Assignment 3

Assignment 3:

Remember Lima’s Functions of Network Visualization!!

1. To document or map a system of relations that has never been documented before–to portray new territory (epistemological rather than geographical)
2. To clarify the system, simplify it, enable understanding (hermeneutical function)
3. To find a hidden pattern, reveal new knowledge and its source patterns
4. To expand our knowledge horizons; allow for the understanding of multidimensional behaviors, multivariate sets of data.
5. To abstract representation as an aesthetic construct; data as art accesses new meaning

Analyze a set of literary/cultural relations through the Palladio platform

For this assignment you may use either:

a)  a dataset that is provided for you (sample data in Palladio or the .csv files on the Google Drive). If you choose this option you must also visualize the same dataset in Google Fusion tables.  You must make a screen shot of each view in each platform, and describe what this visualization is showing and what the variables are in the visualization.  You should write at least 400 words in your reflective blog post that discusses whether these visualizations are, in Johanna Drucker’s terms, representations or knowledge generators and show how the spatialization or arrangement of elements carries meaning.

OR

b) your own data set.  If you choose this option you should visualize your dataset in Palladio with the option of also doing it in Google Fusion tables.  You must also describe your dataset, describe the process by which you decided which aspects of your dataset should be investigated. In your blogpost (at least 400 words) you must make a screen shot of each view in Palladio, and describe what this visualization is showing and what the variables are in the visualization.

For extra credit, you should also discuss whether these visualizations are, in Johanna Drucker’s terms, representations or knowledge generators; and show how the spatialization or arrangement of elements carries meaning.