The Language of Moving Pictures in Computer-Based Visualizations of a Literary-History Database
Keywords:
literature and new media, digital humanities, information visualization, user interface, literary history, WomenWriters database, diagrammatic knowledgeAbstract
A digital humanities project has to find an adequate way for presenting the contents of the database it researches. To resolve this task an interdisciplinary team is formed in which a researcher of humanities, a graphic designer and a computer engineer collaborate. The user interface that structures the ordering of the database and guides the queries, as well as its final stage, visualization of the retrieved results, are based on the principles of graphic design, montage of a moving image and the principles of new media. In the background of information visualization and information design is the ability for diagrammatic thinking. The first part of the paper explicates how coding of meaning is based on technologies and different communication media, such as film, video and new media objects. This awareness is a necessary condition for understanding of the complex functioning of information visualization on computers. The usage of quantitative approaches in humanities research is problematized, as it is the basis for the majority of visualization methods, while humanities operate with qualitative, complex, not easily reduced and quantified entities. The second part of the paper presents an experiment in computer-based visualizations of a literary-history database WomenWriters, where the theoretical concepts were tested in practice. The screen-images of selected visualizations show the user interfaces: how meaning is coded in graphical signs organized on the surface of the computer screen and how moving images are used in cases of interaction and animation. The results of the experiment are interpreted and evaluated in the conclusion by considering the relation between the contents of the concrete database and the outcomes of its visualizations.References
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