Visualization as a Reading Tool

After I finished reading Sinclair’s article on information visualization, I started to think on this digital tool in conventional terms. In other words, I wanted to find out how this tool can enrich my reading conventional reading of literary texts and how can I teach information visualization to my students? Is it only an assisting tool? Is it only to support our interpretation of literary texts? Sinclair points out that information visualization provides digital humanities reader with “evidence and argumentation.” This statement impels me to think of the function of visualization tool as a tool that can perform close reading of texts. As a reader, I can come up with an argument on a digital text and, based on Sinclair view, visualization can help me to pack up and support my argument with an evident, usually textual one. Does this mean that visualization tool can help us to escape the use of conventional critical theory approaches on digital texts?  Sinclair also points out that “visualization that contributes to new and emergent ways of understanding the material is best.” This can mean that visualization can provide many readings of the text. It even can add new readings that never experienced by readers. So, the question is what values can visualization add to digital text? Can we assume that visualization can interact with critical theory? In other words, how can literary critics benefit from visualization in shaping and reshaping their approaches to digital humanities texts? I agree with the point that visualization can do some functions that readers cannot do in their reading of literary texts such “providing additional insight into small amounts of text or data.” Sometimes the repetition of specific words is of a notable significance, however as a readers cannot count the number of times a specific word is repeated. In this instance visualization tool proves to be useful. Also, visualization tool is effective in a different arena where the reader can compare and contrast between different texts, a thing the reader cannot do in the conventional way.

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