Talks in Maths: Visualizing Repetition in Text and the Fractal Nature of Lyrical Verse.

Abstract

Using the techniques of Natural Language Processing (NLP), the repetition in the structure of lyrical verse (song lyrics and poetry) can be visualized by comparing the cosine similarity between each line in a given document. This visualization allows novel insight into the structure of repetition in lyrical verse, allows for the ability to see how this repetition can shape the structure of a poem or song, as well as providing a deeper understanding of how the repetition in lyrical works is generated. The key insight arrived at within this work, made clear through this visualization technique, is that the structure of dense repetition in lyrical verse is often fractal in nature. The fractal nature of song lyrics is explored and measured using the mass dimension. Ultimately this leads to a deep insight into the way fractals drive the aesthetic properties of poetry and song lyrics.