In this pictorial, we introduce the conceptual framework of “plasmatic visualization,” an interactive form of data visualization that incorporates the image of the observer to provoke critical reflection on how data, bodies, and environments are mutually constituted. Drawing on the concept of plasmaticness from cel animation theory, we extend environmental data visualization beyond stable, objective representations toward affective, mutable experiences. We present “Plasmatic Mirror,” a design prototype using a real-time video camera co-located with an architectural-scale display to illustrate the principles of plasmatic visualization and engage participants in a reality-bending encounter with data on microplastics in the news. Through this work, we articulate three defining aesthetic qualities of plasmatic visualization—shifting from representational to visceral experience; from separate to entangled forms of visualization; and from exploring to attuning to environmental data—to support HCI designers in creating interactive data visualizations that prompt audiences to reflect on their relationship to environmental issues.

If we want to understand the affective power of data in shaping our experiences of place, we need new forms of inquiry that reveal what data can do: not just for us, but to us.In this paper, we explore how engaging with data changes the way we feel about environmental concerns that we live with through an approach we call local data memoir.This approach brings together autobiographical making and writing with theorization through a phenomenological lens, specifically using the concept of orientation.We find that attending to our own orientation can be a useful means of tracking how our lived experiences are shaped by practices with data.Our contributions are two-fold: first, we demonstrate how the phenomenological concept of orientation can be used to interpret encounters with data; second, we introduce local data memoirs as a form of affective inquiry with data.

In recent years, researchers have sought more effective ways of making data open, for purposes of accountability, engagement, and reuse. Often, such efforts focus on making existing data sets available to broad audiences. The expression data set itself suggests something discrete, complete, and easily transferable. But data are none of those things. In this paper, we argue that open data projects could benefit from a more contextual understanding of what open means. Instead of focusing on open data sets, researchers can seek to create and understand open data settings: contexts in which things of public significance can be presented as evidence. We share our experiences creating and analyzing open data settings for the Map Room Project, a research through design initiative that establishes local spaces for collaborative data exploration and mapping. Our contribution is to offer a conceptual framework through which researchers, as well as designers, might think about the openness of data settings. This framework emerged from our situational analysis of comparative empirical case studies. In Map Rooms, we found that open can mean accessible, inclusive, or indeterminate. Three practices of contextualization, which we call configuring, convening, and claim-making, shape these dimensions of openness by defining all of the following: where data can work, who is empowered to use them, and what can count as data.

Gentrification-the spatial expression of economic inequality-is fundamentally a matter of social justice. Yet, even as work outside of HCI has begun to discuss how computing can enable or challenge gentrification, HCI's growing social justice agenda has not engaged with this issue. This omission creates an opportunity for HCI to develop a research and design agenda at the intersection of computing, social justice, and gentrification. We begin this work by outlining existing scholarship describing how the consumption side dynamics of gentrification are mediated by contemporary socio-technical systems. Subsequently, we build on the social justice framework introduced by Dombrowski, Harmon, and Fox to discuss how HCI may resist or counter such forces. We offer six modes of research that HCI scholars can pursue to engage gentrification.