A Platform for Cultural Information Visualization Using Schematic Expressions of Cube

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A Platform for Cultural
Information Visualization
Using Schematic
Expressions of Cube
Saito, Shinya
saitos@fc.ritsumei.ac.jp
Postdoctoral Fellow, Digital Humanities Center
for Japanese Arts and Cultures Ritsumeikan
University, Kyoto, Japan
Ohno, Shin
shinohno@gmail.com
Research Assistant, Digital Humanities Center
for Japanese Arts and Cultures Ritsumeikan
University, Kyoto, Japan
Inaba, Mitsuyuki
inabam@sps.ritsumei.ac.jp
Digital Humanities Center for Japanese Arts
and Cultures Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto,
Japan
In recent years, people have tended to be
overwhelmed by a vast amount of information
in various contexts. Therefore, arguments about
"Information Visualization" as a method to
make information easy to comprehend are more
than understandable.
This paper will argue the method of visualization
of vast amount of information using 3-D viewer,
and we will introduce an environment called
KACHINA CUBE (KC) that can visualize various
information using a “cube”. We have introduced
KC in DH2009 (Saito, Inaba and Ohno, 2009).
Then, we limited the use of KC to geographic
information. But now, KC can adopt not only
geographic information but also various events.
In this paper, we introduce KC’s new design and
function.
1. Design Concept of KC
1.1. Visualization Design
The most important thing in this research is
to develop a Web system to integrate a large
quantity of fragmentary information and to
construct a method for visualizing a "scheme of
things". For this purpose, we need to place all
fragmentary information in the same context.
Moreover, we have to come up with a way to put
various information in a cube.
We decided to design KC in three dimensions,
two dimensions for geographical information
and another one for temporal information
(see Fig. 1). In this virtual 3D space (CUBE
model), users can post formal and informal
story fragments and can spin the cube (see Fig.
2). Among them, we call formal ones history
fragments, and informal fragments story ones.
KC also supports researchers to make linkages
among fragments in periodical or logical order.
We call a set of cultural fragments a storyline.
We are developing KC’s search-engine for the
most appropriate word. A fragment highlighted
means that it includes the search term.
Moreover, if there is more than one appropriate
fragment, a line is drawn among those
fragments. This function helps to find a hidden
context or story among fragmented information.
When words are searched and some words have
a logical conjunction, multiple lines are drawn,
as well as color-coded, based on the number
of matched words. This search function thus
makes visible the degree of connection among
fragments.
Fig 1. Application of CUBE Model for geographic information

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Fig 2. Rotation of cube
1.2. Sharing Design
W3C puts tremendous efforts to create
standardized frameworks for Web, and
researchers in digital humanities regard
semantic web technology as one of the key
research fields. This kind of technology gives
us various chances to share data for other use.
We believe archived cultural data should be
standardized to fit in this framework, which
allows users to access data and utilize them in
various platforms.
We apply RDF/OWL to define our data. Its
extensive and flexible definition is suitable for
our system and motivates other researchers to
access our data (Bray, 2001).
1.
History fragment class: Objective information
in textbook or dictionary
2.
Story fragment class: Subjective information
such as oral history
3.
Storyline class: Aggregate of historical and
story fragments based on a specific context
4.
Geography class: Geographical information of
the historical and story fragments
5.
Temporal class: Time when the incidents told
in historical and story fragments occurred
1.3. Conceptual map Design
KC can adopt not only geographic information
but also various events. In order to handle
non-geographical information, KC supports
conceptual maps. Moreover, the way in which a
conceptual map is made should be considered.
A conceptual map is a figure which expresses
a development of story or event. We decided
to apply the Trajectory Equifinality Model
(TEM) to the process of making conceptual
map. TEM is a theory to capture a certain
phenomenon from view point of “time” and
“process” (Valsinar and Sato 2006).
Moreover, KC is a web-based application that
is built on the client-server architecture. In this
system, client side application is implemented
using ActionScript. On the other hand, server
side application is developed by using PHP
(PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor). KC adopts
MySQL as a relational database management
system.
Fig 3. Conceptual map of a muder case
Below is an example of making a conceptual
map using TEM. Fig.3 is a conceptual map
to visualize a process of investigation and
trial of a certain actual murder case. This
conceptual map expresses both the process
of the murder case itself and its trial. The
map’s 12 columns represent development of this
murder case; and 3 rows, the statements in the
court of the defendant and prosecution. The
defendant's statements are set on the top, while
that of prosecution on the bottom. Moreover,
statements that are pertinent to neither the top
nor the bottom are set in the middle.
Fig.4 shows a result of this visualization with KC.
This system is suitable to grasp the perspective
on complicated cases which include multiple
statements, stories, or contexts.