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Data artists: Visualisation as a gateway drug

By Peter Aldhous

2 February 2011

From erogenous zones to sock drawers, gurus of data visualisation and tell Peter Aldhous about the science and art of democratising data

You present data sets in a variety of visual ways. Is your work art, information science, design or something else?

Martin Wattenberg: We don’t stress about labels. Sometimes what we do ends up being art, sometimes science, and sometimes design.

Fernanda Viégas: It’s more about revealing the interesting patterns in data. Visualisation is a very broad and expressive medium. It’s like writing: when you write you can be doing anything from hard science to poetry.…

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