Speaker: Francesca Samsel, Research Scientist, Texas Advanced Computing Center

Title: Melding, Morphing and Blending the Languages of Art, Science and Visualization

Host: Benjamin Keisling

Abstract: Our research explores how expertise from the arts can expand both the analytical practice and communicative capabilities of multivariate, volumetric visualizations of environmental systems. We have created an expanded visual vocabulary of form, color, line, and materials designed specifically for scientific data. This vocabulary provides researchers with an engaging means to investigate and communicate the complexity of climate science through the representation of environmental observations and models.

Beyond visualization as an analytical tool, we also consider how an artistic voice can shape the communication of climate science. Rather than treating art as an illustrative layer added after the science is complete, we consider how artistic practice can shape the ways scientific knowledge is experienced and understood. Combining scientific models and observations with artistic forms, material objects, metaphor, and poetry creates additional pathways into complex scientific ideas.

These approaches connect quantitative information with physical experience, emotion, curiosity, and place, while retaining the rigor and specificity of the underlying science. Together, they suggest a broader role for artistic expertise within scientific visualization: one that contributes not only to how data are communicated, but also to how they are explored, interpreted, and understood. The work asks how an expanded visual and experiential vocabulary might enable both scientists and broader audiences to engage more deeply with complex environmental systems and a changing climate.

Further information on Samsel’s work can be found at https://sites.utexas.edu/artscivis/.