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Visualizing the work of E. E. Cummings
Author(s):
Chris Riccomini, Alex Riccomini
Institution:
(unknown)
Year:
2008
URL:
http://tinyurl.com/8ctyq4
Project Description:
Brother and sister, Chris and Alex Riccomini, have built a visualization exploring the progression and cadence of American poet E. E. Cummings' 1944 collection, "I X I,". Starting at the 12 o'clock position, each bar at the edge of the circle represents a poem. Poems progress in a clock-wise direction. Each ray represents a line in the poem. The coloring of the bar represents the theme of that poem. The thickness of the bars represents the word count for that poem.

As Alex Riccomini explains: "the most obvious piece of information to extract from this visualization is that as the sections progress, the poems within them are at first fairly varied (with a focus on societal, economic, and political commentary; then, the second section begins to translate to these concepts interspersed with love/sex; and, the final section is devoted almost entirely to love/sex.) The overt change in focus happens to be at the exact numerical center of the collection. For a poet whose attention to the positioning, length, structure, and numerical/lyrical structure of his work is nothing if not acute and meticulous, it is hardly unrealistic to infer that this was a purposeful move on his part".

Comments (1):
If only this was an interactive piece with links to his work. I fully understand why it isn't, but it seems like it would be such a great way to introduce someone to his works or have an way of finding works of his on a particular topic. All in all, despite the lack of interactivity, great work here. Great work.

Posted by Isa on Feb 3, 2009 at 9:22 PM (GMT)

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Manuel Lima | VisualComplexity.com