Data Gardens: An Artistic Proposal towards the Representation of Distributed and Dynamic Data using Multiagent Systems

We suggest a new paradigm for the representation of data, which is best suited for the real-time representation (visual and sonorous) of complex systems, real or simulated. The basic idea lies in the use of the garden metaphor to represent the dynamic evolution of interacting and organizing entities. In this proposal, multiagent systems are used to map between given complex systems and their garden-like representation, which we call Data Gardens (DG). The evolution of these Data Gardens is driven both by the real-time arrival of data from the system to represent and by the endogenous reaction of the multiagent system, immersing the user within a visual and sonorous atmosphere from which he can gain an intuitive understanding of the system. The principles exposed may ultimately be applied to the representation of multiagent systems themselves.