Although I’m totally mesmerized by their beauty, the data-generated visualizations grossly lack important information pertaining to how songs were selected and to what degree, if any, classmates are like minded. Am I connected to Elizabeth and H-M because we curated our lists for similar reasons? Are they fascinated with synesthesia and multiliteracies, just as I am? Does the popularity of each song have significance if the reasoning behind the selections are unknown?
In thinking about “null” choices, I was very fortunate to have read Amanda’s Task 8 before finalizing my own post. She really speaks to the pitfalls of the 27 songs selected for The Golden Record. She discusses bias, in terms of western representation, gender and musical genre. Additionally, she suggests the possibility of cultural appropriation and stereotyping within the original selection. In Amanda’s curated list, what she didn’t pick, had perhaps a greater voice than what she did pick. Sadly, this story was not told through the visualizations.
In keeping with the spirit of the assignment, I thought I’d create my own data-generated visualization. Below, I’ve created a visual representation of the reasons behind the song choices. In order to accomplish this, I visited each class member’s Task 8 post and compiled a list of the reasons fueling their playlists. Some students selected songs using a single characteristic, and so their names appear only once. Others used multiple characteristics resulting in their names appearing multiple times. (Jennifer McDaniel does not appear on the visualization because I could not access her task.) Although not perfect, as the null choices are still unrepresented, like mindedness seems to have emerged with the additional data grounded in reason.
Golden Record: Reasons Behind the Playlists
Although I feel that my visual representation better articulates like mindedness than those posted to CLAS, it is not without its own shortcomings. The network I created lacks edges between nodes to clearly identify more complex common connections. For example, Brogan and David both made song selections based on the characteristics: Geography & Culture, Genre/Sound/Composer and Time Period/Historical Significance; however, these connections are not identified through edges within the visualization. As outlined in Network Theory Overview, a multigraph would have been needed to accomplish this. Although my visualization is fairly one-dimensional, I think that the representation of song choice reasoning, more successfully achieves strong correlations based in like mindedness between students.
References:
Systems Innovation (2015). Network Theory Overview. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFcuovfgPTc [Accessed 1 Nov. 2019].
Systems Innovation (2015). Graph Theory Overview. [online] Available at: https://youtu.be/82zlRaRUsaY [Accessed 1 Nov. 2019].
Hi Jennifer,
Thank you for creating the great of Reasons behind the Playlists. I think most of our critiques bounced around this subject, and seeing a visual helps to identify the answers to the questions many of us posed about the visuals in our CLAS site. Would you upload this to our CLAS site as well, so that we can talk to it?
For me, I had only discussed the two extremes – genre/sound vs geography/culture. I like how your visualization rounds out the reasons with the other factors.
You had mentioned that your choices were closest to H-M and Elizabeth. I found that interesting given that H-M stated how she has Synesthesia. Elizabeth had chosen based on covering the most of the musical spectrum. Both of their reasonings (not visualized in your graph) are only available once we jump back and forth between the CLAS site, and your three personal sites. This in itself has solidified the edges that connect you!
This makes me feel better about this assignment – I had felt that the visualizations in themselves were rather weak for forming any connections. Performing the exercise between yourself and your two closest links, and being able to visualize the reasonings has made the connections that much more real. Thank you for adding in the extra work, and for giving me a chance to experience a true web link with our content!
Hey Jen,
I love your addition and extra care to present another visual. For me this represents that the format of visuals that this assignment has provided are not representative of how each person views and interprets information. I am also wondering if you feel like the fact that many people considered geography and culture, as well as genera, sound and composer an over-arching and overcompensating act to avoid ethnocentristic choices of first world, western culture and appropriation as you touch on in your introduction? Can we truly leash our bias and experiences and consider what represents humanity?