As discussed in the Whitley reading, there are advantages to both traditional literature and today’s textual visualization technologies. While reading literature, a reader is encouraged to read more closely, paying attention to what the author is trying to allude to. This style of reading is great for reflecting on the details of a text in order to form your own interpretations. However, in a text that is sophisticated and long, readers can suffer through a bottleneck syndrome. When complex themes sequentially accumulate, the reader becomes easily overwhelmed. Therefore, using graphing technologies to create a visual representation of text can adhere to a person’s natural capabilities to recognize shapes and patterns. In Micki Kaufman’s project “Quantifying Kissinger”, Kaufman wanted to create a digital national security archive that would make analyzing large archives easier and more convenient for historians. The picture below presents a static text plot that displays tendrils of specificity that shed light on patterns of specific words. This information allows the viewer to visualize data in a way not available to the naked eye when just viewing text.
Using similar visualization technologies, the Belfast Group connected many authors in North Ireland with their writing workshop. Although this group unfortunately stopped meeting in the early 1970’s, their work is still studied in the present. To give a specific example, students in Emory University created a “Manuscript, Archive, and Rare Book Library” that has a large collection of their poems. Through this database, the “NameDropper software” was created, which allowed computers to make sense of the people and places mentioned within the group’s poetry. Once this information is represented graphically, the viewer can visualize the relations between each member of the group. In the example below, one can infer from the proximity of one author from another that some had more connections with specific members than others.
