When we read a text, we normally follow it in quite a linear fashion: from left to right, from top to bottom. Even when we skim articles quickly online, the trajectory is still the same. However, this is not the most efficient method of reading: in the age of hypertext we tend to create our own narratives using the bits and pieces from different sources.
As a response to this challenge we at Nodus Labs developed a new free online software tool Textexture.Com, which visualizes any text as a network and enables the user to use this interactive visualization to read through the text in a non-linear fashion.
Polysingularity is a condition where multiple solutions are possible and yet only some are actualized at any moment of time. It’s a study of how affordances (or environmental opportunities) come into contact with the human capacity to believe and make choices. Polysingularity is best described through the framework of networks where the node’s current state and future condition is dynamically determined by its specificity as well as the multiplicities it belongs to.
We visualized Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” as a text network and then read it again using Alexis Jacomy’s GexfWalker. Whether it is a new reading of Shakespeare’s classic or a bunch of unrelated words is for you to decide, but at least it allows for polysingularity of text to be expressed more fully through following the word relations while staying loyal to the text’s original structure.
In this work we propose a method and algorithm for identifying the pathways for meaning circulation within a text. This is done by visualizing normalized textual data as a graph and deriving the key metrics for the concepts and for the text as a whole using network analysis. The resulting data and graph representation are then used to detect the key concepts, which function as junctions for meaning circulation within a text, contextual clusters comprised of word communities (themes), as well as the most often used pathways for meaning circulation.
We are happy to announce our new Text Atlas project. It is now available as a blog on Tumblr and will later be published as a book and presented in exhibition format.