Methods

To conduct my computer-assisted analysis, I used TAPoR to find Voyant Bubblelines. After uploading the plain text of the novel in its entirety, I searched for the frequencies of: “sam,” “hailey,” and “the creep.” I repeated this for each characters portion of the text. Once I completed gathering my three Bubbleline graphs, I compiled them into a single visualization, which I created in Photoshop.

Findings
Just by simply looking at the image produced by Voyant I could see some very prominent patterns. In the Sam portion of the novel his own name is never mentioned and in the Hailey portion her name is never mentioned yet in both, we see the others name consistently appearing.

The creep is creepier in more ways than one. His appearances in the novel are sporadic, yet he seems to appear at the same times in both of the stories (which being 100 years apart shows much parallelism). The appearances of each character when tied in a loop will also consistently repeat in a beautiful pattern.

Also the creep appears in each story nearly the same amount of times (Hailey – 36 Sam – 37). The total appearances of Hailey (348) and Sam (410) are both even numbers where as The Creep appears an odd amount of times (73)

 

Why has my data been presented in this way?
Because I felt that the novels “heart-beat” lies within Sam, Hailey, and the creep I wanted to pick a visualization that dealt with lines. In knowing that I would be dealing with frequencies, I knew that a line graph would not suffice. This is how I came across the Bubbleline. Not only is this visualization able to show change over time but can do so in a well organized fashion that doesn’t require constantly checking the axis for data values.

My larger visualization came more from the heart. I took the data based on the patterns I saw and molded them into one interconnected image. Both of the stories overlap the entire story showing that consistencies exist even there. I was also going to make it a rotating .gif but didn’t have the expertise.

Unfortunately, with the Bubbleline, the colors are pre-allocated to terms and cannot be changed. To avoid confusion in my visual, I kept the colors consistent. The key is found on the first visualization.

What am I doing!?

In my visualizations I strived to show the symmetry within my findings. I used a gradient with a half way mark change, a line through the “entire” circle separating worlds and made sure that the elements were centered appropriately. Though the conversion from the original Bubbleline to the visualization is not exact, it gives us a great idea at the cyclical nature of the novel. Another reason that I had placed the Bubblelines into a circular form is to show its ability to repeat.

Drucker – UCLA
Drucker’s article Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display inspired me to create the second visualization. I wanted to remove the numbers and show a picture that paints both the data from the original source as well as my interpretation of the data and how it correlated to the novel as a larger work of art.

visual 2

Combined in Photoshop

 

 

visual

Voyant Bubblelines