Bio Mapping - Christian Nold


Affect Browser

Christian Nold
2006 - ongoing

The Affect Browser is a tool for extracting and visualising the hidden emotional slant of any text (English for now). In particular it tries to show how an individual text relates semantically to a group of others that are focused on a particular topic.

The software uses a dictonary of positive and negative affect (emotion) words such as "lovely, great,terrible" to draw a series of word clouds. Red is positive, blue negative while the yellow cloud shows the 10 most frequently used words for the text with stop words like "the, and , it" removed.
The resulting diagram is both a content summary as well as an indication of its emotional slanting.

The Affect Browser is a tool I developed for myself in order to help with research into controversial technologies such as Radio Frequency Identification Tags . I am using this tool in workshop settings in order to allow participants to think deeper and sideways about techno/social problems. The software allows visual brain storming for the communal deliberation of a topic lexicon and classification of topic actors. The resulting maps become powerful visualisations of this enquiry and lend themselves well to public communication via electronic display or print reproduction.

If you would like to organise a workshop, exhibit some of my maps or commission a custom map on a particular topic please get in touch

Anyway I thought this was too useful a tool to keep to myself so I thought I thought to make it publically available. Load in a single or multiple a text from the internet or your hardrive and navigate with the arrow keys and the < > keys to zoom. The Space Bar resets the view. Make links and then export as a PDF.

Download application for OSX 2meg (version alpha 5)

I am sure there are many bugs. Please email me with bugs and suggestions and i will get a new version out soon!

"Affect is the body’s way of preparing itself for action in a given circumstance by adding a quantitative dimension of intensity to the quality of an experience."
(Eric Shouse 2005)

Speech is performative "in which by saying or in saying something we are doing something" (Austin 1976). In this sense then the Affect Browser shows the emotional state of the text (author) but also how it is meant to perform towards an audience ie. influence them.

What holds for the receiver also holds, for the same reason, for the sender or the producer. To write is to produce a mark that will consitute a sort of machine which is productive in turn, and which my future disappearnace will not, in principle, hinder in its functioning, offering things and itself to be read and written.
(Derrida 1977)

The aim of the Affect Browser is to interogate these text machines and find out how they perform their function.

Word authority more habit forming than heroin no this is not the old power addicts talk I am talking about a certain excercise of authority through the use of colorless words
form the user more than heroin and he must have more and more.
(William Burroughs 1967)

Affect

An Affect Map of 20 UK news websites. Note, the Sun newspaper website uses the words 'Bingo' and 'Games' with more frequency than 'News'. 'News' doesn't even appear in the Top 10 words on the Metro newspaper site while 'Beyonce' and 'Barbecue' do.

Affect

The first Affect Browser Map showing the common semantic connections between a number Anti-RFID websites. The piece was created at a worshop at Labomedia in Orleans, France.

Affect

Here is a visulisation of the of the Stern Review on the economics of climate change made by Mark Simpkins CC Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Christian Nold christian@softhook.com

E-mail:

Please support this work

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Creative CommonsW3C XHTML W3C CSS

All the work on the Softhook website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 2.5 License unless otherwise stated on the page or in the image ALT tag. The CSS is adapted from Intensive Station

Last Updated 21.06.08
------------------------------

I am travelling to Spain to provide consultations on footpaths. Then off to Italy to run the Complexity Maps summer school for the World Design Capital. Take a look at the website I think this will be a great project:
ComplexityMaps

----------------------------

I finally took the time to rework an old project, the Rio - Point of Sale poster! Take a look :
Rio - Point of Sale

-----------------------------

The Brentford Biopsy Map is complete. Check out the 10 meter map! This week I am heading to Paris for a lecture about the East Paris Emotion Map. Next week I will be in Copenhagen for the Metropolis Conference

-----------------------------

Off to Turin to plan the Complexity Maps summer school for the World Design Capital

-----------------------------

I am in Paris for workshops part of my new solo show at Arslonga Gallery and part of Mal aux Pixel festival

-----------------------------
Next week sees the launch of my major solo show, the Brentford Biopsy at Watermans in London. Come to workshops and look at the exhibition evolve over the next few months!
-----------------------------

Next week I will be in Holland for workshops at Delft University and then a keynote at Mobile City in Rotterdam. On the 3rd March I will giving a lecture at MIT Medialab come along!

-----------------------------

I will be in NY in Feb giving a lecture with Adam Greenfield, J. Meejin Young and Stamen at the New Museum. Come along!

-----------------------------

In Popular Terms has won the Eyebeam Eco Visulisation Challange and is showing at Eyebeam in NY.

-----------------------------

The printed San Francisco Emotion Map is now available!

-----------------------------

Tonight is the physical and online launch of my new project In Popular Terms at the Berkeley Art Museum. Check it out!

-----------------------------

Hello I would love to get feedback from people about what they think about my projects. Please help by filling out this online form. Thanks so much !!!

-----------------------------

Back in London trying to get over the jetlag. Preparing for the last Stockport workshop.

-----------------------------

I am in Tokyo speaking and running a workshop at the Dislocate 07 conference. Come and join us if you are around.

-----------------------------

Some of my maps are currently showing in Santa Monica in the Zoom exhibition.

The Stockport Emotion Map will be starting next week. Have a look!

-----------------------------

I have made a diagram to try and clarify my own position in this world. Have a look (PDF)

-----------------------------

Link to press coverage about my work.

Back in London and working on the SciArt commission as well as preparing a mapping project for Stockport and Tokyo.

-----------------------------

I am in Holland setting up the Cultuur exhibition. I also just uploaded a brand new project Sensory Deprivation ! If you want to setup workshops or make maps get in touch.

-----------------------------

France for the Festival Bandits-Mages in Bourges in France to show the RFID Map / Affect Browser. At the end of May I am setting up an exhibition of all my maps for the the Cultuur 2.0 event in Amsterdam.

-----------------------------

I am in San Francisco for a residency at SOEX setting up the San Francisco Emotion Map. The Mapping Fulham project is also currently continuing until June. Also my work is currently showing in Turku, Finlnd at the Digittaly Yours exhibition. In May there are shows in Bourges, Fracnce and Amsterdam coming up.