Can data visualisation effectively communicate the nuances of the creative process?

Abstract

This text examines the potential of data visualisation to communicate the complex and often intangible nuances of the creative process. Creativity, by its nature, is fluid, subjective, and deeply personal, making it a challenge to analyse or represent using conventional analytical methods. By exploring different scholarly authors’ models of creativity, the study investigates how visualisation techniques can represent the evolving, subjective nature of artistic expression. Through both theoretical analysis and practical application, the research highlights the challenges of capturing creative processes and argues that, while statistics cannot fully encapsulate the depth of creativity, it serves as a valuable tool for bridging the gap between an artist’s internal experience and their external communication. The research delved into within this text sets the foundations for the physical piece ‘Fragments’, an exploration of how the creative process can be translated into tangible representational forms. It aids with comprehending why certain design and compositional choices were made and with understanding the necessity of the statistics collected during the project. ‘Fragments’ proposes a way of understanding the creative process through the material traces it leaves behind, using physical remnants of artistic practice as data to visualise the intangible journey of creation.