Visualization in the Digital HumanitiesA survey

Cornelius PuschmannEnglish DepartmentHeinrich-Heine-Universitt Dsseldorf

all sources, tools and methods describedin this presentation can be googledand wikipediad!

Franco MorettiGraphs, Maps, Trees (2005)

Information and ideas on visualization

Edwar TufteThe Visual Display of Quantitative Informantion (1983)

Ben FryVisualizing Data (2008)

Aditi Muralidharan's blog

Twitter

Processing.org

why visualization?

visualization allows the analysis of large volumes of information

difference forms of reading:- close reading- distance reading - not-reading or scanning(Matt Kirschenbaum The Remaking of Reading: Data Mining and the Digital Humanities)

it's also a form of reading and (re)writing

and increasinglya pop culturephenomenon

is visualization... a tool for research (cultural analytics)? a means of aestheticizing data? a form of info-democratization? just a fad?

should we as digital humanists care?

what forms of visualizations are being usedand for what communicative purposes?

visualization is the use of... dots

lines

shapes

color

motion

and other graphical elements

for the purpose of conveying information about non-graphical data.

Ancient world map

scientific visualizations present multiple dimensions of data...

days of the week

number of cars

...and ask if a relationship exists between them

Dimension 1:word length

Dimension 2: number of unique letters

Dimesion 3: overall frequencyof the word (size of the dot)

Dimension 4: is the word ofAnglo-Saxon (red) or Latin (blue)origin?

...and ask if a relationship exists between them

up to now, the data visualized has typically been quantitative

Franco Moretti's line graphs showing the rise of the novel

scientific visualization traditionally works with quantitative data (statistics)

consequence: visualization must be adjusted for DH use

non-numerical data

multivariate data

subjectively quantified data

R

NLTK

Processing.org

programming/scripting

GUI

Many Eyes

MALLET

Wordle

Google Charts

tools

covers of Popular Science 1882-2007

wordle of a speech by Barack Obama

qualitative

quantitative

aesthetic

representational

scatterplot

barchart

pie chart

words-as-colored-boxes

word clouds

trees

maps

formulate questions

gather data (download txt/csv/rdf)

analyze (R, NLTK, PHP, or simply read!)

annotate (oxygen, text editor, ...)

visualize (Processing, NLTK, R, JavaScript, or a text marker)

present (pdf, powerpoint, ...)

formulate questions

gather data (download txt/csv/rdf)

analyze (R, NLTK, PHP, or simply read!)

annotate (oxygen, text editor, ...)

visualize (Processing, NLTK, R, JavaScript, or a text marker)

present (pdf, powerpoint, ...)

what can we visualize?

what can we visualize?

letters

words (strings)

morphemes

phrases

clauses

narrative sequences

named entitites

direct speech

paragraphs

sentences

semantic roles

rhetorical devices

metaphors

moves

character descriptions

pages

passages we like

shifting points of view

the happy girl

the depressed boy

word classes by color

visualization can..

reduce complexity

increase density of observable data

illustrate an interpretation

aestheticize data

open up large datasets

make an argument

in addition to other areas, visualization has great potential for teaching!

creativity

experimentation

self-expression

translation

multilingualism

analytic capabilities

Thanks!