Similar Diversity by Philipp Steinweber and Andreas Koller Visual is based on the English translation of holy texts of five major religions: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism. Evaluation of the text is done with VVVV (node-based programming tool) then visualised using Processing.
The large arc visual shows the 41 most frequent characters from different Holy Scriptures and their communalities. The characters are aligned alphabetically on the x-axis. Their names’ and the arcs’ size is calculated from their total wordcount in all scriptures. According to that, characters which play a big role in several scriptures are displayed larger.The colored segments of the arcs are showing the frequency of the word resp. the character in the particular Holy Books.Below the names can be found bar charts which are breaking down the activities of the characters in detail. The verbs are gained by filtering them out of the texts, technically each verb straight after a character’s name is taken. In case of the word order "God loves" the verb "loves" is referred to the charcter’s name "God". The hight of the rows and the font size show the frequency of particular activities. The numerous arcs connecting the names in the upper part of the visual symbolize similarities of the activities assigned to a character pair. An algorithm calculates the according activities of every couple. Based on these results, the different stroke sizes and shades of grey are calculated.
The creator’s intention for this visualisation is for the viewers should be inspired to think about own prejudices and current religious conflicts. Since the visualisation is created objectively - the scriptures processed by a program, structured in an alphabetical manner - it takes out the faith component of religion itself. It forces viewers to look at the bare text of these scriptures themselves and find the commonalities between these five major religions. This is reflected in the title itself - Similar Diversity.
This infographic is effective not only due to its objectivity, but its intuitiveness. The familiarity of pie chart and bar chart elements in the coloured arches and blocks below it makes it easy to read. The clear differences in colour used adds to this readability. However, the overarching, grey arches are not as easily understood. Without an explanation, the function of these arches are not clear. Yet, this aside, this infographic is a refreshing take on data concerning religion.
