Artists, Data and Climate Change: Distilled messages, multiple entry points, layered metaphor

Abstract

Artists have been speaking to, and creating paths for reflection on, fundamental threats to society and our lives as far back as we can document. Our changing climate is one such threat demanding meaningful narratives. In this short paper, we present the work of six internationally recognized artists addressing climate change, along with an analysis of their common work threads, toward the goal of promoting adoption of some of the "tools" in their toolkit. By doing so, we hope we can assist the visualization community in creating content that moves beyond intellectual understand toward an emotional adoption and thus action.