Comparing Visual Projects

The two projects I compared were “Anna Karenina,” a literature-based project by Lev Manovich, and “filmhistory.viz,” a film-based project. Though the subject matter of each project is different–the first is a computer-generated visualization of the full text of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and the latter is a series of charts and graphs mapping the lengths and shot numbers of various films dating as far back as 1900–both rely on the aspect of visualization as their main focus. As opposed to reading Anna Karenina, looking at a full chart; instead of staring at numbers and figures about film, viewing a graph or a chart as a guide.