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.
Italo Calvino once said that “writing is essentially a combinatorial exercise” and that “reading is a way of exercising the potentialities contained in the system of signs”. We propose a new way of reading using text network visuaization. It goes beyond the normal sequential organization of textual material and instead offers the reader to navigate through polysingularity of meanings present within the text. Created using Alexis Jacomy’s GexfWalker and Gephi software.
Our new polysingularity blog is online. Polysingularity is an umbrella term for everything that expresses itself in its multiplicity and yet remains isolated in its specificity. It’s a sci-fi action that’s directed inwards, counteracting hyperconnectivity and technological singularity through dysfunctionally dynamic propositions.
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.
We took some random but well-known texts and put them through the X-Ray of our methodology and imagination, as well as various tools, such as Automap and Gephi. Here are the first results of this analysis.
