[-empyre-] visualization as the new language of theory

[Gregory Ulmer]

Simon Biggs wrote:
> Hi Sean
>
> I am aware of the examples you give – but that was not the sort of 
> thing I meant when suggesting some form of data analysis of a text. I 
> was thinking more about how you could mash-up discourse analysis, 
> corpus linguistics and reader reception theory, on the one hand, and 
> empirical linguistics and statistical semantic modelling, on the 
> other. I imagine it would be a mess so was entertained by what a 
> possible visualisation might resemble (a car crash?). If you look at 
> http://hosted.simonbiggs.easynet.co.uk/installations/utter/index.htm 
> you might see something like this. The point I was seeking to make is 
> that it seems ambitious to apply quantitative analytical methods to 
> the understanding of something as subjective, fugitive and motile as a 
> text (or other cultural artefact).
//

  Ambitious, and necessary... Data analysis is an important aspect of 
these threads (although my interest includes text).  Are you perhaps 
stating precisely the challenge to data/text mining, to design or 
develop a means of accessing this (connotative?) level of discourse?  I 
am thinking for example of the Digging into Data Challenge
http://www.diggingintodata.org/
 ( I participated with a group that was not awarded one of the few 
grants).  "What do you do with a million books?" (or umpteen million, 
thinking of the Google digitizing project) ... or a million animations?  
The challenge relates to my post in October about the possibility of 
inventing an approach to Web Ontologies using poststructuralist 
ontologies.  Lev's work is relevant here of course.  As the (more or 
less) entire archive of books becomes available online via full text 
search, we will be (are) in a condition of the information sublime.  Is 
the unity between the animation question and text mining found at the 
level of database design or Web Ontologies (if all content is digital)?
  Learning much...
  thanks everyone for the bibliographies

Greg

-- 
*Gregory L. Ulmer*
http://www.english.ufl.edu/~glue
http://heuretics.wordpress.com
 University of Florida