Feral data visualization: A manifesto for cultivating livable worlds with visual sensemaking practices

Feral data visualization is a posture offering theories and practices for designing data visualizations for collaborative survival in the midst of ecological and social turmoil. Feral data visualization demands an embrace of situated, embodied, vegetized, and feral forms of visual pattern making that might allow us to take up the task of building livability in our surrounding ecologies and communities. We demonstrate how these imperatives might unfold in practice through Tsuga Convictio, a research through design project. Feral data visualization calls designers to action, outlining three paths for crafting data visualizations for the feminine, vegetal, and embodied.