Make Data Visible with Art!

                         As data increases, Artists are joining the Data Science Culture.

For the sake of clarity and understanding of the DAILY millions of tweets, millions of photo shares, and billions of viewed videos, art is the go to medium for data presentation. Visualization, design, and creativity are more important than ever in making sense of complex huge amounts of info stored in The Cloud. I’m so glad to see Art take its place in all this STEM business….(science, technology, engineering, and math!). This is truly Elementary…literally.

I was the ‘go to’ artist for my parochial grammar school class, creating large wall art clearly showing the subscriptions sold, bake sale profits, and annual fundraising event successes for all the families to see on their way to church! Big, easy to read, obvious to the casual passerby, every spot up the giraffe, rocket to the moon, and book added to the stack showed where we were thriving, and where we were challenged.

Pie Charts, diagrams, flow charts, and Infographics, often organically beautiful, tell the big story, with abstract symbols that still are clearly understood. From the fallen in WWII, to the lack of culture in Batislava, art transcends cultures, countries, and ideologies, to get the point across to the masses. In the moment ‘real time’ is even being incorporated in some website city maps so anyone can track the routes of buses and taxis, or even reported crime scenes happening in the Now Time.

Visual Arts are becoming more valuable as a means of making sense out of chaos, if only we ask the right questions, as an excess of data floods the world. This is what artists do, and have been doing forever. Gathering information and interpreting it is the basis of all the arts whether political, social, atmospheric, or flowers in the garden. Patterns of regularity and repetition have held the artists mind since the impressing of shapes into clay to record the phases of the moon. Let more artists view life through their own unique way of thinking, of perceiving, and use their personal language and media to do what they do best. It will help us all.

More info: google Mark Lombardi, or Time Magazine July 6, 2015.