We have a new version of the Big See collocation centroid. Version Beta 3 now has a graphical user interface where you can control settings before running the animation and once the animation is run. As before we show the process of developing the 3D model as an animation. Once run you can manipulate the 3D model. If you turn on stereo you can see the text model as a 3D object if you have the right glasses on (it supports different types including red/green.)
I’m still trying to articulate the goals of the project. Like any humanities computing project the problem and solutions are emerging as we develop and debate. I now think of it as an attempt to develop a visual model of a text that can be scaled out to very high resolution displays, 3D displays, and high performance computing. The visual models we have in the humanities are primitive – the scrolling page and the distribution graph. TextArc introduced a model, the weighted centroid, that is rich and rewards exploration. I’m trying to extend that into three dimensions while weaving in the distribution graph. Think of the Big See is a barrel of distributions.