TERMINUS

TERMINUS: A virtual stroll through postapocalyptic Basel | Research & Interactive Media | 2022

As part of my bachelor's thesis, I focussed on the hypothetical scenario of a world without/immediately after humans. What scenery do we leave behind? What traces of our society would remain if we were to disappear from one day to the next, what remnants would disappear over time? I think it is relevant to engage with this topic as a society, to ask what would happen if humanity suddenly disappeared - especially in the midst of a global pandemic and an advancing climate crisis, when the thought of human extinction seems omnipresent.

How can this topic be communicated immersively? What new visual languages can be used to visualise speculative future scenarios and what influence and responsibility do we as designers have on these representations? To what extent can artificial intelligence be used to generate speculative visual material, and to what extent can this experimental technology be eradicated? I asked myself these questions in my design bachelor's thesis.

The result is a virtual walk through a post-apocalyptic Basel in the form of an interactive website. Open source geodata from the city of Basel serves as the basis for generating immersive 360° backdrops using machine learning algorithms.

Visit the documentation website: