Data Impressionism by University of the Arts London

In the 21st century, people are creating more than 2.5 terabytes of data every day. Complex and large amounts of data are difficult to understand and develop a sense of distance. As data visualisation practitioners, how can we transform viewers’ perceptions of data and make data more accessible and engaging for the general public?

In the 1860s, the Impressionist movement used revolutionary techniques to capture changing environments and society. This shift has reshaped the way people think about and engage with art. Nowadays, data records and captures our lives in the present, as Impressionist paintings capture the lives of the past. Through this similarity, Impressionist painters and data visualisation designers share a parallel vision, capturing society's changes through visual forms and connecting people to their surroundings.

The project views Data Impressionism as a contemporary visual movement that can change how people think about data, as the Impressionism movement changed how people thought about art. This project incorporates impressionistic concepts into data visualisations and embeds them into the artistic context. Thus, changing the audience's perception of data and constructing a new communication path to connect data, life, and people.

Drawing from Neo-Impressionism, this project aims to address selective reporting, leading the public to believe that the overall situation in the world is getting worse rather than better, through the concept of Pointillism. The key elements of Pointillism are light sources, pure colours and the visual form of dots, serving to subvert this negative situation. The outcome of this project presents a lighting installation, highlighting data revolving around the positive progress of decoupling economic growth from CO2 emissions. This showcases the phenomenon of the UK’s falling CO2 emissions and the reasons behind it. Different aspects of the images provide multiple perspectives to view changes in the world, allowing viewers’ accessibility to explore and engage with the stories behind the data more freely.