1. An interactive, electronic method for exploring and analyzing visual data using a plurality of traversal records, each of the traversal records comprising a time-based sequence of frames, each frame being a spatial subset of the visual data, the method comprising: displaying an abstract map of the visual data; plotting a plurality of markers, each of said markers associated with one of said traversal records, in a corresponding plurality of locations on the map; and playing back the corresponding traversal in response to interactive selection of a desired one of the markers.