Thursdays, 2-6pm, Start: 26 Oct 2017

Cultural institutions are investing great efforts in the digitization of their collections, however, there is a lack of innovative approaches to reveal the richness of these collections and make them available for casual exploration. What would an exploratory interface to digital cultural heritage look like? In this research-oriented project course we will approach this question. We consider the digital representation of collection items as a perspective in its own right, not a lower-quality proxy of the ‘original’ physical collection. So far there are only few examples of visualizations being applied to cultural objects, however, initial experiments demonstrate a variety of promising opportunities for research and design. In particular methods of information visualization have already been used to make the conceptual and material structure of collections better visible and explorable.

The aim of this interdisciplinary project course is the investigation of innovative visualization techniques for the exploration of cultural collections. Advanced students of design, cultural management, conservation, and media studies will work together to study the potential of visualizing cultural collections. In collaboration with cultural institutions small project teams will connect cultural considerations with technological possibilities and pursue both practical and theoretical research questions. The objective is to create and evaluate visualizations that open novel perspectives on collections. As part of this process, we consider the visualizations to be cultural artifacts themselves that need to be interpreted and questioned, too.

Participants should have a basic understanding and some practical experience with either information visualization or cultural collections – and an interest in the respective other. In interdisciplinary groups, participants will develop research projects and pursue their own questions. The results of the course will be presented at the end to the partners and documented in the form of a paper and a demo on the web.

Please note: The language of teaching for this course is English. All communication during the seminars as well as literature and auxiliary materials will be in English.