Data Ecosystems, Speculative Narratives, and Multidimensional Experiences
Extensive Research
Digital Platform
Installation Design
Graphic design is moving from static layouts and flat screens, to engage audience with interactive systems and spatial narratives. Through building flexible, responsive experiences shaped by audience input and real-time data, this thesis proposes a narrative ecosystem where media and environmental data reconstruct speculative histories and alternative futures across multidimensional experiences. By simulating consequences and embedding forensic insights, these scenarios transform passive consumption into active discernment, making ecological stakes tangible and immediate across space and time.
The brain constructs mental models from fragments. Therefore, the brain doesn't need everything spelled out. It needs just enough to start building. The gaps are invitations. Imagination fills them. That's where stories form.
How can speculative design practices inform non-linear, multidimensional narratives?
The research insight shaped this thesis identity–treating narrative as data, then reassembling it into immersive typography. It reimagines identity systems as dynamic, where a collection of images becomes a living typographic language.
The methodology of emergence framework involves input, processing, output and feedback.
They inform each other in a dynamic relationship.
Generative Narrative Structure
Each node represents a thread of narrative that can be re-configured.
Snowflake is a metaphor for “Emergence"—its non-linear and recursive.
Project Breakdown
This thesis composes five narrative experiences, each functioning as a module to investigate data ecosystems, speculative narratives, and multidimensional experiences.How might we experience data-driven narratives in the future?
How can speculative design provoke new ways of thinking?
How can we create meaning through multi-dimensional storytelling?
How can we create a framework to explore new forms of narratives?
> Spatial Installation
> Web Space
Spatial Installation
Modules APerspectival Portals
We understand the world only through what we personally experience. But the Earth is full of other living systems that share the same resources–and the same stakes. These modules ask: How can spatial narrative shift the viewer outside their own frame of reference?
Module B
Parametric Cartography
Environmental information governs the formal properties of each image. As viewers body movement activates scenes of a landscape where the LA Aqueduct was never built, this module asks: How can multidimensional experiences allow us to engage with narratives at the scale of the body?
Module C
Ephemeral Substrates
Global carbon dioxide levels mapped through viewer input, projected onto evaporating water. This module asks: How can data-driven narratives raise awareness of urgent ecological issues?
Web Space
Module D, Branching Decision Logic, is a micro-site–a "time machine" where viewers make choices that impact the stories. Users navigate between timelines, connecting outcomes and consequences through decision.Module E, Narrative Repository, is a narrative repository for research and archive. The interface reflects how the mind works. By organizing information non-linearly, the system supports active learning through navigation.
A publication summarizes my research–interactive narratives, computational literature, cognitive science, speculative design, ecological systems, and the history of Owens Lake.
Emergence is a narrative framework for designers to develop data-driven ecosystems, speculative narratives, and multidimensional experiences.