Ignacio Pérez-Messina
, Silvia Miksch, Christian Tominski
From Data to Ficta: A Critical Reflection on Visual Analytics in the Age of Generative Models
In EuroVA 2026 : EuroVis Workshop on Visual Analytics. 2026.
[
paper]
Information
- Publication Type: Conference Paper
- Workgroup(s)/Project(s): not specified
- Date: 2026
- ISBN: 978-3-03868-309-4
- Publisher: The Eurographics Association
- Open Access: yes
- Location: Nottingham
- Lecturer: Ignacio Pérez-Messina
- Event: 17th International EuroVis Workshop on Visual Analytics (EuroVA 2026) co-located with the Eurographics Conference on Visualization (EuroVis 2026)
- Editor: Villanova, Anna and Archambault, Daniel and Laramee, Robert S. and Xu, Kai and Fellner, Dieter
- DOI: 10.2312/eurova.20261008
- Booktitle: EuroVA 2026 : EuroVis Workshop on Visual Analytics
- Pages: 7
- Conference date: 8. June 2026 – 12. June 2026
- Keywords: Visualization theory, Synthetic Data, Visual Analytics
Abstract
Over the last decades, the pervasiveness of data and the rate at which they are produced have propelled the rapid growth of Visual Analytics (VA) methods for interactive analysis and decision-making. This foundation is now shifting as computers increasingly not only process data, but also produce them through generative models. Revisiting the notion of synthetic data, we oppose data to capta (observational inscriptions) and introduce ficta: model-produced outputs that enter VA sessions as an analytic substrate with their own means of interactive production. In ficta-driven workflows, the substrate of analysis is no longer a static representation from which knowledge can be distilled; interaction becomes entangled with what is available to observe, and visualizations come to mediate not a single world but a plurality of model-admissible alternatives. We argue that this breaks VA’s classic data-driven epistemic contract and motivates a reevaluation of core assumptions behind knowledge production in the age of generativeness.Additional Files and Images
Weblinks
BibTeX
@inproceedings{perez-messina-2026-fdt,
title = "From Data to Ficta: A Critical Reflection on Visual
Analytics in the Age of Generative Models",
author = "Ignacio P\'{e}rez-Messina and Silvia Miksch and Christian
Tominski",
year = "2026",
abstract = "Over the last decades, the pervasiveness of data and the
rate at which they are produced have propelled the rapid
growth of Visual Analytics (VA) methods for interactive
analysis and decision-making. This foundation is now
shifting as computers increasingly not only process data,
but also produce them through generative models. Revisiting
the notion of synthetic data, we oppose data to capta
(observational inscriptions) and introduce ficta:
model-produced outputs that enter VA sessions as an analytic
substrate with their own means of interactive production. In
ficta-driven workflows, the substrate of analysis is no
longer a static representation from which knowledge can be
distilled; interaction becomes entangled with what is
available to observe, and visualizations come to mediate not
a single world but a plurality of model-admissible
alternatives. We argue that this breaks VA’s classic
data-driven epistemic contract and motivates a reevaluation
of core assumptions behind knowledge production in the age
of generativeness.",
isbn = "978-3-03868-309-4",
publisher = "The Eurographics Association",
location = "Nottingham",
event = "17th International EuroVis Workshop on Visual Analytics
(EuroVA 2026) co-located with the Eurographics Conference on
Visualization (EuroVis 2026)",
editor = "Villanova, Anna and Archambault, Daniel and Laramee, Robert
S. and Xu, Kai and Fellner, Dieter",
doi = "10.2312/eurova.20261008",
booktitle = "EuroVA 2026 : EuroVis Workshop on Visual Analytics",
pages = "7",
keywords = "Visualization theory, Synthetic Data, Visual Analytics",
URL = "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2026/perez-messina-2026-fdt/",
}