Mappers Delight
Mapper’s Delight is a multiplayer, sculptural data visualization and collaboration tool built on semantic relationships of tens of thousands of rap lyrics. This mixed reality platform uses geography, a dynamic timeline, and a high-dimensional cluster map to demonstrate and explore rap’s range and diversity. In the geography mode players interact with a globe populated with pins that mark places like New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Antarctica, Sierra Leone, and Maui; the timeline orders interactive search results historically; and the vector word cluster map renders the high-dimensional relationships between the words spoken by 25,000 artists across 500,000 lyric transcripts. Selecting a point of interaction plays the corresponding excerpt of the song. Players discover that rappers mention spaces and locations for many reasons: to signify wealth, ancestry, and mobility; to make political statements; and for the sheer joy of wordplay. Whether players are deep rap nerds or just realizing the depth of the art form, Mapper's Delight presents a compelling, intuitive, and fun means of exploring the politics of place embedded in Rap Research Lab's Rap Almanac database. Contact us to request a demo.
