GertrudeMapper prototype tool was created as an exploratory visual artefact that can enhance historians’ intuition when approaching the study of text documents. It makes it easy to graphically, dynamically and interactively explore the contents of the business letters available in Simón Ruiz’s archive. To this end, the proposed approach is based on simulating a 2D particle system, where each particle represents a word. The relative positions of any given pair of particles will depend on the relations of proximity between the corresponding word pairs in the text. Consequently, it is possible to obtain a global visualization of the letters as a whole, by animating individual words and looking at their proximity to the rest of the words.

This experimental prototype visualizes 20 business letters from the decades 1560 and 1570. These letters were collected and published by José Gentil da Silva in 1959.

• Once Gertrude is started, the letters will automatically be loaded
• You and can click and drag any ball
• Use “p” key pause/start the loading of the letters with
• Use “w”, “a”, “s” and “d” keys to pan
  
• When clicking particle, opaque dots emerge
• By clicking these dots the complete sentences containing the word in question appear
  

 

More information about GertrudeMapper has been published “Mapping Letters Through Interaction Design” (T. Iturrioz (1), J. Cano (1) and M. Wachowicz (2)). Cartographic Journal. Art and Cartography Special Issue. Vol: 46 Nº4 pp 350-359, November 2009

(1)Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
(2)Wageningen UR, The Netherlands

Some references

Clark, J. (2008) Neoformix. Discovering and Illustrating Patterns in Data. Stephanie Posavec. <http://www.neoformix.com/2008/StephaniePosavec.html>
Dapot, I. (2005) ‘The Force of Things’ <http://www.iandapot.com/bennet.html>
Fry, B. (2007) Visualizing Data, O'Reilly Media Inc., Sebastopol, CA, USA
Fry, B. and Reas, C. (2009) ‘Processing’ <http://www.processing.org>
Harris, J. and Kamvar, S. (2005) ‘We feel fine’ <http://www.wefeelfine.org>
Harrison, C. (2009), Chris Harrison - Visualization Projects. <http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/visualization.html>
Vande Moere, A. (2009) ‘Information Aesthetics Weblog. Information Visualization & Visual Communication’ <http://infosthetics.com/>
Klanten, R., Bourquin, N., Ehmann, S., F. and Heerden, F. (2008) Data Flow. Visualising Information in Graphic Design, Die Gestalten Verlag, Berlin
Lima, M. (2009) ‘Visual Complexity Website’ <http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/>
Paley, B. (2002) ‘TextArc: Revealing Word Associations, Distribution and Frequency.’ <http://www.textarc.org/>
Polónia, A. (2008) ‘DynCoopNet: Portuguese research Project. Report to European Science Foundation’ <www.dyncoopnet-pt.org/portuguese-team>
Reas, C., Fry, B. and Maeda, J. (2007) Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists,
TECT Programme. European Science Foundation (2008) ‘DynCoopNet’ <www.dyncoopnet.eu>
TheBrain Technologies LP (2009) ‘The Brain. Visual Information Management’ <http://www.thebrain.com/#-50>
Traer, J. (2009) ‘Traer Physics Library’ <http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~traer/physics/> 2009
Van Vleck, C. (2007) ‘Information Taking Shape’ <http://www.cvanvleck.com/vanvleck_thesis.html>