Visualizing the Invisible

visualization, n

“The action or fact of visualizing; the power or process of forming a mental picture or vision of something not actually present to the sight; a picture thus formed.”

What is Visualization:

Visualisation builds from ancient traditions of mapping visual data as a means of communication. Abstract data is transferred to a form of graphic variables that is visually represented. This work exposes information and patterns from large amounts of data that may not necessarily be visible to the researcher without the use of digital tools.

Types of Visualization:

• Static Visualizations - visualizations that move and cannot be manipulated

• Dynamic Visualizations - short animations that show change over a specific variable

• Interactive Visualizations - allow for the manipulation of graphic variables

Visualization and Literature:

While those who study language and literature often do not think of their studies as being concerned with the visual. I would argue though that visual aesthetics are very much involved in both the production, comprehension, and studies of literary artefacts. If visualization is focused in one regard on analysis of the visual elements of a data set, we can include images embedded in text as well as the shape of the text itself. My thoughts go to the concrete poetry of bpNichol in which the shape of the work is just as important as the semantic information embedded in each piece. This allows for researchers to perform a multimodal discourse analysis in which they interpret all elements of a data source. As well, visualization tools can be used to clarify and explain information in research. Often, literature is analysed in relation to the plot line which narrates the trajectory of a text. This is often something visualized in relation to literature, in which a visual image marks how the story develops. For instance, Christopher Booker argued that there are seven basic plots that are used in all stories. In his book, The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, he details these plots and their uses in literature. Using vizualization techniques we can map these out as a means to add another level of interpretation to the text. And so, literature is not just text but it is also the images that come along with it which means that we can both study the visuals of the text and also use visualization in order to clarify data in research.

Tools:

Imj - A web-based movie barcode generator, montage generator, and image plotter for creating visualizations for your large image sets. http://www.zachwhalen.net/pg/imj/

Raw - An open source data visualization framework for making visual representations of complex data sets. http://app.rawgraphs.io/

Links:

Bailey, Jefferson. 2014. ‘Speak to the Eyes: The History and Practice of Information Visualization’. http://www.jeffersonbailey.com/speak-to-the-eyes-the-history-and-practice-of-information-visualization/

King, Linsday and Peter Leonard. 2017. ‘Robots Reading Vogue’ http://dh.library.yale.edu/projects/vogue/

Ferguson, Kevin. 2017. ‘Digital Surrealism: Visualizing Walt Disney Animation Studios’ DHQ 11.1 http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/11/1/000276/000276.html

Huffer, Damien and Shawn Graham. 2017 ‘The Insta-Dead: The rhetoric of the human remains trade on Instagram’ Internet Archaeology 45.5 https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.45.5

Graham, Milligan, and Weingart. ‘Principles of Visualization’ http://www.themacroscope.org/?page_id=469

Owens, T. “Discovery and Justification Are Different: Notes on Science-ing the Humanities”http://www.trevorowens.org/2012/11/discovery-and-justification-are-different-notes-on-sciencing-the-humanities/

Owens, T. “Defining Data for Humanists: Text, Artifact, Information, or Evidence?” Journal of Digital Humanities 2011 1.1. http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-1/defining-data-for-humanists-by-trevor-owens/

Sinclair, Stéfan and Geoffrey Rockwell. ‘Visualization’ Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities https://digitalpedagogy.mla.hcommons.org/keywords/visualization/

Manovich, Lev. “What is Visualization?” http://manovich.net/index.php/projects/what-is-visualization

Manovich, Lev. “The Science of Culture? Social Computing, Digital Humanities, and Cultural Analytics “http://manovich.net/index.php/projects/cultural-analytics-social-computing

Drucker, Johanna. “Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display,” Digital Humanities Quarterly, Winter 2011: v5 n1. http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/5/1/000091/000091.html

Jessop, Martyn. “Digital visualization as a scholarly activity,” Literary and Linguistic Computing 23.3 (2008): 281-293. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqn016

Price, Daniel et al., “Curating Digital Spaces, Making Visual Arguments: A Case Study in New Media Presentations of Ancient Objects,” DHQ 7.2 (2013), http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/7/2/index.html

My annotations can be found here: https://hypothes.is/users/kirstenbussiere