Do you know how to read?

What is distant reading?

Distant reading is a type of analyzation in which large amounts of literary works are fed into a computer program.  The text is treated as more of an object rather than the traditional way in which text is viewed via a close reading.  It is able to recognize patterns and frequencies of words, allowing you to have a macro understanding of the works. Today, we fed our blog into a distant reading software.  

What did distant reading tell us about our blog that we would not know from reading it closely?

Two specific terms that stood out in our results from putting our blog into a distant reading software were art and intelligence.  The reason why we think that this is significant is because those two words really encapsulate what this class is all about. Not only do we focus on aesthetically pleasing art, but we also listen and interact with art in this class.  Intelligence is also a central theme of this class. Intelligence (from numerous perspectives including: cultural, technological, and emotional) becomes a subject in this class quite regularly.

Distant reading or close reading?

Without distant reading, one may not see the importance that the words, art and intelligence have in our blog because they get hidden within the text. Distant reading is like the sparknotes version of Beowulf, you may not understand everything that gets put into the story but once you read the sparknotes you begin to get a better understanding of things. Distant reading is by no means

sparknotes but is something that can give you more of an incite into what we are talking about. When reading literature you need BOTH, the overview to have a broad understanding of things but you also need a closer and deeper understanding of things with close reading.