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culturevis > cultural analytics CULTURAL ANALYTICS: Visualizing Cultural Patterns \| since 2005 a new approach for the study of culture and media being developed by Software Studies Initiative @ UCSD/Calit2 For internship and sponsorship opportunities, please contact: Dr. Lev Manovich, Director, Software Studies Initiative @ Calit2/UCSD Press: UCSD Graduate Students Benefit From Chancellor's Interdisciplinary Collaboratories Orders of Magnitude The Next Big Thing in Humanities, Arts and Social Science Computing: Cultural Analytics Cultural Analytics is our vision of using interactive visualization, GIS, and data analysis for research, teaching and presentation of cultural artifacts, processes, and flows. The joint availability of large cultural data sets (through the Web and digitization efforts by museums and libraries) and tools already employed in the sciences and industry to analyze "big data" makes feasible a fundamentally new methodology for the study of culture and meda. If humanities have typically relied on the manual analysis of a small number of cultural objects, we can now use interactive visualizations of large cultural data sets to map patterns that have not been visible previously. The name "Cultural Analytics" has been deliberately chosen to invoke connections with already existing fields of web analytics, business analytics, visual analytics, and knowledge discovery. In particular, we believe that the paradigm of visual analytics - combining data analysis and data visualization to enable "discovery of the unexpected within massive, dynamically changing information spaces" is perfectly applicable to cultural data sets. You can download Cultural Analytics white paper and a Powerpoint which present our ideas in more detail and survey exiting and related work: Cultural Analytics: Analysis and Visualization of Large Cultural Data Sets \| .doc \| 2.4 MB Introduction to Cultural Analytics \| .ppt \| will be available on slideshare shortly We are currently working on projects to explore the following: 1) Analysis and and visualization of large sets of visual and spatial media: art, photography, video, cinema, computer games, space design, architecture, graphic and web design, product design. 2) Using the wealth of cultural information available on the web to construct detailed interactive spatio-temporal maps of contemporary global cultural patterns. 3) New interactive interfaces for the study and presentation of cultural data sets which combine multiple visualization techniques. We have been successfully using Cultural Analytics ideas in a classroom. Using Manyeyes and other software tools, the teams of UCSD digital art and media students have already created a number of culture vis projects. We have also teamed up with researchers from cognitive science, computer science, communication, and other fields to develop an open Cultural Analytics research environment which would support interactive analysis and visualization of cultural data. Our group is located inside California Institute for Telecommunication and Information Technology (Calit2). This allows us to take advantage of the cutting-edge research into next-generation cyberinfrastructure tools - such as, HIperSpace which is currently the highest resolution display in the world (270 megapixels.) Interface designs for Cultural Analytics Research Environment running on HIperSpace:





As our second home, UCSD has one of the most well-known and diverse program in digital media anywhere, with many renown professors and thousands of undergraduate and graduate students. Through the UCSD network, we are also able to draw on cutting-edge research in digital arts, digital cultures, and media theory happening across UCSD in the following centers and departments: Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA) Visual Arts Department UCSD Music Department UCSD Communication Department Related Initiatives: MONK (Metadata Offers New Knowledge) NEH's Humanities High-Performance Computing Initiative P.S. Why Cultural Analytics? Why do we need a Cultural Analytics research environment? What problem would it be solving? One answer is that Cultural Analytics, is a logical development given the rise of digital humanities, i.e. humanists beginning to use digital media and other IT in their work. But if Cultural Analytics will provide new tools for the research and teaching of culture situated in the past (the traditional domain of humanities), we feel that it is particularly necessary if we are to have a meaningful conversation about contemporary culture. The exponential growth of a number of both non-professional and professional media producers over the last decade has created a fundamentally new cultural situation. Hundreds of millions of people are routinely created and sharing cultural content (blogs, photos, videos, online comments and discussions, etc.). This number is only going to increase, as the number of mobile phones is projected to grow from 2.2 bil to 3 bil within the year 2008. At the same time, the rapid growth of professional, educational, and cultural institutions in many newly globalized countries, along with the instant availability of cultural news over the web, has also dramatically increased the number of "culture professionals" who participate in global cultural production and discussions. Hundreds of thousands of students, artists and designers now have access to the same ideas, information and tools. It is no longer possible to talk about centers and provinces. In fact, the students, culture professionals, and governments in newly globalized countries are often more ready to embrace latest ideas than their equivalents in "old centers" of world culture. If you want to see this in action, visit the following web sites and note the range of countries from which the authors come from: Student projects on archinect.com/gallery/; Design portfolios at coroflot.com; Motion graphics at "xplsv.tv; Before, cultural theorists and historians could generate theories and histories based on small data sets (for instance, "classical Hollywood cinema," "Italian Renaissance," etc.) But how can we track "global digital culture" (or cultures), with its billions of cultural objects, and hundreds of millions of contributors? Before you could write about culture by following what was going on in a small number of world capitals and schools. But how can we follow the developments in tens of thousands of cities and educational institutions? Impossible as this may sound, this actually can be done. Welcome to Cultural Analytics.