Digital Visualization as a Scholarly Activity

Introduction
The numerous visual metaphors that describe cognitive
processes hint at the nexus of relationships between what
we see and what we think. We say we ‘see’ when we mean we
understand, we try to organize and make our ideas ‘clear’ by
bringing them into ‘focus’, and so on. When faced with tasks
that require substantial thought or organization of ideas we will
often reach for a pen and paper to ‘sketch out’ (another visual
metaphor) our thoughts. We have a deep understanding that
we can enhance our thought processes by finding ways of
linking external perception with our interior mental processes.
Graphic aids to thinking are not new but the development of
computers has provided a new medium with remarkable
functionality. This in turn offers the potential for new research
methodologies that amplify cognition. These tools serve two
distinct purposes. One of these is often described by the
hackneyed phrase “A picture is worth ten thousand words”.1
This misses the true point of visualization as what is being
described here is just a matter of transmission, of having high
bandwidth to transmit large volumes of information. Of far
greater importance is the ability of these tools to allow visual
perception to be used in the creation or discovery of new
knowledge. Knowledge is not transferred, revealed, or
perceived, but is created through a dynamic process. This raises
epistemological issues concerning visualization and points the
way to an intellectual approach to the subject.
Computer visualization techniques began as a methodology for
understanding the meaning of large volumes of numeric data.
Scientists needed a means of visualizing the flood of data that
can be collected by modern monitoring and measuring
instruments. The National Science Foundation initiative on
Scientific Visualization launched in 1985 led in a very short
time to Scientific Visualization becoming recognised as not
just a methodology but a discipline in its own right. A similar
trend may now be developing in the Humanities. For example
the London Charter seeks to establish principles for the use of
3D visualization in research and communication of cultural
heritage that ensure the intellectual integrity of the methods and outcomes derived from it. How is visualization being used
in the humanities at the moment? Is there a potential counterpart
to Scientific Visualization in the digital humanities – a field of
‘humanistic visualization’? What issues does it raise? Where
is the common ground and what are the intellectual issues
involved?
Visualization in the Digital
Humanities
There are many ways of structuring an examination of the
use of visualization in the humanities; by discipline, by
type of information structure and so on. To set the context for
this paper I have chosen to look at the type of data that is being
visualized. The boundaries of data types are sometimes blurred
but a starting point could be as follows
• Numbers. Quantitative analysis and visualization has been
an established tool in many humanities disciplines for a
long time. It is found in generic statistical analysis software
or embedded in specialised applications such as text
analysis. It is gradually permeating into new areas of the
humanities through work such as that of Franco Moretti
(2005) who has argued for a wider application of
quantitative methods in areas such as literary history.
• Text: Visualization techniques using tables and graphs have
been commonplace in text analysis for many years. These
visualizations are sometimes variants of statistical
visualizations of numeric data (as in word frequencies) but
in other cases they are specialised visual forms of text
analysis. Projects such as the TAPoR and NORA Projects
are developing imaginative new visual forms and
applications. These new methods apply not just to the visual
representation of the results of analysis but also to the
visualization of the texts themselves. This aims to support
interpretive scholarship by allowing areas or relationships
of interest to be identified within large volumes of text.
Projects have explored specific texts in this way, for
example Dante’s Inferno , Hume’s Dialogues and The Shape
of Shakespeare but there is substantial scope for a tool that
could be applied to any text. The use of the word ‘tool’ here
should not be taken to imply that this is a computational
problem, this is far from the truth, as what is being grappled
with here are conceptual problems. For example, what is a
text? How should it be displayed visually? Humanities
computing provides a medium with a myriad of possibilities
of representation; uni-dimensional or two dimensional
physical objects, abstract objects showing relations among
words or between words and annotations, and animations.
Further questions arise from this work; is there a need for
representational as well as interpretive markup? What are
the relationships between text visualization and the
interpretation of texts? The visualizing of texts is also an
area which links humanities computing work to the arts, for
example the interactive installation Text Rain by Camille
Utterback and Romy Achituv.
• Narratives and relationships. These can be grouped and
referred to as diagrams . Edward Tufte has drawn public
attention to this style of diagram; famous examples include
the work of Playfair and Charles Minard’s narrative graphic
of Napoleon’s ill-fated campaign against Russia in 1812.
