Linked cultural data in fashion history: information visualisation as an explorative and narrative tool
Restaging Fashion, a collaboration between the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam (UCLAB) and the Berlin State Museums, is an interdisciplinary project within the scope of digital cultural heritage where researchers from interface design, information science and art history address the topic of fashion representation from a Linked Data and information visualisation perspective. In this context, selected objects from the Lipperheide Costume Library in Berlin and the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, realia / 3D models and reference texts from local or external sources are being contextualised and made available for research by means of visualisation and narrative components. On the basis of structured and semantically enriched data, we are developing an interface for showing relationships on a graph-based setting, giving the end user the possibility to discover new material or connections beyond the functionality of a regular search/browsing interface. Moreover, we juxtapose the visualisation alongside art historical texts (stories) and images, providing a new approach to curatorial communication and online exhibition. By combining the narrative form with nodes and edges, we create a prototype to be implemented and reused on other types of linked data in humanistic research - beyond vestimentary sources.
This session will address the 'exploration' theme of the conference, although it covers significant aspects of the engagement and experience themes, too. Its goal is to offer all interested attendees a design research perspective regarding the use of linked data and its incorporation in cultural heritage settings that combine representational (data-centered) and non-representational (narrative) components.
