[Commlist] CFP: Reimagining Data Visualisations: Critical Questions, Expanded Practices | London Conference in Critical Thought 2023

*Call for Presentations – deadline March 13th, 202**3*

*Conference: June 30 – July 1 2023*

The Call for Presentations is now open for the 10^th annual/London 
Conference in Critical Thought/(LCCT), hosted and supported by the 
School of Social Sciences and Professions at London Metropolitan 
University. This will be an*IN-PERSON*conference, occurring at the 
Holloway Road (North) campus of London Metropolitan University. The full 
call is available here:LCCT 2023 Call for Presentations 
<http://londoncritical.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/LCCT-2023-Call-for-Presentations-1.pdf>

Proposals are invited for the conference stream REIMAGINING DATA 
VISUALISATION: CRITICAL QUESTIONS; EXPANDED PRACTICES:

Data visualisations are used in a wide range of disciplines, including 
digital humanities, visual communications, urbanism, environmental 
science and many more. This stream invites proposals that engage 
critically with visualisation practices, exploring their 
epistemological, social and ecological effects, exposing the assumptions 
inherent within them, and imagining alternative aesthetic and ethical 
approaches.

Data-driven computational processes constitute a substrate of human 
experience in the 21stcentury – we interact continually with digital 
devices, applications and networks, such that they become embodied 
aspects of our everyday lives, enmeshed in social, economic and cultural 
practices. This tendency towards datafication impacts scholarly 
research, having implications for what counts as knowledge, and how this 
knowledge is produced (see: Beer 2022; Esposito 2022). In this techno- 
cultural context, data visualisations have become an essential means of 
communicating complex information to broad audiences. Yet, visualisation 
practices are neither neutral nor transparent. Johanna Drucker (2020) 
posits that the translation of data into graphical forms acts 
constructively to interpret the information and construct an argument. 
Moreover, these processes of visual interpretation are imbued with a 
range of cultural biases which require further scrutiny, because they 
contain codes and hierarchies inherited from the history of visual 
culture – for example, presuppositions about what constitutes a 
‘scientific image’ based on Western notions of objectivity. This raises 
questions of how visualisation practices might be decolonised and 
degendered to democratise knowledge production and communication (see: 
Ignazio and Klein, 2020).

This stream aims to articulate these questions by critically examining 
existing visualisation practices, and offer responses by testing 
alternative approaches that acknowledge the embodied and situated 
character of knowledge. It welcomes presentations of experimental, 
creative and speculative practice- research.

Possible questions to explore include:

  * What forms of knowledge do data visualisations produce / how do they
    act to define the object of knowledge?
  * Can we reframe what ‘counts’ as data and how data are counted?
  * What is occluded in the process of selecting data and presenting it
    in visual forms?
  * What role do visualisations play in data colonialism?
  * What power structures are implicit in visualisation practices / what
    empowerment can be achieved by approaching them differently?
  * What would a feminist data visualisation look like?
  * How can indigenous knowledge inform a more inclusive and/or
    ecological approach to information visualisation?
  * What forms of mapping can render the labour that produces datasets
    visible?
  * Can participatory design approaches help to decolonise data
    visualisation, making it more transparent and accountable?
  * What creative media methods could be used to develop an expanded and
    multi-sensory visualisation practice?
Please send an abstract for a proposed presentation 
to*(londoncritical /at/ gmail.com)* <mailto:(londoncritical /at/ gmail.com)>with the 
stream title ‘Reimagining Data Visualisations: Critical Questions, 
Expanded Practices’ indicated in the subject line. Abstracts should 
be*no more than 250 words*and must be received by*Monday March 13^th 
****2023*.

If you would like to discuss your proposal prior to submission, please 
contact the stream organiser: (Hannah.Lammin /at/ gre.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(Hannah.Lammin /at/ gre.ac.uk)>


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