Distant Viewing Toolkit:  Software for the Analysis of Visual Culture

1. Abstract

The poster will introduce the Distant Viewing Toolkit (DVT), a Python package for the computational analysis of visual culture. The toolkit addresses the challenges of working with moving images through the automated extraction and visualization of metadata summarizing the content (e.g., people/actors, dialogue, scenes, objects) and style (e.g., shot angle, shot length, lighting, framing, sound) of time-based media. DVT is optimized for two purposes: scholarly inquiry of visual culture from the humanities and social sciences, and search and discovery of collections within libraries, archives, and museums.