VIKUS Viewer
An open-source visualization system that makes large cultural image collections explorable through time, themes, and texture.
VIKUS Viewer is a web-based visualization system that arranges thousands of cultural artifacts on a zoomable canvas — from a collection-wide overview down to a single high-resolution image in one continuous movement, with no search box required.
The system is built on a simple observation: to make sense of a cultural collection you need three fundamental facets — time, themes, and texture. When an artifact was created gives context to the themes it depicts and to its visual texture. VIKUS Viewer lets you explore a collection along all three at once: artifacts arranged on a semantic timeline, filtered by thematic keywords, studied up close as imagery.
The software generalizes the code behind Past Visions, our visualization of Frederick William IV’s drawings developed with Katrin Glinka and Marian Dörk: the goal was to transform a collection-specific prototype into an open-source tool that any institution can deploy on its own holdings.
That worked. Beyond the deployments I built — including FW4, Goethes Ausleihen, RECS Flugschriften, Sammlung Burggrafen, Van Gogh, and Art Of The March — the system has been picked up by others — most visibly in Surprise Machines, the visualization revealing Harvard Art Museums’ image collection, which I joined as a collaborator.
The project was carried out in cooperation with the Urban Complexity Lab, the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation (SPSG), the Research Center Sanssouci (RECS), and Forschungsverbund Marbach Weimar Wolfenbüttel (MWW).
