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Visualization research and practice that incorporates the arts make claims to being more effective in connecting with users on a human level. However, these claims are difficult to measure quantitatively. In this paper, we present a follow-on study to use close reading, a humanities method from literary studies, to evaluate visualizations created using artistic processes [Bares 2020]. Close reading is a method in literary studies that we've previously explored as a method for evaluating visualizations. To use close reading as an evaluation method, we guide participants through a series of steps designed to prompt them to interpret the visualization's formal, informational, and contextual features. Here we elaborate on our motivations for using close reading as a method to evaluate visualizations, and enumerate the procedures we used in the study to evaluate a 2D visualization, including modifications made because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Key findings of this study include that close reading is an effective formative method to elicit information related to interpretation and critique; user subject position; and suspicion or skepticism. Information gained through close reading is valuable in the visualization design and iteration processes, both related to designing features and other formal elements more effectively, as well as in considering larger questions of context and framing. 

We, as a society, need artists to help us interpret and explain science, but what does an artist's studio look like when today's science is built upon the language of large, increasingly complex data? This paper presents a data visualization design interface that lifts the barriers for artists to engage with actively studied, 3D multivariate datasets. To accomplish this, the interface must weave together the need for creative artistic processes and the challenging constraints of real-time, data-driven 3D computer graphics. The result is an interface for a technical process, but technical in the way artistic printmaking is technical, not in the sense of computer scripting and programming. Using metaphor, computer graphics algorithms and shader program parameters are reimagined as tools in an artist's printmaking studio. These artistic metaphors and language are merged with a puzzle-piece approach to visual programming and matching iconography. Finally, artists access the interface using a web browser, making it possible to design immersive multivariate data visualizations that can be displayed in VR and AR environments using familiar drawing tablets and touch screens. We report on insights from the interdisciplinary design of the interface and early feedback from artists. 

As scientific data grow larger and more complex, an equally rich visual vocabulary is needed to fully articulate its insights. We present a series of images that are made possible by a recent technical development “Artifact-Based Rendering,” a component of our broader effort to create a methodology for scientific visualization that draws on principles of art and design.