Infoviz pioneers have often maneuvered between the pragmatic and the conceptual. Computer scientist and designer Ben Fry has worked extensively with genetic data. In Genome Valence, which appeared at the Whitney Biennial in 2002, he invites viewers to explore similarities between the human, mouse, and fruit-fly genomes. Fry's piece is a visualization of a well-known tool, called BLAST, which allows researchers to find similar sequences in different organisms. In the image at right, the dots represent every possible nine-letter combination of the DNA letters A, T, C, and G. The arcs represent sequences in the fruit fly, mouse, and human. (For more on how exactly it works, see here.)

While BLAST itself is highly useful to scientists, this visualization was not intended to be, Fry says. Instead, the piece seems to pay homage to the scientists' tools of the trade. It makes genetic exploration, which can sometimes seem abstract, feel more like an ocean voyage, with ribbons shooting through a sea of letters.