How to Turn Family Data into an Art Project

The process of creating data art based on the Mezen Northern painting

Artistic presentation of data

Hi! My name is Natalia Kiseleva, I am an engineer and BI analyst, I teach data visualization, study data art and data storytelling! In this article, I want to tell you the story of the creation of the project “Small family tree in the style of Mezen painting” – one of my first data art projects.

Sphere data art — is a fairly new direction in working with data. It involves data visualization – not in an easy-to-read form (graphs and dashboards), but rather in an artistic, attention-grabbing, engaging, soul-stirring way (and then lead them warmly into your analytical reports).

Family tree. Mezen painting

The theme of this data art is a small family tree. The patterns and symbols are taken from Russian northern folk painting – MezenskayaThis style includes black and red images of animals and nature motifs.

Each element in this work represents one of the closest family members, and the colors and decorations reveal additional details about the person. For a detailed explanation, see the legend in the picture.

The process of creation

I have always been interested in the topic of data art, and I am inspired by the works Shirley Wu, Federica Fragapane, Georgia Lupi And Nadia Bremer.

I have created small traditional works in this style before, but this time I decided to try something more complex and digital. “Family Tree” is my first digital data art work. If you are interested in seeing my other data art projects, they are available on my website.

When I was working on traditional data art,Friends“, then I got a little experience of manual work with small data. But since the project was done on paper by hand, any mistakes were critical. And changes required reworking the entire project.

Working on a family tree digitally allowed me to make changes as I went along, which is not the case with paper and markers. However, working on paper is also fun; I recommend everyone give it a try.

Sources of inspiration

I have long been attracted to the motifs and patterns of Russian northern painting, and I collected interesting examples. In the end, I decided to work with Mezen painting – my favorite style, which depicts black and red horses on thin legs. As a child, I drew elements of painting in art school, and now I wanted to convey them through the prism of data.

Symbolism and data

Individual symbols in the Mezen painting already carry information, but without a legend they are difficult to decipher. The motifs of the painting are simple: fire, water, sun, moon, natural phenomena, flowers, protective symbols. Encrypting data in these symbols was especially exciting! “Krivulka” is my favorite symbol, I even seem to have gone a bit overboard with it.

Family trees

I have been interested in genealogy for a long time and have tried to create an interactive family tree on JS.D3. But this project is focused on the artistic part, realizing that diving straight into a datavis library with a fairly high entry threshold is not the best idea.

For small amounts of data, manual processing proved ideal.

Having compiled the data on the closest relatives into a table and having identified several features that I would like to display, I began to draw the main elements. I worked in Figma — a great tool for vector graphics!

Having found several interesting symbols from different sources, I assigned them the required level of kinship to each. Some of the symbols went to signs.

Mentions:

My article about the project published in the international datavis journal Nightingale in 2020.

The project entered shortlist Moscow Dataviz Awards in 2021.

In 2022, he entered long list international award Information is Beautiful.

Project automation

Five years have passed since my first publication, and I have continued to develop my skills. With tools like p5.JS and Tableau, you can create automated and semi-automated data art projects, which opens up new horizons. I am not sure if I will try to automate this project — but my colleagues from the data art community Flowers and Numbers^{[ссылка удалена мод.]} offer help. Maybe there will be updates soon!

Project update after 5 years

During this time, my project changed along with life. I had a child, my grandparents died. I updated the data.

It is a vivid reminder that data can not only inform, but also tell personal stories. This project is an example of how data can become art, a personal and cherished project.

Thank you for reading to the end!

If you are interested in learning more about dataviz and data art, I write about them in the TG channel DataComics.

I'd be happy to answer your questions!