hand side which displays data impressions and loaded variables for your data.
  • Composition Panel: the central window into which data impressions are dragged. Each set of data impressions + colormaps, glyphs, streamlines, etc. is called a “plate,” sticking with the printmaking metaphors. Use this panel like you would in Photoshop, adding visual elements as you see fit. More information on this can be found further along in this instructional guide.
  • Design Palette: the panel on the right-hand side which displays all design options for the elements that comprise your visualization.

Expanded Visualization Vocabularies

ABR enables artists and designers to leverage their practices in the visualization space. This capability includes expanding the visual vocabulary of scientific visualization—redefining the visual components used in data representations in a shift toward human- and nature-made glyphs, textures, lines and colors. This shift shortens the distance between data and the natural phenomena they represent and opens new possibilities for visually distinguishing and communicating intra-variate dynamics in complex visualizations.

ABR Libraries

The ABR library catalogs glyphs, lines, colormaps, and textures created by Francesca Samsel, professional artist and co-PI of the Sculpting Vis Collaborative. Each of these assets is usable in the Artifact-Based Rendering program. Click here to access the online library of vis assets.

ASSOCIATED PUBLISHED ARTICLES

×