We introduce the Collection Space Navigator (CSN), a browser-based visualization tool to explore, research, and curate large collections of visual digital artifacts that are associated with multidimensional data, such as vector embeddings or tables of metadata. Media objects such as images are often encoded as numerical vectors, for e.g. based on metadata or using machine learning to embed image information. Yet, while such procedures are widespread for a range of applications, it remains a challenge to explore, analyze, and understand the resulting multidimensional spaces in a more comprehensive manner. Dimensionality reduction techniques such as t-SNE or UMAP often serve to project high-dimensional data into low dimensional visualizations, yet require interpretation themselves as the remaining dimensions are typically abstract. Here, the Collection Space Navigator provides a customizable interface that combines two-dimensional projections with a set of configurable multidimensional filters. As a result, the user is able to view and investigate collections, by zooming and scaling, by transforming between projections, by filtering dimensions via range sliders, and advanced text filters. Insights that are gained during the interaction can be fed back into the original data via ad hoc exports of filtered metadata and projections. This paper comes with a functional showcase demo using a large digitized collection of classical Western art. The Collection Space Navigator is open source. Users can reconfigure the interface to fit their own data and research needs, including projections and filter controls. The CSN is ready to serve a broad community.

翻译：我们提出集合空间导航器（Collection Space Navigator，CSN），这是一款基于浏览器的可视化工具，旨在探索、研究和策展与多维数据（如向量嵌入或元数据表）关联的大型视觉数字制品集合。图像等媒体对象常被编码为数值向量，例如基于元数据或使用机器学习嵌入图像信息。然而，尽管此类方法在多种应用中广泛使用，如何以更全面的方式探索、分析和理解由此产生的多维空间仍是一项挑战。t-SNE或UMAP等降维技术常将高维数据投影至低维可视化空间，但由于剩余维度通常较为抽象，这些投影本身也需要进一步解读。为此，集合空间导航器提供了一种可定制的界面，将二维投影与一组可配置的多维过滤器相结合。用户可通过缩放、平移、投影切换、范围滑块过滤维度以及高级文本过滤来查看和探索集合。交互过程中获得的洞察可通过元数据和投影的即席导出反馈至原始数据。本文附带了一个使用大型西方古典艺术数字藏品的功能演示。集合空间导航器为开源工具，用户可根据自身数据和研究需求重新配置界面，包括投影和过滤控件。CSN已准备好服务于广泛的研究社群。