What would it be like to see thoughts outside of the body, perhaps floating overhead or shrunk down to fit in the palm of a hand? How might that experience change the way people think?

These questions drive the research of Alex Christie, Associate Professor of Digital Prototyping in Brock’s Department of Digital Humanities (DDH), and spark excitement in him for the future.

“Many ideas we study in the humanities can be very abstract, so the goal of my research is to make them more concrete by turning them into things you can see and touch with your hands,” he said.

To achieve this, Christie has developed Wordscape, a virtual reality program that users experience through headset devices like a Meta Quest VR Headset or Apple Vision Pro.

He brought his idea to life by teaching himself computer programming and designing Wordscape line by line.

Still early in development, Christie’s program uses text analysis, meaning users input a text and search specific words or terms, which generates various physical shapes and colours seen by headset users that reflect the narrative of the story.

Christie used Harry Potter books as an example. When these well-known texts are put into Wordscape and the word “Voldemort” is searched, the program creates a visualization of Voldemort that gets bigger and more menacing before ultimately taking over.

“The shape of the Harry Potter stories is that Voldemort appears at the end. Most people can understand this concept, but what drives this way of critical thinking is quite abstract,” Christie said.

While there are digital tools in existence already that allow users to see visual representations of texts on a computer screen, Christie’s work goes a step further.

“With spatial computing and augmented reality, you can move freely and experience the visualization around you, not just in front of you. You can reach out and touch the shapes — the ideas — with your hands,” he said.

According to Christie, making an abstract or complex idea, such as climate change, into something concrete and relatable is a core 21st century skill.

“It exerts itself in our lives in very real ways but for many, climate change is an abstraction or an idea. But what is the shape of the climate change story? What are we being told, and what is being left out,” he said.

While humanities scholars are trained to think creatively and critically about these kinds of questions in their heads, Christie said communicating these ideas to a wider audience can be a challenge as they are intangible.

Christie sees great classroom potential for Wordscape as he moves towards integrating computers and headsets for collaborative use and adding a social component which could open significant opportunities for knowledge mobilization.

In Christie’s Digital Scholarship course, students are tasked with writing their own version of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. They then use programming to create a 3D visualization of the cave they have conceptualized in writing.

The result is an interactive website where each student’s cave scene comes to life on the screen as their essay is read. In creating these websites, DDH students have also learned fundamental programming techniques.

“Studying humanities involves imagination, and it can be hard for people to understand this way of thinking and why it is so exciting. The goal is to make these ideas visible, and have more people share in the excitement too,” Christie said.