Katharine Coles

Rule-based visual mappings - with a case study on poetry visualization

In this paper, we present a user‐centered design study on poetry visualization. We develop a rule‐based solution to address the conflicting needs for maintaining the flexibility of visualizing a large set of poetic variables and for reducing the tedium and cognitive load in interacting with the visual mapping control panel. We adopt Munzners nested design model to maintain high‐level interactions with the end users in a closed loop. In addition, we examine three design options for alleviating the difficulty in visualizing poems latitudinally. We present several example uses of poetry visualization in scholarly research on poetry.

Finding and figuring flow: Notes toward multidimensional poetry visualization

Under a grant funded by the NEH in the US and the AHRC, ESRC, and JISC in the UK, we are collaborating with computer scientists to create digital poetry visualization tools for fellow creative writers and literary scholars, beginning with sonic patterns and moving on first to more abstract figural constructs such as images and metaphors and then to relationships among poems. Like other digital humanities teams, we aim to develop software that will help readers recognize and analyze patterns in and among poems as aids to close readings and eventually to larger scholarly inquiries. What we hope will help distinguish our project from other efforts, though, is the strong emphasis we are placing on poetry’s multidimensionality—especially its relationship to and experience of time, which we are working to access through time-dependent visualizations via the metaphor of “flow.”

LENS: a lyric meditation

ABSTRACT This lyric/scholarly meditation engages perception and vision in both the scientific and the personal senses of the words, with an eye in particular on how the lenses we use for seeing (both such instruments as microscopes, telescopes, and spectacles on the one hand and constructions like theories and hermeneutics on the other) not only enable us to perceive what is beyond us but also shape and sometimes distort what we perceive. The essay also considers how creative works, and in particular narrative and lyric writings, operate at once as instruments by which perceptions are communicated and as tools for forming and shaping our perceptions. Finally, ‘Lens’ addresses and enacts ways in which the construction of the literary work, like the construction of an instrument, shapes what we can use it to observe and consider.

The poetics of distraction

ABSTRACT This lyric essay champions the value of distraction, especially in the context of creative work, in an age obsessed with focus and attention. Using personal anecdotes and close reading, the piece examines both the hazards and the benefits of allowing our attention to be diverted, especially by our inner lives.

Re-spatialization of time series plots

Visualizing time series is a ubiquitous aspect of many applications from science to business. The conventional designs of line graphs and temporal parallel coordinates plots focus on the depiction of the temporal context, but typically fail to convey the spatial information associated with data values at each time step. In this paper, we present a study of the design space for reintroducing spatial context to time series plots. We consider a range of options, from color encoding to glyph encoding, from abstract illustration to realistic representation, and from interactive brushing to animated three-dimensional viewing. We evaluate these design options in conjunction with two case studies: (i) observing events in temporal sensory data of seafloor hydrothermal plumes and (ii) observing phonemic dynamics in poems. We report domain experts’ comparative assessment, which provides an insight into the effectiveness of different re-spatialization methods.

The Great Writing International Creative Writing Conference, Imperial College, London: Observations from 2012–2014

These observations from the Great Writing international Creative Writing conference (www.greatwriting.org.uk) serve not only to highlight some of the discussion that occurs annually at this global conference, which is now entering its 19 year, but also to frame those discussions in terms of New Writing, where a number of papers first delivered at Great Writing, and later developed into articles, have then been published. Over the three gatherings of the Great Writing international Creative Writing conference occurring between 2012 and 2014, we conducted a number of plenary discussions and anonymous polling of conference presenters with regard to their thoughts on the practice of creative writing, and on current issues related to creative writing in higher education. These activities were conducted under the auspices of the annual ‘New Writing International Creative Writing Event’, which began at the Great Writing conference in 2011 with an inaugural keynote talk from the ever-energetic author for adults and children, Philip Gross. Philip has recently completed a Foreword for the book Creative Writing and Education (Multilingual Matters, 2015) in which the evidence of his continued energy and support for creative writing education is inspiring. To begin, in 2012 Katharine Coles (University of Utah, USA), Jeri Kroll (Flinders University, Australia) and Nigel McLoughlin (University of Gloucestershire, United Kingdom) formed a panel for the annual ‘New Writing International Creative Writing Event’ to discuss creative writing in universities and colleges. Here are some extracts from that lively panel discussion: