research-article

Poemage: Visualizing the Sonic Topology of a Poem

Authors:

Katharine Coles,

Miriah MeyerAuthors Info & Claims

IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Volume 22, Issue 1

Pages 439 - 448

https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2015.2467811

Published: 31 January 2016 Publication History

Abstract

The digital humanities have experienced tremendous growth within the last decade, mostly in the context of developing computational tools that support what is called distant reading - collecting and analyzing huge amounts of textual data for synoptic evaluation. On the other end of the spectrum is a practice at the heart of the traditional humanities, close reading - the careful, in-depth analysis of a single text in order to extract, engage, and even generate as much productive meaning as possible. The true value of computation to close reading is still very much an open question. During a two-year design study, we explored this question with several poetry scholars, focusing on an investigation of sound and linguistic devices in poetry. The contributions of our design study include a problem characterization and data abstraction of the use of sound in poetry as well as Poemage, a visualization tool for interactively exploring the sonic topology of a poem. The design of Poemage is grounded in the evaluation of a series of technology probes we deployed to our poetry collaborators, and we validate the final design with several case studies that illustrate the disruptive impact technology can have on poetry scholarship. Finally, we also contribute a reflection on the challenges we faced conducting visualization research in literary studies.

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Index Terms

Poemage: Visualizing the Sonic Topology of a Poem
1. Applied computing
  1. Arts and humanities
2. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)

Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.

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Published: 31 January 2016

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Cited By

Hoque MMashiat TGhai BShelton CChevalier FKraus KElmqvist N(2024)The HaLLMark Effect: Supporting Provenance and Transparent Use of Large Language Models in Writing with Interactive VisualizationProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3641895(1-15)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3641895
House NJohnston A(2023)Clover Connections: Visualising Character Dynamics in Novels for Non-ExpertsProceedings of the 35th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference10.1145/3638380.3638384(191-201)Online publication date: 2-Dec-2023
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Hoque MGhai BKraus KElmqvist N(2023)Portrayal: Leveraging NLP and Visualization for Analyzing Fictional CharactersProceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3563657.3596000(74-94)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3563657.3596000
Risha ZSonmez Unal DWalker E(2023)Soliloquy: Fostering Poetry Comprehension Using an Interactive Think-aloud VisualizationProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581374(1-16)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
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