Visualizing Cultural Patterns

The interdisciplinary project Visualizing Cultural Patterns (see also Visualizing Cultural Patterns and video) was created on the novel opportunities to studying social and cultural processes from large amounts of data about people’s cultural behavior and preferences as well as cultural assets themselves in digital form. In the same vein as Bruno Latour’s essay on digital footprints (and other sources), this project starts from the observation that:

The joint availability of (a) large cultural data sets (through the Web and digitization efforts by museums and libraries) and (b) tools already employed in the sciences to analyze big data makes feasible a new methodology for the study of cultural processes and artifacts. If humanities have typically relied on the manual analysis of a small number of cultural objects, we can now create information visualizations of large cultural data sets to discover patterns that have not been visible previously.

Lev Manovich present interface design for Cultural Analytics Research Environment running on HiperWall. Photo courtesy of Anne Helmond

Relation to my thesis: A growing number of researchers start take advantage of digital footprints . This one proposes an interdisciplinary approach with a combination of expertise in Visual Arts, Communication, Cognitive Science, and Structural Engineering. I am really intrigued by their use of computer-based analysis and visualization of large data sets and data flows used that should go beyond eye-candy mashups.