Visualization in the Digital Humanities

Visualization in the Digital Humanities A survey Cornelius Puschmann English Department Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf

all sources, tools and methods described in this presentation can be googled and wikipediad!

Franco Moretti Graphs, Maps, Trees (2005) Information and ideas on visualization Edwar Tufte The Visual Display of Quantitative Informantion (1983) Ben Fry Visualizing Data (2008) Aditi Muralidharan's blog Twitter Processing.org

why visualization?

visualization allows the analysis of large volumes of information

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

and increasingly a pop culture phenomenon

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 used and 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 frequency of the word (size of the dot) Dimension 4: is the word of Anglo-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, ...)

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 <positive-emotion>happy</positive-emotion> girl the <negative-emotion>depressed</negative-emotion> 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!

Visualization in the Digital Humanities

by Cornelius Puschmann on Aug 16, 2010

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Visualization in the Digital Humanities — Presentation Transcript