This paper demonstrates a technique for visualising multidimensional data sets holistically. The EVA algorithm provides an automatic mapping from semantically important features of the data to emotionally or perceptually significant features of the corresponding visual structure (such as a face). In other words a single glance at the visual structure informs the observer of the global state of the data, since the visual structure has an emotional impact on the observer. The visualisation is designed to correspond to the impact that would have been generated had the observer been able to access the relevant semantics of the underlying data.