3D Cartography of Covid-19

The 3D Cartography of Covid-19 is a collaborative project showcased in 2021 at Ars Electronica, a prominent new media art festival in Linz, Austria. The project employs a three-dimensional data visualization to showcase the tireless efforts of scientists during the pandemic to cope with the fear the virus has generated.
The visualization features over 600,000 scientific articles collected from the Covid-19 Open Research Dataset Challenge. These articles are arranged based on language similarity using dimensionality reduction, while their publication dates are factored in to create a timeline on the third axis.
The 3D Cartography of Covid-19 was presented at the Ars Electronica Center’s Deep Space 8K, an immersive theater with two 16 x 9 meter projected screens on the wall and floor. Due to Covid-19 restrictions, the performance was limited to 40 spectators and consisted of a presentation followed by a Q&A session where the spectators could interact with the data visualization using a gamepad. The shared space of Deep Space 8K encouraged audience engagement and sparked a dialogue in what can be defined as a data-driven pedagogic conversation.
The 3D Cartography of Covid-19 aimed to promote a critical understanding of data-driven exhibitions and increase data literacy among the general public. The project was made possible through the support of DARIAH and their grant scheme, Theme Call in Arts, Humanities, and Covid-19.