Cultural analytics
Encyclopedia
Cultural analytics is the exploration and research of massive cultural data sets of visual material - both digitized visual artifacts and contemporary visual and interactive media. To take on the challenge of of how to best explore large collections of rich cultural content, Cultural analytics has developed new methods and intuitive visual techniques to address both the new and existing research questions, which currently drive the humanities.
("the science of analytical reasoning facilitated by visual interactive interfaces") and visual data analysis
:
"Visual data analysis blends highly advanced computational methods with sophisticated graphics engines to tap the extraordinary ability of humans to see patterns and structure in even the most complex visual presentations. Currently applied to massive, heterogeneous, and dynamic datasets, such as those generated in studies of astrophysical, fluidic, biological, and other complex processes, the techniques have become sophisticated enough to allow the interactive manipulation of variables in real time. Ultra high-resolution displays allow teams of researchers to zoom in to examine specific aspects of the renderings, or to navigate along interesting visual pathways, following their intuitions and even hunches to see where they may lead. New research is now beginning to apply these sorts of tools to the social sciences and humanities as well, and the techniques offer considerable promise in helping us understand complex social processes like learning, political and organizational change, and the diffusion of knowledge."
While increased computing power and technical developments allowing for interaction visualization have made the exploration of large data sets using visual presentations possible, the intellectual drive to understand cultural and social processes and production pre-dates many of these computational advances. Charles Joseph Minard's famous dense graphic showing Napoleon's March on Moscow (1869) offers a 19th century example. More recently, Pierre Bourdieu
's historical survey of the cultural consumption practices of mid-century Parisians, documented in La Distinction
, foregrounds the study of culture and aesthetics through the lens of large data sets. Most recently, Franco Moretti
's Graphs, maps, trees: abstract models for a literary history. along with many projects in the Digital Humanities reveal the benefit of large scale analysis of cultural material.
of large sets of culturally-relevant data (such as studies of library catalogs, image collections, and social networking databases.) Image processing
of still and moving video, with feature recognition as well as image data extraction is used to support research into cultural and historical change. Cultural analytical methodologies are deployed to study and interpret videogames and other software forms, both at the phenomonological level (human-computer interface, feature extraction) or at the object level (the analysis of source code.)
Cultural analytics relies heavily on software-based tools, and the field is related to the nascent discipline of software studies
. While the objects of a cultural analytical approach are often digitized representations of the work, rather than the work in its original material form, the objects of study need not be digital works in themselves.
History
The term "cultural analytics" was coined by Lev Manovich in 2007 and shares many ideas and approaches with visual analyticsVisual analytics
Visual analytics is an outgrowth of the fields information visualization and scientific visualization, that focuses on analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces...
("the science of analytical reasoning facilitated by visual interactive interfaces") and visual data analysis
Data analysis
Analysis of data is a process of inspecting, cleaning, transforming, and modeling data with the goal of highlighting useful information, suggesting conclusions, and supporting decision making...
:
"Visual data analysis blends highly advanced computational methods with sophisticated graphics engines to tap the extraordinary ability of humans to see patterns and structure in even the most complex visual presentations. Currently applied to massive, heterogeneous, and dynamic datasets, such as those generated in studies of astrophysical, fluidic, biological, and other complex processes, the techniques have become sophisticated enough to allow the interactive manipulation of variables in real time. Ultra high-resolution displays allow teams of researchers to zoom in to examine specific aspects of the renderings, or to navigate along interesting visual pathways, following their intuitions and even hunches to see where they may lead. New research is now beginning to apply these sorts of tools to the social sciences and humanities as well, and the techniques offer considerable promise in helping us understand complex social processes like learning, political and organizational change, and the diffusion of knowledge."
While increased computing power and technical developments allowing for interaction visualization have made the exploration of large data sets using visual presentations possible, the intellectual drive to understand cultural and social processes and production pre-dates many of these computational advances. Charles Joseph Minard's famous dense graphic showing Napoleon's March on Moscow (1869) offers a 19th century example. More recently, Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher.Starting from the role of economic capital for social positioning, Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location,...
's historical survey of the cultural consumption practices of mid-century Parisians, documented in La Distinction
La Distinction
La Distinction is a book by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu , based on Bourdieu's empirical research on French culture. Taken from studies conducted by Bourdieu in 1963 and concluded in 1967-68, the book was originally published in France in 1979...
, foregrounds the study of culture and aesthetics through the lens of large data sets. Most recently, Franco Moretti
Franco Moretti
Franco Moretti is an Italian literary scholar, trained as a Marxist critic, whose work focuses on the history of the novel as a "planetary form". He has written five books, Signs Taken for Wonders , The Way of the World , Modern Epic , Atlas of the European Novel, 1800-1900 , and Graphs, Maps,...
's Graphs, maps, trees: abstract models for a literary history. along with many projects in the Digital Humanities reveal the benefit of large scale analysis of cultural material.
Current Research
To date, cultural analytics techniques have been applied to films, animations, video games, comics, magazines, books, and other print publications, artworks, photos, and a variety of other media content. The technology used ranges from open-source programs downloadable on any personal computer to supercomputer processing and large-scale displays such as the HIPerSpace (42,000 x 8000 pixels).Methodologies
The methodologies which fall under the umbrella of cultural analytics includes the data miningData mining
Data mining , a relatively young and interdisciplinary field of computer science is the process of discovering new patterns from large data sets involving methods at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, statistics and database systems...
of large sets of culturally-relevant data (such as studies of library catalogs, image collections, and social networking databases.) Image processing
Image processing
In electrical engineering and computer science, image processing is any form of signal processing for which the input is an image, such as a photograph or video frame; the output of image processing may be either an image or, a set of characteristics or parameters related to the image...
of still and moving video, with feature recognition as well as image data extraction is used to support research into cultural and historical change. Cultural analytical methodologies are deployed to study and interpret videogames and other software forms, both at the phenomonological level (human-computer interface, feature extraction) or at the object level (the analysis of source code.)
Cultural analytics relies heavily on software-based tools, and the field is related to the nascent discipline of software studies
Software studies
Software studies is an emerging interdisciplinary research field, which studies software systems and their social and cultural effects.-Overview:...
. While the objects of a cultural analytical approach are often digitized representations of the work, rather than the work in its original material form, the objects of study need not be digital works in themselves.
Related Methodologies
Related Methodologies include:- Digital Humanities
- Information VisualizationInformation visualizationInformation visualization is the interdisciplinary study of "the visual representation of large-scale collections of non-numerical information, such as files and lines of code in software systems, library and bibliographic databases, networks of relations on the internet, and so forth".- Overview...
- Visual AnalyticsVisual analyticsVisual analytics is an outgrowth of the fields information visualization and scientific visualization, that focuses on analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces...
- Data VisualizationData visualizationData visualization is the study of the visual representation of data, meaning "information that has been abstracted in some schematic form, including attributes or variables for the units of information"....
- Data MiningData miningData mining , a relatively young and interdisciplinary field of computer science is the process of discovering new patterns from large data sets involving methods at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, statistics and database systems...
- New Media ArtNew media artNew media art is a genre that encompasses artworks created with new media technologies, including digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, virtual art, Internet art, interactive art, computer robotics, and art as biotechnology...