Engaging Data-Art: Conducting a Public Hands-On Workshop

TL;DR

This paper presents a public, hands-on data-art workshop designed to teach basic visualization skills while engaging a broad age range. It organizes the session into three parts—data interpretation, sketching, and data-sketching—guided by a three-part mantra and reinforced with live demonstrations and patient facilitation. The workshop is integrated with accompanying university coursework and an open exhibition, with cheat sheets and ethics considerations to support learning beyond the event. Findings indicate positive participant engagement, skill gains, and a replicable blueprint for future public data-art education that blends storytelling, design reasoning, and exhibition formats.

Abstract

Data-art blends visualisation, data science, and artistic expression. It allows people to transform information and data into exciting and interesting visual narratives. Hosting a public data-art hands-on workshop enables participants to engage with data and learn fundamental visualisation techniques. However, being a public event, it presents a range of challenges. We outline our approach to organising and conducting a public workshop, that caters to a wide age range, from children to adults. We divide the tutorial into three sections, focusing on data, sketching skills and visualisation. We place emphasis on public engagement, and ensure that participants have fun while learning new skills.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: Four examples used at the start of the workshop. a) 'student journey' showing physical paper cars of stripes of colour representative of their grades. b) 'Poppy field' visualisation https://www.poppyfield.org using poppies to present war fatalities. World health data represented by Chernoff facesChernoff1973use, artwork by author. Ceramic poppies in Caernarfon castle, UK. Poppies to commemorate each death in the British and Colonial forces of World War I; photograph by author.
• Figure 2: 'Soundscapes' by author. Sound is turned into circles. Louder sounds are mapped to larger circles, higher pitches are lower down the screen, and time moves to the right.
• Figure 3: The sketch round your hand activity, where participants add five sketches, one to each finger: smiley face, favourite shape and colour, hobby or game they play, favourite food or drink, and clothing or accessory.
• Figure 4: Two distinct visualisations depict fourteen books, illustrating whether the book was enjoyed, completed, recommended, and other related factors. The top visualisation is inspired by the parallel coordinates plot (PCP) technique inselberg1990parallel, while the bottom visualisation presents a brief sentence indicating enjoyment -- represented by an upward line if the book was enjoyed, or a drooping plant stem if it was not.
• Figure 5: Participants translated the parallel plot design into action during the "Food Critic" activity, where they evaluated images of various burgers, fries, and other fast-food items commonly found at fast-food outlets. One participant (shown in the right sketch) strongly disliked the apple slices and salad, going so far as to cover the image with a white scrap of paper.