CIRCA:TextArc
From CIRCA
- This page is under construction*
Contents |
Introduction to TextArc
[1] is a program for visualizing the structure of text. It treats the text as a
* A text display program: "a visual index"
* Visualizing the whole: full text on outer spiral
* Visualizing the concordance: words repeated inside with text location determining position ("rubber band")
* Visualizing associations: word pairs are linked
* Highly interactive
* Artistic design
TextArc reading Alice in Wonderland in orange with words associated to Alice glowing purple while the places the word Alice appears showing in green on the outer ring
Significance
* "The first accurate cyber-accountant of literature that is
capable of analysing the content and structure of a text"
* Influential: seen by thousands; inspired other text visualization projects, including a visualization of the history of information visualization, for an information visualization conference (InfoVis)
* Boundaries between art - design - text - data - science
* Highly interactive
* Explores relationship between structure and meaning - but how much meaning is inherent in structure?
* Importance is based on frequency, connection is based on co-location: privileges the word as discrete unit
* Usefulness vs reading a Review
Lines radiated from the word King (in gray) and Queen (in orange) showing that both words chiefly appear in two sections of the book, although there are four prior occasions at regular intervals that mention the Queen: closer inspection reveals these to be foreshadowing mentions of the Queen by other characters.
Audience and Purpose
* Audience: people who need to filter a text quickly * To expose the structure implied by word distribution * To allow deeper interpretation based on structure * To expose timing and interconnection * "Suppose you have 5 minutes to understand a 500 page book with no index or chapters..."
Technologies
* TextArc is a Java applet, typically run in a web browser
* Java is an Operating System-independent programming language released by Sun in 1995
* Text is an input parameter
* Links to Project Gutenberg (1000s of texts as input)
* Other input could be:
o E-mails archives
o Legal documents
o Source code
o Financial news updates
o Genomics
History
TextArc was conceived, designed and developed by Paley. Bradford teaches interaction design as "cognitive engineering" at Columbia University. He is also a consultant for Wall Street, creating visualizations for stock traders. The program was originally conceived as a text analysis tool.
TextArc was released in 2002 (although a preview was shown at the Centre for the Arts in 2001). Since then it has been displayed in numerous locations, including:
* Columbia University * SIGGRAPH Show (Bradford Paley was a "working artist" at the show) * York Public Library plasma screen * Whitney Museum of Modern Art [2] gallery * The Japan Media Arts Festival in 2002, where it won the Prize Non-Interactive Digital Art Award for a poster of TextArc displaying Alice in Wonderland * & Spaces Part 4: 2nd iteration, where TextArc displayed the text of "History of Science", in 2006 * Project Room at Art Museum in 2010
References
Report by Katrina Kimport for the Transliteracies Project
