Michael Perkins

A TextArc is a visual representation of a text. In a TextArc analysis, the full text of a work is drawn in a tiny, one pixel tall line in two concentric spirals. Each distinct word is also drawn in a readable font at a location that is the average of all the actual word locations. Each of the readable words is then attached to the tiny words that occur in the text by lines.  This provides a graphical representation of the word's distribution in the text.

For a more detailed explanation and additional examples, check out http://www.textarc.org.