Digital Humanities – Spring 2018

Pokémon Go

My experience with Pokémon Go was pretty funny. I decided to play it this weekend, while I was helping out at a Cortland Nites event. So I was in Corey Function room, picking up stuffing off the floor from Build-a-bear workshop, when I downloaded the app. After not having played the app for at least a year, I was delighted to see it remembered my login and hadn’t deleted my information. I was still a level 16 Pokémon trainer with my lovable side-kick, Nippers.

Okay, yes, my name is Dr. Seth Asumah. He’s the best professor ever, so he inspired me. Anyway, from there, I began the hunt. I flipped my camera to augmented reality and started looking for clues. Once a Pokémon was nearby, leaves appeared along the floor to guide me to them. My first victim, I mean catch, was this Jiggly Puff.

I had him right in my sights (Image via my phone)

It honestly took me six or seven pokéball throws to even catch this sucker, and I already have six Jiggly Puffs, but I wanted to see if this one had a higher CP level. It did not and I had wasted about a quarter of my pokéball stash. But I moved on, trying to make the best of the game.

A wild Crabby appeared! This Pokémon only took me three tries to get and his CP level was considerably higher than my own Crabby who’s aptly named “Mr. Krabs.” I turned around, reeling from this win, to find someone waiting for me.

Whismur, staring me down (Image via my phone)

I had to look this one up, since I don’t know all the Pokémon names, and this is a Whismur. He was my last catch of the day and I really had to chase him down, pushing past angry people trying to stuff their teddy bears.

Ultimately, playing this game again brought back the initial excitement it gave me when it first came out and I actually might just start playing it again. Also, actually playing this game in “augmented reality” was really interesting. The mode brings you into the video game and makes it real, making it seem as if there are real life stakes even, all while tricking you into exercising. I could see this game being brought into a middle school gym class and used to encourage the kids to run around. The app could even be used for marathons and encourage more young people to participate in them to raise money for different causes.

-Sarah DeLena

Voyant Tools Blog Post- Megan Bender

I chose to inquire about the book The Cash Boy by Horatio Alger, Jr. I believed that the book would be about a boy who was very eager to make a good living because he grew up poor. I assumed that I would see the words “money” “rich” “children” “poor” and “job” a lot. When I copied and pasted the book into Voyant Tools, I saw that my predictions for words that would be used often weren’t exactly correct- but I wasn’t surprised, considering that I’ve never heard of this book, nor did I read it. I didn’t predict that the word “said” would be used a lot, and it was, however that also doesn’t surprise me considering that it seems as if there was a lot of dialog in this book. The words were all pretty simple and nothing is extravagant or hard to understand, which makes sense since I did find it under the children’s fiction section. I think that this assignment was very intriguing- I never knew that you could copy and paste an entire book into a website and learn so much about it! I could see myself using this in the future, especially if I need to skim a book to look it over.

The Woman in White

For this blog post, I worked with Voyant tools to try to be able to visualize what the meaning of a novel is about. I choose the Woman in White by Wilke Collins which is a mystery fiction book so from that I predicted that a woman was seen at a crime scene or a place where she shouldn’t have been and the detective call her the Woman in white because she was wearing white. The story would revolve around the woman and I think it could be a thriller. By going to the gutenberg website and using their bookshelves I was able to copy the plain text of the novel into Voyant tools. From there I played with the tools and found that in one word wall the name “Laura” comes up and I suppose the Woman in white is named Laura. Percival, time, and halcombe come up pretty big in word web which makes me think that those words are important to the plot. For phrases, the most the same phrase came was twice so that wasn’t much help, but I see how it is helpful with other texts. Overall, the tools I worked with were helpful and could be used as a great teaching tool

Barbara Mackey Voyant Tools

Text: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Prediction: I predict that this is a romantic novel with a main focus on the woman, Anna Karenina. I believe that Anna and the main man in the novel will fall in love, but there is a major conflict between the two’s lives, perhaps their families, that does not allow them to be together. I also think that by the end, several characters will have died, maybe even Anna herself.

Text Visualizations:

This graph displays the most common words in specific sections of the text. This shows that “alexandrovich” was the most written word in the text, and which sections it was written the most.

This graph displays the most commonly used phrases in the novel. In this graph, you can see that “alexandrovich” is the first word at the beginning of each phrase, once again emphasizing that this is the most commonly used word.

This graph displays in a word cloud the most commonly used phrases in the novel. I found it odd that in every other graph, “alexandrovich” is displayed the most, but in this visualization it is smaller than many other words. “Said” is the largest word in this graph, and therefore is the most commonly said word according to this visualization. This is also the only visualization that displays the word “Anna,” which I found interesting because her name is in the title of the novel, and so I predicted that a majority of the novel would be concerning her, but through these graphs it does not seem to be the case.

Results: Through this assignment, I was able to find the advantages and disadvantages of these text visualization tools. The advantages are that the reader can see the most commonly occurring words and phrases in the novel, discovering the most important aspects, and where these aspects occur the most. Through these tools, I was able to recognize the most vital parts of the novel include Alexandrovich, who through research I discovered is the main male character. This contradicts with my predictions, as I expected Anna herself to be the true main character in the novel, as her name is the title of the novel, but these text visualizations say otherwise. The disadvantages of these tools could be that they may not agree with each other, creating a mixed message for the user. For these visualizations, two of them stated “alexandrovich” as the most commonly used word, but in the third, “alexandrovich” is shown as smaller and therefore used less frequently than words such as “said” and “anna.” Overall, I think these tools are very useful for readers to understand the main points of a novel before they even read the novel; the user will know what points of the novel are important, and therefore what to look out for when reading the novel.

Garrett’s Voyant tools blog

Garrett Sweeney

Intro to Digital Humanities

Predictions- I predict the the book King Solomon’s Mine is going to be about a mine in Africa that produces an expensive good like oil or diamonds. Many Africans work on the mine and it is run by a foreign country like England. It is going to be a mild violent, adventurous book. The words “money” , “mine” and “rich” are going to appear frequently.

My predictions were not accurate because the book seems to have a deeper meaning than the title. I would have to read more to have a good understanding of the book.

Pokemon Go!

I have never played Pokémon Go in my life. As a kid growing up, I was never a Pokémon player. I was not a child who liked to sit down, in fact it was a miracle if you could keep me in my seat for more than twenty minutes. Playing a card game or a board game just was not enticing to me. I definitely think if this version of Pokémon was around back when I was a child, I would probably have played this game. It’s active, I was always running around the neighborhood with my friends so this would have fit perfectly into our routine. The characters on this game can be really adorable, which appeals to me as an adult and animal lover, and most certainly would have appealed to who I was as a child. I can see how this game gets to be addicting. As a parent I would be nervous about my child’s safety; I would not want my child to be so distracted by the game that they would walk into traffic or ignore their surroundings. I would encourage my kids to play this game, but in moderation just like any other game. The augmented reality aspect of this game was super cool. When the Pokémon characters just popped up in the snow next to me or in front of me, it was kind of hard not to jump backwards or at least step away from it. It’s awesome that the game adjusts to the weather as well. I am really impressed with this game and will probably continue to play it throughout the semester.

Emily Hatch