Palimpsest translates coded interview data into animated visual form using a Gray-Scott reaction-diffusion substrate. Each of five anonymised participants is assigned a distinct chromatic identity and organic substrate pattern. Their interview material is segmented into thematic units, coded against four analytical categories from a constructivist grounded theory analysis, and rendered as fields of generative mark-making whose stroke style, animation behaviour, amplitude, and density encode qualities of the described experience.
The instrument makes visible how categories layer and recur across an interview, a persistence that is easy to miss when reading sequentially but hard to miss when the whole interview is present on screen simultaneously. It was through this instrument that the same participant returning to the act of translation again and again without naming it first became visible, part of how protective translation came to be treated as central.
Palimpsest includes a Visual Codebook export that produces a print-ready document pairing each coded segment with its visual rendering, parameter rationale, thesis cross-references, and canvas snapshots. Five modes (Editor, Solo, Comparative, Present, Exhibition) serve different analytical and presentation contexts.
Thesis reference: section 3.5.2 (design), section 5.3.1 (contribution). Technical construction: Appendix C.