txtkit is an Open Source visual text mining tool for exploring large amounts of multilingual texts. It’s a multiuser-application which mainly focuses on the process of reading and reasoning as a series of decisions and events. To expand this single perspective activity txtkit collects all of the users’ mining data and uses them to create content recommendations through collaborative filtering.

Main parts of txtkit are: an integrated parsing program, a MySQL database running on a server and the txtkit client. After you have installed txtkit on your computer you can choose from different texts, languages and servers, and after that you will automatically be connected with the txtkit database. The txtkit interface is divided into two parts: txtshell (shell interface) and txtvbot (visual bot). txtshell provides several commands to browse, read and select text, whilst the txtvbot displays the user activity in real time. The visualization is based on the users’ actions, statistical information about the content, and collaborative filtering schemes. You can use the txtvbot and the txtshell individually, but by alternating perspectives you will merge visual and textual cognition processes to develop the potential of digital hypothesis formation and dynamic decision-making.

txtkit was commissioned by Prof. Hans Ulrich Reck, co-author of the concept and project director with Prof. Georg Trogemann of KIT, a research project based at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. KIT is a part of the KUBIM programme, financed by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research and Länder Ministries for Education or Science and Culture.

Concept: Schoenerwissen / OfCD (Anne Pascual & Marcus Hauer), Hans Ulrich Reck; Development, Design and Programming: Schoenerwissen / OfCD; Freelance Programming: Thomas Chille; Texts txtkit 1.0: Hans Ulrich Reck; Support: Hans Ulrich Reck, Georg Trogemann, Thomas Chille, Jochen Viehoff