The VISAP’16 Call for Entries / Call for Papers
Artists, graphic designers, and visualization researchers share common goals: to make things visible which are normally difficult to see, and to enable reasoning about information that we might otherwise remain ignorant of. A conventional explanation of the differences between creative practice and visualization research is that artistic exploration raises new questions while visualization research aims to help domain experts answer existing questions. However, these categorizations may be oversimplified. Media artists create opportunities for reflecting on cultural issues, but also highlight how we absorb technology and explore how the exposure to tremendous amounts of data affects our daily lives. Visualization researchers raise new questions by pushing the boundaries of what we can perceive when introducing new interactions with and representations of complex data.
The theme for VISAP’16, the IEEE VIS 2016 Arts Program, is Metamorphoses. We encourage artists, designers, and researchers to think about transformation as a fundamental component of the pipeline from raw data to meaning. In Ovid’s epic poem— our thematic inspiration— transformations are often capricious occurrences, arising from the whim or wrath of a Greek god or goddess, yet nonetheless serve to explain the mysteries of the natural world and social order. In the realm of science, the movement from observation to hypothesis to measurement is, ideally, quantifiable and reproducible. Yet visualization researchers are also explorers, investigating new types of visual encodings and interaction techniques on ever new technologies in order to augment our understanding of the modern world. Similarly, artists often emphasize the metamorphosis of subjective experience through conceptual lenses to create artifacts that transforms our understanding of culture and technology. For this year’s Call for Entries we ask artists, designers, and researchers to question and chronicle their process of meaning making. We are especially interested in projects and papers that explore the relationships between visualization research and arts and/or design practice, and that present or discuss creative visual techniques that emphasize transformative aspects of scientific or cultural exploration.
Selected artworks and design submissions will be installed in a gallery setting (the location is still to be determined). The exhibition is open to the general public as well as to VIS attendees. Other submissions will be chosen to present for a shorter time during the IEEE VIS conference. All accepted submissions (whether full installations or not) will be featured in the VISAP’16 Exhibition Catalog.
The VISAP’16 papers sessions will take place at the Baltimore Convention Center during IEEE VIS. Following the success of last year's collaboration with Leonardo/ISAST, a selection of the accepted submissions will be featured in a special section of an issue of Leonardo, the Journal of the International Society of the Arts, Sciences and Technology. Additionally, selected authors will be invited to prepare a revised, longer version of their papers for fast-track submission to IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications.
All submissions are due on June 24th, 2016. Details about the submission process as well as author guidelines can be found at the VISAP’16 website. For instructions on how to submit an artwork or design piece, click here: Exhibition Track. For instructions on submitting a paper, click here: Papers Track.
We look forward to your participation!
Angus Forbes and Fanny Chevalier
VISAP’16 Chairs
