Imagery Lenses for Visualizing Text Corpora

FAIN: HJ-50099-12

University of Utah (Salt Lake City, UT 84112-9049)
Katharine A. Coles (Project Director: July 2011 to November 2014)

A project to explore new visualization techniques for use in large scale linguistic and literary corpora using the collections of the British National Corpus and various smaller archives of poetry. The project is led by humanities scholars and computer scientists from the University of Utah (US) and University of Oxford (UK). The UK partner, the University of Oxford, is requesting £97,606 from the UK funding consortium.

Corpus-based research originated in modern linguistics, and it now has applications in many fields of the humanities and social sciences. A fascinating research question is whether or not advanced visualization techniques can provide an interface that enables humanities researchers to use their domain knowledge dynamically, while using the computational capability of computers. In particular, can data visualization help users make new observations and generate new hypotheses? The aim of this project is to answer the above methodological research question, and to create a set of new visualization tools for future scholarly research. The objectives of this project are to develop a family of novel techniques for visualizing text corpora and to formulate mappings from new taxonomies to visual organizations of the statistical information of a corpus, a document cluster or an individual text document and to evaluate the usability and transferability of the developed visualization techniques.

Associated Products

Slippage, Spillage, Pillage, Bliss (Article)
Title: Slippage, Spillage, Pillage, Bliss
Author: Katharine Coles
Abstract: Paper written out of the Poem Viewer and subsequent Poemage projects theorizing the usefulness of visualization tools to close readers of poetry.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://www.sci.utah.edu/~nmccurdy/Poemage/images/20150224154447411.pdf
Primary URL Description: Poemage web page
Periodical Title: Western Humanities Review
Publisher: Western Humanities Review

Sounding and Seeing (Article)
Title: Sounding and Seeing
Author: Katharine Coles
Abstract: An adaptation for print of a talk on poetry visualization presented at the Poetry in Motion Conference at the International Poetry Studies Institute in Canberra, AU, September 2015. Invited and accepted; not yet in press.
Year: 2016
Primary URL Description: Will appear on the Poemage web site once the print edition is released.
Access Model: print
Format: Other
Publisher: International Poetry Studies Institute

Freedom and Flow: A New Approach to Visualizing Poetry (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Freedom and Flow: A New Approach to Visualizing Poetry
Author: Abdul-Ramen, Alfie
Author: Coles, Katharine
Author: Lein, Julie Gonnering
Author: Wynne, Martin
Abstract: A presentation at the international DH conference presenting the new Poem Viewer tool.
Date: 7/17/2013
Primary URL: http://dh2013.unl.edu/abstracts/ab-143.html
Primary URL Description: DH conference abstracts

Solitary Mind, Collaborative Mind: Close Reading and Interdisciplinary Research (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Solitary Mind, Collaborative Mind: Close Reading and Interdisciplinary Research
Author: Coles, Katharine
Author: Julie Gonnering Lein
Abstract: A presentation on collaboration.
Date: 7/19/2013
Primary URL: http://dh2013.unl.edu/abstracts/author.html?q=author:%22coles%2C%20katherine%7C%7CColes%2C%20Katherine%22
Primary URL Description: DH conference web site/abstracts
Conference Name: DH

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