iData

The project develops an immersive browser pioneering the exploration of virtual space using intelligent navigational systems, redefining frameworks for interactive museological visualisation. It uses the ZKM Karlsruhe database as a case study and is a complementary project to mARChive. Through the experimental application of the world’s first immersive 360-degree interactive data browser, this project seeks to explore the proposition that museum users in digital settings will apply aesthetic choices in their navigation and re-organisation of heterogeneous databases and that these choices take on qualities of an interactive narrative. An immersive 360-degree interactive data browser provides the three-dimensional (3D) visualisation and audification of data from the ZKM database in a projection space that fully envelops the user on all sides. The hypothesis is that the aesthetic choices that the user makes take on qualities of an interactive narrative, a narrative structure that is created by the re-composition of multiple data into diverse storylines and episodes. The project investigates the quality of narrative coherence brought by users to the interactive navigation and re-organisation of information. Narrative coherence refers to the provision of clarity for users as they explore and creatively reorganise multiple forms of data.