Care is easy to recognize on a personal level, especially when it takes the form of small, attentive gestures woven into daily life. We see it in how someone nurses a sick friend, tends a garden, or stitches a quilt by hand. Each act, marked by presence, patience, and the quiet commitment to care through touch, time, and attention. It takes shape through quiet, deliberate acts that often go unnoticed, yet carry lasting weight and meaning. But what does care look like when it scales up—across complex systems where the risks are higher, the people more dispersed, and the consequences harder to see?
This year at VISAP—a mini conference and exhibition exploring the intersection of data visualization, art, and science—we’re asking what it means to approach visualization not just as a practice of analysis and synthesis, but as a form of collective care. How do we design visualizations that not only represent, but also actively protect, nurture, and respect the environments and communities embedded within datasets? What practices emerge when we begin to visualize data with thoughtfulness, empathy, and intention? In a time when data shapes public perception, policy, and personal identity, centering care in our visual methods becomes not just desirable, but essential.
In the world of data visualization, “care” is not a term we use often. We usually talk about clarity, insight, and impact; terms that suggest objectivity and utility. But as datasets expand to reflect our bodies, beliefs, environments, and communities, and as algorithms increasingly shape our collective realities, the visual representation of data becomes an act reflecting politics, culture, and ethics. It shapes how we understand one another and the systems built around us. In this light, the role of the visualizer extends beyond aesthetics or clarity, calling for a deeper engagement with social consequence and ethical responsibility. Recognizing this role means accepting that visual choices can influence narratives, reinforce or challenge biases, and shape public understanding in lasting ways.
In contemporary digital culture, data functions not as a static artifact but as a living archive, one that holds memory, identity, and collective history. Biometric scans, environmental sensors, and geotagged images—nearly every aspect of human life today is captured and converted into data. Giorgia Lupi suggests that working with data can uncover deeper connections, revealing not just patterns in the world, but insights into what it means to be human. Her approach invites us to see data not as detached or abstract, but as deeply embedded in the stories, emotions, and lived experiences of individuals and communities.
Within this context, data visualization is not merely a cosmetic tool for representation, but a critical process of reinterpretation, contextualization, and communication. It offers a means to narrate our datafied collective histories, shaping how communities are made legible. Artists and designers working in data visualization act as communicators and storytellers. Through visual, sonic, spatial, or even olfactory forms (such as scent-based installations) they transform abstract data into something tangible, something we can feel, question, and connect with. In doing so, they turn datasets into living archives and visualizations into spaces for reflection, empathy, and care.
Maria Puig de la Bellacasa calls this orientation “matters of care.” It’s a call to move beyond surface concern and into the thick, entangled, affective labor of maintenance, repair, and relationality. It’s an invitation to care for our practices the way we care for each other—not just efficiently, but attentively and critically. Within this framework, care is not about sentimentality; it is a relational and communal ethic. It urges us to take responsibility for the data we engage with and to honor the lives, communities, and ecosystems it represents. To visualize with care is to visualize with empathy: to make visible environmental harm, surface suppressed narratives, reveal shared experiences, and confront the structural biases that too often remain hidden.
Building on this understanding of visualization as a relational and embodied practice, we envision a future in which data visualization becomes a process of restoration, connection, and long-term social resilience. This vision invites us to approach data as a space for healing, resistance, and belonging. It encourages the use of data visualization to support the well-being of both environments and the communities most affected by them. These same values must also guide how we collaborate with emerging technologies, especially as we begin to co-create meaning with algorithmic systems and AI—for example, by shaping how data is interpreted, narratives are generated, and decisions are guided by machine learning tools. This collaboration raises critical questions around authorship, agency, and ethics: Whose data is used? Whose voices are amplified or erased? A care-centered approach to AI foregrounds transparency, accountability, and relational design, prioritizing systems that are socially responsible and culturally aware.
VISAP ’25 explores the theme Collective Care, inviting bold, critical, and creative works that reflect on the role of visualization in an interconnected world. In conjunction with IEEE VIS 2025, the program welcomes papers, pictorials, and artworks engaging with care, solidarity, and ethical collaboration. VISAP will take place in person at the University of Applied Arts Vienna from November 6–15, while IEEE VIS runs at the Austria Center Vienna from November 2–7.
Submission deadline: June 13, 2025.
For details, visit: https://visap.net
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ieeevisap/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/visapnet/
Contact: art@ieeevis.org
Damla Çay
Damla Çay is a researcher at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME), where she explores how people engage with data and how to design meaningful data experiences. Her work focuses on co-design approaches that bring different voices into the process, with the goal of creating visualizations and physicalizations that are intuitive, engaging, and reflective of users’ needs and perspectives.
Dario is an Assistant Professor of Sciences and Technology Studies at the University of Groningen, and a faculty associate at Harvard University. His research is rooted in design, data, and humanities; focusing on the mapping of science and more broadly on digital archives of cultural institutions. With Metis Press, in 2021 he authored Mapping Affinities — a book about charting scientific communities from a design-driven, ethical thinking.
Weidi Zhang
Weidi Zhang is a new media artist based in Los Angeles and Phoenix. She is an Assistant Professor at the Media and Immersive eXperience center of Arizona State University. Her research investigates Speculative Assemblages at the intersection of immersive media, data visualization, and AI art. Her works are featured in international awards, conferences, and museums, such as Best In Show Awards in SIGGRAPH, Red Dot Design Award, A’ Design Award, Honorary Mention in Prix Ars Electronica, Lumen Prize Shortlist, ISEA, V2 Lab, Times Art Museum, Mutek, and others. She holds her Ph.D. in Media Arts and Technology from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
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Weidi Zhang#molongui-disabled-link
