What Can text mining tell us about aesthetics?
What can text mining tell us about the construction of —place”? Can we both visualize and textualize information on aesthetics,design and locale?
This year marks the publication of Afrøpean’s second year as a web-based multimedia platform. Afrøpean is a digital community dedicated to highlight the social, cultural, and aesthetic practices of Afro- descendant Europeans. However, the minimalist gallery-like interface, stark photo displays, and myriad of testimonies, travel literature and journalism alike interrogating what being black beyond African borders means is not unique to Afrøpean. Afrøpean, although a stand-alone digital community is in dialogue with a larger network of contemporary digital platforms whose multimedia and multi-disciplinary work extend beyond national boundaries and foreground what is now being called the Afropean movement in Europe and the Black Travelers movement in North America.
In a similar light, contemporary Afro American cultural expression has also turned to web-based media as a medium to discuss the intersection of race and space through digital travel narratives. Although Afro Americans have a history of travel narratives this new wave uses similar aesthetics as the Afro European digital platform to negotiate their position as both American and a member of the African Diaspora by traveling beyond the borders of birth to distinguish between “place” and “role”, and the properties of modernity that overdetermined and subjugate their black identity in America. The genre and aesthetic was recently coined the modern black traveler’s movement. For both the digital including social media, YouTube, personal and group web-based platforms alike offer an alternative space for visibility, commentary and solidarity. The aesthetics and host of questions concerning race and the role of place running through each movement begs the question how the digital serves as an alternative space to further interrogate the conceptualization of blackness and the politics of place- what is the work of the digital, that is what kind of new relations it affords?
Methodology
My interest to understand the role of aesthetics, design, and place making in a capitalist world system lead me to different pools of literature.
Contemporary home and design magazines: BID,crate and barrel, Ikea, Pottery Barn, Home & Design, Elle Decoration, Dwell,
Digital platforms for black travel: Nomadness,Travel Noire,Brown Girls Fly, Afropean, “Strolling” Virtual social movements and their use of hashtags
For the purpose of this weeks class I used Voyont tools to investigate the language on the home pages of two digital platforms for black travel: Travel Noire and Nomaness Travel Tribe. It was mostly exciting to to see the pages transform and take other shapes beyond the interface I am accustomed to.The word clouds and word trends graph where helpful at face value but I am not sure how far it will get me. For instance, by analyzing the word clouds from each website I was able to see popular word choices on the entry page of the site. In other words, the vocabulary they were each using to introduce the reader to the concept of Afro travel as a lifestyle, way of being, and performing blackness in the diaspora. For Travel Noire words like: culture, destination, Africa, Asia, Festival, Jakarta, African, capital, discover, escape were frequently used on the entry page. While for Nomadness Travel Tribe words like: comment, travel, January, nomadness,, tribe, December, February were more prevalent. If reading from the words selection alone I can tell that the entry page for Nomadness is interactive and keeps a monthly schedule for events. This got me thinking what would be the difference between an interactive aesthetic and one that is designed just for readership. Does the design practice and overall aesthetic alter depending on the functionality?
Another curious observation I found on the word trend graph was the frequency of the word travel. Although both Nomadness and Travel Noire function as companies, communities, and businesses through the guise of travel they do not aestheticize travel in the same way. The word trend graph reveals the word travel being used almost half the amount of times on the homepage of Nomadness than on Travel Noire. Again, I wonder if this can speak to the aesthetic value of the respected home pages. Perhaps, because the home page of Nomadness functions as some sort of planner the word and iterations of the word travel pop up more frequent. Whereas the home page of Travel Noire is more of a magazine style.Perhaps what would be more helpful if I could somehow account for the how each homepage is stylized then examine how the word travel is being advertised. However, I did find this to be a helpful initial exercise to think through these two different platforms.