For this assignment, I used Shakespeare’s The Tempest. I started off with Gemini, which seemed promising at first. It seems to understand what the task at hand is and what the necessary steps are to complete its analysis. I started off with the Anastasia Salter’s prompt, “I’d like to do some distant reading analysis of a novel. Can you help me through the process?”
When responding with words, Gemini seems to do alright; like, it tells me the possible themes and topics one might conclude should in The Tempest if one were to do a distant read. I then asked it for the different visuals but asked it to “go berserk.” Gemini started to become less competent at differentiating what is relevant and irrelevant.
I then asked Gemini, “explain yourself.” That question led to this response that, if paraphrased, might make me think someone actually read or watched the play:
“[A]nchors the play in human relationships despite the magic” was impressive to me because it came from a computer.
The thing about Gemini is that it will at least filter out the useless terms when presenting its interpretation. For Voyant, I can’t say the same. I used the same file that I gave Gemini instead of using The Tempest that is already on Voyant just to see how it compares. I tried out the textual arch, which I notice took a while bouncing around the publishing information before it began hitting main characters like Ariel. There is some use to seeing actual connections between terms in the play. I am not entirely misled with this information.
Most tools did not help much because they lacked enough context to really do much. I eventually found this one, bubbles, which is probably the most useful out of the ones that I tried because the terms grew with frequency and in time. One could watch importance grow throughout the play. Chronology is the key, but what about for nonlinearity?
I don’t think we need to worry much besides waste when it comes to the literary stuff, at least for now. Even the part that impressed me is still nothing revolutionary. Middle schoolers could make that same conclusion. This stuff might be useful to someone in stats maybe, but, god, does it suck. By the time I went through Voyant’s tools, I could have read the play again and made real, human interpretations.