Step into the forgotten corners of the internet with an exhibition that transforms real web archive data into playful, thought-provoking artworks. From vanished websites to fading digital traces, this exhibition invites you to reflect on what’s preserved, what’s lost, and what that reveals about our identities and values.
This exhibition is the outcome of an interdisciplinary project led by Dr Andrea Kocsis, in collaboration with multimedia artist Dorsey Kaufmann. Together, they assembled a team of archivists and librarians from the National Library of Scotland along with visualization developer Parker Kaufmann and Informatics MSc (Master of Science) students to explore novel computational and creative visualization techniques that enable public engagement with web archives.
Using exploratory visualization and interaction techniques, the exhibition pieces seek to uncover insights within the data and craft compelling visual narratives to engage wider audiences in the cultural significance of past, present and future web archives.
Three of the works were first created by Informatics MSc students Mansi Manoj, Qianhui Meng, and Shuyu Zhang under the supervision of Dorsey Kaufmann. Kaufmann and Parker recently launched their data visualization studio Feeling Data, which adapted and expanded the students’ projects for public interaction, as well as producing two new works. The ‘Digital Ghosts’ centrepiece is an artist commission in which Kaufmann experiments with physicalising web archive data through UV projection onto cyanotype.
Digital Ghosts
An exhibition that transforms real web archive data into playful, thought-provoking artworks
Exhibition details
Dates: 5-16 Nov 2025 (Closed Mon & Tues)
Times: 10:00-17:00 daily | Free/Drop-in
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB
Audience: General public
Venue Access features: Accessible toilets, Assistance dogs welcome, Baby changing facilities, Seating, Step-free access, Wheelchair accessible
Inspace City Screens
Dates: 5-16 Nov 2025
Times: 17:00 – 1:00 Daily | Free/Street viewing daily
Location: Inspace City Screens Exhibition, Potterrow, Edinburgh
If you have any enquiries about Inspace programming and the venue, please contact us at designinformatics@ed.ac.uk
Exhibition Video
Featured Artworks
Digital Ghosts
Dorsey Kaufmann and Feeling Data
Centrepiece commission where Dorsey Kaufmann experiments with physicalizing web archive data through UV projection onto cyanotype. Explore the centre piece here
Digital Coordinates
Parker Kaufmann and Feeling Data
Geospatial visualization where Parker Kaufmann explores web archive data by location. Explore the work here
Three of the works were first created by Informatics MSc students Mansi Manoj, Qianhui Meng, and Shuyu Zhang under the supervision of Dorsey Kaufmann.
Life and Death of Music
Mansi Manoj and Feeling Data Studio
The interactive and browsable visualisation highlighted the scale of online decay in music collections through the metaphor of falling.
Sites: Surfaced or Submerged
Qianhui Meng and Feeling Data Studio
Through embodied interaction via motion tracking, visitors could explore the growth of the collection by topic, recognising that even the most systematic curatorial approach could not escape curatorial bias. Explore the work here
Pandemic in the Archives!
Shuyu Zhang and Feeling Data Studio
This interactive visualisation demonstrated that during a crisis, such as COVID-19, online contents changes so rapidly that, without extremely frequent archiving, important discourse disappears from our future archives. Explore the work here
Event Programme
Exhibition Late and Panel Discussion
During the Exhibition Late, the team behind the project will host a panel discussion on Scotland’s digital footprints.
Date: Thurs 6 Nov 2025
Time: 18:00-20:00 | Free/Ticketed
Location: Inspace
Visualising Presence and Absence in Scotland’s Web Archives
Led by artist Dorsey Kaufmann, this workshop explores “digital ghosts”—data that evolves, disappears, or behaves unpredictably.
Date: Sat 15 Nov 2025
Time: 13:00-14:30 | Free/Ticketed
Location: Inspace
About the Research
Read Digital Ghosts research outputs
Read reflection written by Andrea Kocsis and Dorsey Kaufmann about the exhibition
Explore the data on the Data Foundry of the National Library of Scotland (NLS)
Dowload the digital version of the exhbition leaflet
Gallery
Supported by
This project is partially funded by the ESRC Festival of Social Science, the National Library of Scotland, the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust, with support from the Institute for Design Informatics, Inspace and Edinburgh Futures Institute.
This programme is part of the Being Human Festival, the UK’s national festival of the humanities, taking place 6 – 15 November 2025. Led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, with generous support from Research England, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy. For further information please see beinghumanfestival.org.
