Author: Susu

the source utilizes a t-SNE algorithm display method which plots readers as x-y coordinates allowing for easy viewer visualization of relationship links using Euclidean distances. The algorithm takes the totals of someone’s reading reviews and relates them to 11 genres, makes their #1 genre their icon and groups them by totals in relation to other genres. The more someone reads of each genre the closer they are to it. The tool of t-SNE makes 11 dimensional data (for the 11 genres) and smooshes it down into 2 dimensional which allows for easier human visualization for the relationships between the genres rather than a one dimensional graph, just a report of the most read genres, or 2 dimensional plots of only 2 genres by their popularity for readers. this allows for many different genre’s relations to be seen all at once and their interconnected relationship to one another

The goal is to see relationships between genre readers in relation to other genres visually. This poses questions in a viewer for the specific relations between different genres and why. Allowing the viewer to see these relationships visually opens for curiosity as to why certain distances and distributions exist (i.e. the distance between romance, mystery, and literary fiction). Perhaps there is a larger societal factor influencing a large amount of space between 2 specific genres(romance and literary fiction), or how certain singular genres can be divided on the other genres a reader tends to drift toward (fantasy).

I thought something that was interesting with the website that we didn’t really touch on in class was the “Readers Mapped by Network” page. The page shows a similar distribution to the “Readers Mapped by Genre-Mix”, however instead of by genre it is by actual book. This allows the viewer to see the relationship between different readers and their most read genres to one another by the actual books they are reading. It connects readers on a 2d plane with Euclidean distances and allows a slide view form the original graph to show the relationship between the two. I think this allows for some great expansion and further thinking on the questions posed by the original graph. However, this expansional graph allows for more data and points to be taken into account with the real connection readers have to one another with the specific book titles. Particularly interesting I think is the greater intermingling of mystery with historical fiction, fantasy, and partially romance. Just looking at the original graph it looks like mystery readers are all out alone, when in reality they are one of the most middle and diverse readers by title to other readers other than fantasy readers. It extracts the skew of the sheer amount of mystery novels some read and allow expansion on the question of how different genres are interconnected and why. It also enforces arguments like we talked about in class with the stigma against romance novels and for literary fiction posed as opposites as on this graph as well they are at distinctly different ends of the graph here as well.

Source(s)

UTI (Ultrasound Tongue Imaging system) takes a series of images at a frame rate of 121 fps that are complied into a video format to show the visual movement of individual’s tongues, lips, and mouth. It involves multiple people from around the world that speak English. Includes video of the ultrasound, people and their biographical information, and audio of their speech pronunciation patterns.

Process

Taking people from all over the world who speak English they hook them up to “a high-speed Sonix RP ultrasound machine was used with automatic audio-ultrasound synchronization, recording at 121 frames per second.” Articulate Assistant Advanced (AAA) software version 2.16.12 was used to record simultaneous audio and UTI. A “short-handled microconvex probe set to an angle of 150°” was attached to a stabilizing headset on participants to record their outer faces simultaneously as well. Video from the UTI is compiled with the facial video and the audio to form one singular playable video and audio format. Words were displayed as text via a screen to the speakers to iterate aloud. Audio was recorded using an “Audio Technica directional clip-on microphone” attached to the side of the headset.

Presentation

They chose to display their findings in 2 different ways. “Accent Map” in the form of a map that allows users to interact with a world map that has the speakers linked to pinpoint dots placed where their accent is from. This links to both the UTI video with integrated face recordings as well as audio from the video. after selecting the dot location there is a list of all words that participants said with the base word being spontaneous across all locations no matter the number of participants. “Accent Chart” is a large chart containing all biographical data of the person (town and country, age range, gender) with all their recordings of different words. Each row is another person and column is a different data point (gender, word, town).

I think this is really interesting personally because I am interested in linguistics and as such the different entomologies of words and language origins. This project allows for people to analyze different accents side by side, with not only their auditory differences but also their physical differences which is not typically available. I think connecting this with history and linguistics can show some interesting features of the past and how the world has developed into what it is today. For example, the British colonized North America in the 16th century leading to mass migrations over the next several hundred years this leads to many people with British English accents to migrate to North America. Later on however, there was a revolution causing a distinct identity split and independence for the newly formed USA, this causes southern accents to be closest to British accents. However because of the large French and German presence in the American north north this causes their accents to flatten and merge with their own. It is interesting to see the actual physical differences and influences of different accents on one another.