INTRODUCTION
Following the Middle Ages, Europe experienced a fervent period of cultural, artistic, political, and economic “rebirth” during the Renaissance. The Renaissance, generally regarded as occurring between the 14th and the 17th centuries, promoted the rediscovery of classical philosophy, literature, and art. This period saw the flourishing of some of the greatest thinkers, writers, statesmen, scientists, and artists in human history as global exploration opened up new lands and cultures to European trade. It is said that the Renaissance was responsible for bridging the cultural divide between the Middle Ages and modern society.
This project intends to explore the network data of the Renaissance period figures (People). Assess its complexity, analyzing the data and representing it visually with the help of Gephi software. The goal is to design an esthetic and informative network data visualization.
INSPIRATION
Before diving into the dataset and designing, I started looking for inspiration from similar network data. I already had one, which was available on the website (Renaissance Network) where I discovered this data. I was unhappy with the original visualization, so I conducted additional research. I discovered two visualizations: “Linked Jazz” and “My Map.” I really like idea of using images of people by Linked Jazz. In addition, I like the layout of My map where colors are telling another story.
MATERIAL & PROCESS
Tools
Microsoft Excel – A spreadsheet software by Microsoft, part of the MS Office suite.
Gephi – Gephi is a Java-based accessible network analysis and visualization software package built on the NetBeans platform.
Adobe Photoshop – Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS.
Process
Searching and Cleaning up the data
I did a lot of research to find a good dataset that was not used before during this course and is interesting to work on. While learning Gephi from Youtube. I found a video and that video had a link to this dataset. I was fortunate to find this dataset which was organized in a CSV format. This dataset was created by Young Joon Oh and was collected from Wikipedia. This data was also interesting as I am fond of the Renaissance period (paintings & artists). I have studied this during my undergrad and also designed products inspired by it in past.
This dataset contained two separate files: one for the nodes with unique ids, and one for the labels, which listed the Renaissance figure’s name and the category to which they belonged (e.i. artist, writer, mathematician, etc.) The second file (edge) contained the source and target ids. The appropriate labels were also present in the CSV file’s header, which Gephi could read. The labels made exporting the CSV files to Gephi convenient and error-free. Because the node and edge tables were in separate files, each table had to be imported individually into its respective table.
Working With Gephi
After loading the data into Gephi, since this was the first time I was using Gephi, I first started by exploring the software and using different layouts. I experimented with layouts like Yifan Hu, Yifan Hu Proportional, Force Atlas 2, Circular layout and Circle Pack layout. After several attempts at creating different visuals of the network, I learn the basics of the software. Below are the images of some of my experimented layouts.
Creating Visualizations
I finally decided to try the networks from my inspirations after learning a little bit about Gephi. However, I had to first pick a suitable color palette for the visualization. I got the idea for my color scheme from a well-known Renaissance painting “The School of Athens by Raphael”. Adobe Photoshop was the tool used to create this palette. There were limited colors during the Renaissance period. Earthy colors dominate this color scheme. In Gephi, I was unable to locate a suitable palette. As a result, I added each of these colors separately to the categories.
So after finalizing the colors for our network. First, I tried the original network visualization (Renaissance Network). The layout used for this Visualization is “Yifan Hu”.
This visualization did not satisfy me because I believe there is too much overlapping and it is difficult to find links in terms of category, degree, or specific people.
My Map inspired the second visualization. I used the “Circular Layout” in this. This was to understand the degree of connections and categories, but I believe I could do better with labels and layout.
After creating the two Networks mentioned above, I was still not entirely satisfied with the visualization, so I tried again with a third attempt to make a visualization that would be inspired by the fusion of “My Map” and ” Linked Jazz.” No particular layout was used for this visualization. I experimented with various layout plugins Yifan Hu, Yifan Hu Proportional, Force Atlas 2, Circular layout, and Circle Pack layout) and the last one I used was Yifan Hu. I also made some manual adjustments to create this.
RESULTS
Visualizations & Findings
The above is the final network visualization. I added the color categories in this for better understanding. This network’s node was filtered for sizes (measured in degrees) and colors (in terms of category). Nodes with more than 8 degrees (connections) in the data make up the network’s outer circle. To better understand the nodes, I reduced their opacity since they were overlapping. Gephi allowed me to add labels, but they overlapped the images. It was difficult to add labels in a radial form around the inn Gephi, so I used Photoshop to further refine the final visualization.
Gephi made it simple to understand some additional network statistics. I experimented with layout and filtering to create Leonardo da Vinci’s network. I chose him specifically, because his degree was the highest in the data, implying the most connections. Leonardo da Vinci had the strongest connections. The figure above shows that Leonardo was mostly associated with artists and architects. In the visualization, you can also observe, that he has no ties to Composers, Explorers & Navigators, or Dance Masters.
REFLECTION
Limitation
It was fascinating to learn more about the Renaissance Period through research. However, before this, I tried a few other networks to figure out what I was looking at, the relationship between nodes and edges, and how to comprehend and analyze the network. This was my first time using Gaphi, and it took me longer to learn it than tableau. I’m still trying to learn more about labels in it because I wasn’t able to manipulate them according to will. Furthermore, when I experimented with my data visualization, it was difficult to go back and undo it. Although there are many plugins available for the layout in Gephi, I felt that only a few layouts (Yifan Hu, Yifan Hu Proportional, Force Atlas 2, Circular layout, Circle Pack layout, and Geo layout) give a good representation of the network and others are primarily supporting (Expansion, Noverlap, label adjust, Contraction, etc). I found Yifan Hu Proportional better presenting my network instead of Force Atlas 2.
Future Directions
In the future, I hope to learn more about SigmaJS’s interactive version. People will be able to learn more about networks by using an interactive interface. They can hover and investigate the connections of whoever they want. I’d like to add some filters to the interactive network visualization for a profound understanding of network data. I’d like to add some context for each of these figures so that when people hover over them, they get a box with an image, an explanation, and a link to learn more about them