Coding Dürer

Tag: digitalarthistory

  • Looking back on Coding Dürer—and envisioning future perspectives

    Looking back on Coding Dürer—and envisioning future perspectives

    The hackathon Coding Dürer took place exactly three weeks ago. Now it is time to take a look back. What are lessons learned? What is the way ahead?

    In addition to the lively working atmosphere of the international participants, the active involvement of many people via social media and live streams had been extraordinarily successful. On Monday alone we had over 1,000 views on our website. Since its launch in November the analytics rose to over 14,000 views.

    Two blogs reported on us. And the hashtag #Coding Dürer worked fantastically to spread what we did over the five days and to get responses from people, who could not be there with us. Alex Kruse has analyzed the hashtags wonderfully and published his R-code on GitHub for everyone to use.

    Alison Langmead from the department of History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh gathered colleagues and students in front of a big screen to watch the live streams and twitter as if they were in Munich. That was the kind of involvement I dreamed of.

    The final presentation has shown beautifully what we accomplished in only a few days. Until today, the live video has been watched by almost 250 viewers from all over the world—not bad for such a specialized topic. We have seen the results of seven teams: The Rogues, Similarities, Metadata, Chatbot, VABit, Dutch Church Interior Paintings and Tracing Picasso. I have put together a few information about every project on the press page—additionally some teams have documented their work in dedicated project websites or in blog posts, others are still working on that. This is a great help to follow the development of the projects, their challenges and results, and thus giving others the chance to get in contact with them and continue the work.

    Now is a good time to reminisce what the conditions have been for such a productive and creative outcome. Along the way, everyone has learned so much. What I have learned is that the selection and formation of the groups is crucial for interdisciplinary collaboration. Having talked to many, it seems to me that the following points are important:

    1. The size of the group. An interdisciplinary group of art-historians and information scientist is in need of many skills. Therefore it should not be too small. On the other hand, the bigger it is the more communication overhead is necessary. A team on 6-7 participants seems to be ideal.
    2. The balance of skills. The technical realization starting with data cleaning already needs a lot of man power. But having too few art-historians, the group would lack the continuous contextualization of the work in regard to the research question. Balancing the group is, thus, key. In addition: To have a few people experienced in both fields or a designer who can bridge both spheres would be ideal.
    3. An internal project management. While we have had frequent plenum discussions to have every project know about every other, this is also necessary within the group in order to keep everyone up-to-date about the current challenges and goals and assign a role to every participant. Also: The use of visualizations such as flip-charts or simply papers taped to the wall help very much the interdisciplinary communication.

    The Post-It wall seems to have served that need quite well, maybe in an unexpected way, but could be streamlined next time in order to achieve the goals above even better.

    What were lessons learned? According to the participants, who filled out a feedback form, everyone was excited about the course of the week, the thrilling discussions on art from different viewpoints and the astonishing results. One project group proposed that it would be better next time to contact data providers beforehand—as they downed the Getty servers several times! For this reason, it would be productive to have technical support at hand, such as server space. People from different backgrounds had different needs and expectations, but they agreed in one thing: More time to work until late at night—and more coffee and snacks throughout the days!

    To me, Coding Dürer has given a glimpse of what Digital Art History could be in the future. It has shown that the technology is there, we just need to bring the right people together. I have the feeling we have prepared the soil for many projects to keep growing. And I have the strong believe that it has not been the last Coding Dürer. With the things we have learned, we have to plan for a Coding Dürer 2018 already. I welcome every funding organization or sponsor to get in contact with me to pave the way into the future of Digital Art History.

    Thank you @lalisca for everything!

    What are your thoughts?

     

  • Project Groups (5) – Dutch Church Interior Paintings

    Project Groups (5) – Dutch Church Interior Paintings

    [The following text is written by the project group “Dutch Church Interior Paintings”. You will find more information on their project soon on their website, which will be linked here.]

    The genre of church interior paintings has developed in the Netherlands in the middle of the 17th century and lasted only a few decades. It is represented by a relatively small group of specialized artists, such as: Pieter Jansz Saenredam (1597-1665), Emanuel de Witte (1616-1692), Hendrick Cornelisz Van Vliet (1611-1675), Gerard Houckgeest (ca.1600–1661), Anthonie De Lorme (c.1610-1673) and others. In many cases, the same church’s interior was depicted by the same artists dozens of times, however, the iconography, composition and vantage point (a position from which the interior is viewed) varied. One of the main factors in the development of this type of painting was the Reformation and its consequences, particularly the Calvinist approach to art. The so-called Beeldenstorm in 1566, a series of events during which churches were plundered and their Catholic decorations removed or destroyed, was a starting point of this far-reaching transformation of church interiors in the Netherlands. The churches became obsolete civic spaces filled with everyday activities, not exclusively restricted to preaching the God’s word any more. The altars, statues and other decorative elements were replaced by white-washed walls and simple panels filled with biblical excerpts instead of representations of saints and miracles. This is reflected in the church interior paintings, where we can see, for example, a woman breastfeeding, children at play, groups of gentlemen involved in conversations about business, couples strolling down the aisles, beggars and even dogs urinating. The latter was perhaps the strongest symbol of this transition of the church as a building: from a holy temple to a civic, urban and mundane space.
    There are hundreds of church interior paintings scattered across collections around the world. The research of this subject to date has focused mainly on particular artists or churches, rather than the overall genre and its network of artists and places. This project, born at Coding Dürer 2017, addresses this issue by providing a platform for further research on the paintings and creating an insight into the bigger picture of the genre for the first time. This visualisation of over 200 paintings of 26 different churches by 16 different artists was created with the following research questions in mind:

