Searchable records make the literary collection easier to enter.
Curatorial note
A book becomes a constellation.
This platform reimagines The Book of Imaginary Beings as a digital cultural heritage object. Each creature is preserved as a record, but also connected through morphology, habitat, and symbolic categories, allowing visitors to wander through patterns rather than only read from beginning to end.
Explore by relation
Find beings by form, place, or meaning.
Use the filters as quiet pathways into the archive.
Archive
Browse the beings
Move through the complete catalogue and see each being as a structured cultural record.
Generative explorer
Summon a new creature
Recombine forms, habitats, and symbolic categories into speculative creature cards.
Method
Read the dataset
Understand the archive as digitisation, interpretation, access, and participation.
Controlled vocabularies reveal relationships hidden in linear reading.
The generative layer invites playful, reflective engagement with the archive.
A few beings from the cabinet
Catalogue glimpses
Record #1
✦
A Bao A Qu
A luminous unfinished being that perfects its form only in the presence of spiritual ascent.
Record #2
✦
Abtu and Anet
Twin sacred fishes that eternally accompany the solar barque through sky and underworld.
Record #3
✦
The Amphisbaena
A double-headed serpent whose venomous body moves with uncanny agility across the desert.
Record #4
✦
Kafka Animal
A restless hybrid creature whose almost-human appearance evokes alien intimacy and unease.
Record #5
✦
Lewis Animal
A gentle singing beast of the deep woods whose beauty embodies innocence and harmony with nature.
Record #6
✦
Poe Animal
A strange furred animal discovered on remote islands, suspended between marvel and natural anomaly.