In many respects this has been a neglected field since the
advent of digital tools because diagrams of this type are not
easily implemented in software. They are also potentially
of enormous value to the humanities as narratives and the
study of relationships between people, events and artefacts
are studied by many disciplines.
• Space. The study of spatial relationships and a sense of
place occur in many humanities disciplines. This area is
dominated by Geographical Information System (GIS)
software but this was developed for scientific data and is
not ideally suited to the qualitative data used in the
humanities (Jessop, 2006). Digital dynamic maps are one
of many alternatives offering media that are better suited
to humanists (Jessop, 2006). The Electronic Cultural Atlas
Initiative (ECAI) with its utilization of Timemap provides
an indication of possible future developments.
• Time. Digital visualization provides a very powerful
medium for temporal visualisation. Tools such as timelines
allow one to explore the development of complex historical
events and the inter-relationships between precursor events.
They are of obvious value in the study of history where later
events build upon earlier ones but they can also be applied
elsewhere. Historiography and literary criticism are both
histories of accumulated comments on a subject. Matt Jensen
(2006) has developed a number of timeline tools which are
intended to answer the styles of questions that are asked by
humanists, for example in the case of political scandals
questions of the style ‘who knew what and when’ or for
exploring the response to an author’s writing over a period
of many years
• 3D Visualization. Much of this work has centred upon
visualizations of the built environment. It is of interest to
not only historians and archaeologists but also anyone who
seeks to find out how the buildings of the past worked in
human terms, for example the Pompey Theatre and Theatron
projects are based on historical and archaeological data but
are primarily of interest to scholars of theatre studies. 3D
visualization is of especial interest in the context of this
paper because there is currently great deal of work focused
on defining not only good practice (see ICT Methods
Network) but also principles for maintaining the intellectual
integrity of such work, for example the London Charter. It
may therefore provide pointers for similar work in the development of a broader humanistic visualization as a
whole.
Any demarcations between the applications of visualization
between different disciplines are misconceived. There is much
common ground offering considerable potential for humanities
computing and the digital humanities. This is where we need
to focus our attention if digital visualization is to achieve
recognition as a rigorous intellectual activity in research and
teaching.
Conclusion
We accept that texts and documents are produced as
readings resulting from acts of interpretation between
the reader and the text; we now need to regard images in the
same way. Every representation, visual or otherwise, is an effort
to structure an argument and as such it is a rhetorical device.
We need to understand the relationship between what is being
communicated and how it is being communicated.
Information graphics, and indeed images generally, can be
considered as historical artefacts themselves, filled with
interesting incidental and substantive information embodied in
their production, style, and graphical properties. But perhaps
more importantly, they are expressions of procedures for
generating knowledge through the act of visualization and ways
of displaying knowledge embodied in visual imagery (Drucker,
2003).
Visualization addresses epistemological and pedagogical issues
that are common to the digital humanities and are at the
forefront of the developing discipline of humanities computing.
This is a vast topic the main aim here is to identify some of the
underlying intellectual issues arising from visualization and
the use of images in digital humanities scholarship.
1. This is commonly believed to be based on a “Chinese proverb”
however Paul Martin Lester believes that it was in fact made up
by the advert writer Federick R. Barnard. See <http://www
5.Fullerton.edu/les/ad.html> and Printers’ Ink,
March 10, 1927.
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Web Resources
• A Visualization of Dante's Inferno <http://urizen.
village.virginia.edu/hell/>
• Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI) <http://ec
ai.org/>
• ICT Methods Network <http://www.methodsnetw
ork.ac.uk/index.html>
• King’s Visualization Lab <http://www.kvl.cch.kc
l.ac.uk/>
• The London Charter <http://public-repository
. e p o c h - n e t . o r g / T h e
LondonCharter_v1.pdf>
• Nora Project <http://www.noraproject.org/de
scription.php>
• Pompey Theatre Project <http://www.kvl.cch.kc
l.ac.uk/pompey.htm>
• Text Analysis Portal for Research (TAPoR) Project <htt
p://www.tapor.ca/>
• TimeMap <http://www.timemap.net/>
• Theatron <http://www.theatron.org/>