Cultural Dynamics

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Cultural Dynamics

This is a computer program for visualising historical and cultural events, influences and interactions.
The program originated from the author’s own need to visualise when people lived, who else was alive at the same time, how they were related, when they created their works, which people influenced each other and what other events occurred and influenced people or their works. The program creates a diagrammatic model of a timespan.
The following basic requirements for a diagram were identified as follows:

Simplicity: as Einstein said, models should be as simple as possible but no simpler. We would like to have as few different symbols as possible so that diagrams can be easily read. The aim is to visualise information without extraneous decoration.
Generality: it should be possible to represent any desired relationship or connection.
Consistency: help the user to ensure internal consistency and completeness.
Single Function: it should not implement functions that other programs do better but should be open to exchange data with other programs.

The elements are to a large extent taken from other more or less familiar paradigms, for example hash-tags from social media, cross-reference and missing data reports from software development, and Feynman diagrams from particle physics as these happened to fit the concepts particularly well (hence the name - it was originally called "Quantum Cultural Dynamics" like Feynman's "Quantum Electrodynamics").
Consistency is ensured by selecting the fonts for types of data rather than individual items and defining a palette of named colours rather than choosing a colour for each item.

Main Features

Timelines, Events related to timelines, General Events, Untimed Events. Apart from the basic data, these can have links to external sources.
Zoom and pan of timeline
Division of timeline into segments.
Optionally show age on timelines.
Connections between the above: direct, wave, spiral; plain, dotted, dashed; straight or curved; arrow heads at ends.
Connections labelled with moveable names.
Optional user-defined icons for events and start and end of timelines.
Vague Dates, e.g. 1500 rather than 1500-12-31; intelligent entry (just type the year).
User-defined colour palette.
Hash Tags and comprehensive Filters.
Selective Find function, including regular expressions.
Separate texts for overall introduction and technical notes.
Reports to extract data, ensure consistency (cross-references), detect missing data. All in html for internal navigation and export to text processors or presentations.
Export of graphics in any resolutions and paper size, e.g. for presentations or documents.
Complete html export for viewing outside the app or on websites.
Filter and Find in separate windows to drive presentations from a second monitor.
Storage in JSON text file.

The manual can be viewed here.

Examples

The examples show exported graphics which can be used in documents or presentations, a view of the filter window and a link to a full HTML export of several timeline files.
Sample data files and icons can be supplied on request via the Contact page

Printing Press

This show an exported graphic of how the printing press was transmitted from Germany to Italy. Pannartz and Sweynheim worked with Gutenberg and went to Subiaco and then Rome. Jenson learned from Gutenberg in Mainz and went to Venice. Gutenberg's press was taken over by Schöffer.

Beethoven's Pianos

This example (in German) show when Beethoven received various pianos and from whom. It also shows the makers and their relationships with one section for the German, Austrian and French makers and another section for the English makers.

Palazzo Quirinale

Example of exported graphic showing architects involved in the Palazzo del Quirinale in Rome.

This shows the architects who worked on the Palazzo Quirinale in Rome. For Maderno and Bernini the times when they worked on St. Peter's Basilica are also shown.

The Filter Window

The Filter window has some globally applicable checkboxes to hide all the connections, or just hide their names, to show all items that have no tags, to hide empty rows and to automatically include the timelines of events selected by the filter.
Each filter stage has buttons to determine whether items that have all the selected tags, any of the selected tags or none of them will be shown.
The tags to use are selected from the list of available tags. To find a tag in a long list, the first few letters can be typed.
The filter stages are combined with Boolean operators AND and OR, so here we have any of the people in the first stage AND none of their books or paintings.
Filters can be saved with a name and description, and then selected from the list to use them.
The HTML export creates an image for each filter and a menu to select them.s

HTML Export

The link leads to a complete set of exported files, some in German.
The html export is a simplified view of all the filters defined in a data file. It gives a basic view of the data, with display of the metadata by clicking on timeline or event names in the graphic (this does not work reliably in all browsers).
The html export does not have the full functionality of the program.
Each has a menu icon at the top left where the views can be selected. The Overview is the complete database and can be overwhelming. Each filter shows a certain aspect of the total. There are also entries for the introductory text and the full summary report, which lists all the data in an html file.