Overview
ln the Digital Age data visualisations are becoming increasingly epistemically relevant. The SNSF Ambizione research project 'Netted Letters in lmmersive Environments (2020-2025)' focused on the development of a data model and an ontology based on the FAIR principles, the 'Netted lnk Ontology'. This ontology seeks to convey an intuitive aesthetic-epistemic experience, provide interoperability of LOD and verify contents by linking back to norm data as point of truth. Using a case study with a thematically focused segment of Siegfried Kracauer's correspondence, the project particularly addressed questions of intuitive cognition from network visualisations, such as: How can proximity be modelled to convey a valid processual impression of personalintellectual relationships? - The CIDOC-CRM-based ontology facilitates visualisations that explicitly disclose algorithmic reasoning, lt incorporates vagueness, is suited to represent 20th century intellectual exchange on various public and private communication channels and elucidates communication gaps during the Cold War by considerate contextualisation. Besides, the data model seeks to compensate for the gender bias in archive holdings by carefully modelling nuanced relationships between persons.
RE/COLLECT is a follow-up research and implementation project. We will review and adapt the 'Netted lnk Ontology' in collaboration with various potential future user communities (academics, archivists, cultural mediators) through iterative testing/evaluation and prototyping. These communities will be encountered and adressed at conferences, contacted and engaged in a survey or involved in specifically tailored workshops. The core motivation of this project is raising critical visual network literacy among scientists and the general public by providing an - in terms of tellingly defined relationships - alternative example to awe-inducing scientific Big Data visualisations.
