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Watching TextArc cycle through Alice in Wonderland is amazing. The text flows around the edge of the image, and as the words are drawn and associations are made in flowing color, the work of literature comes alive.
This is one of the coolest things we have brought to you in some time. Itis a project called TextArc from W. Bradford Paley that marries literature and technology in such a way as to offer new ways of looking at the written word. TextArc is, in a nutshell, one of the most innovative ways to examine the relationship of words within a work (be it novel, play, Web site, or even speech). The goal of TextArc is to visually show the links between words, their distribution in the text, and their location relative to each other, which allows us to see the way words work with each other to tell a story.
See below for information on prints, and a special discount TextArc is offering TMO readers for those prints. |
What it does
The idea is a deceptively simple one: The entire text is drawn around the page in an arc, hence the name TextArc, to show the full body of work to be examined. Words that are frequently used are then drawn brighter and larger than those around it. Any word that is used more than once is placed in the center of its mentions. It helps, according to the TextArc.org project, to "think of the word as being attached to every place it is used in the text by tiny rubber bands. Those forces pull each word closer to where it appears most often in the text."
The live interactive online display
( see below for more information)
This screen shot shows all the connections
"Alice" has to other words in the text.
(Click the thumbnail for a very large version of this image to see the details)