    • In what places the artists were active and in what places they depicted church interior(s)?
    • Did the artists have ‘favourite’ church interiors?
    • In what places and when could the artists possibly meet?
    • What church interiors were depicted the most?
    • What church interiors were depicted by most artists?

     

    DATASET

    The starting point of the project was a spreadsheet listing the paintings, artists, collections, etc. that was created for research purposes 2 years ago. This re-purposed data needed cleaning and additional information, e.g. IDs (artists, churches, paintings), locations (longitude, latitude), stable URLs for images.

     

    GOAL

    To create a map/visualisation that shows:

    1. Dutch churches depicted in the paintings (25)
    2. Artists’ activity (16+)

    TOOLS

     

  • Project Groups (4) – Meta Data Group

    Project Groups (4) – Meta Data Group

    The topic of visualization is quite popular at Coding Dürer. We already saw an approach in visualizing interactions of photographers with an artwork as well as an attempt to show how the work of an artist moves around the world throughout time. The “meta data group” engages in a project that relates to the person who gave the Hackathon its name: Albrecht Dürer. The group wants to show to whom and how the artist was related. By creating a graphic plot they want to answer the question of the artist’s relationship to his contemporaries in a way that is intuitive and easy to understand. The main challenge the team faces is to find data that fits their research question. ULAN, the Union List of Artist Names from the Getty Research Institute, might offer a solution, as its data is organized in a network of categories like “assistant” or “teacher” which the team uses in recreating a network.

    Screenshot of ULAN data (a standardized list of artist’s names)
    The data that ULAN provides (as well as data from online research) can be visualized with the help of WebVowl and Gephi.
  • A moment to report

    A moment to report

    It is quiet today. A few voices and keyboard tapping. Today is working time.

    Since it is also quieter for me, let me report, what we have done so far.

    On Monday, we had a lively discussion on the subject of data, data analysis and data visualization in the context of art history. Many aspects came up from the truth of data, the necessity of cleaning and the viewpoint of the end-user. The question was raised how art-historian and information scientists can work together even if there is this perceived gap. That gap consists of different approaches, ways of thinking and even concepts associated with particular terms. It was agreed, however, that we have to be the agents of change we want to see. This group is such a diverse group of people from different backgrounds that the fruitfulness of interdisciplinary collaboration—that is the flip side of the coin—can probably nowhere better be yielded than here.

    There were also solutions proposed how to fill that gap:

    1. It needs time to work together.
    2. It needs communication, including visual communication (flipcharts are available).
    3. It needs translators, who can bring the fields together.
    4. It needs a shared vision. If everyone knows the goal it is easier to do the first step.
    5. It needs an interdisciplinary mind-set of openness and cognitive flexibility.

    Are there more elements that you think are important? What are your experiences? Let me know in the comments below or via Twitter @HxxxKxxx.

    Then we were talking about data sources and on Tuesday gathered a list of tools. And after a Post-It wall of ideas we formed 8 project teams that started working together. Here is the list of preliminary group names:

    1. Church interiors
    2. Group One (later renamed Picasso Group)
    3. The Americans
    4. The Associatives
    5. Metadata Group
    6. Image Similarity Group
    7. Generative Machine Learning Group
    8. Chatbot for Exhibitions

    Additional input came from contextualising Lunch Talks by Nuria Rodríguez Ortega and Anna Benkowska-Kafel and the very inspiring Evening Talk with Lev Manovich. Also the Lightning Talks, where everyone had the chance to present their home project, showed what a fantastic group comes together here.

    All participants are now in high activity, discussing and gesturing in front of displays. That is wonderful to watch… Today we are looking forward to listening to the Lunch Talk by Justin Underhill (Berkeley University) and tomorrow by Mario Klingemann (Google Fellow). On Friday we will be presenting the results in a public event in the Department for Art History.

    You can follow those parts of the event via live streaming. Past lectures are also archived. You can also follow us on the Twitter hashtag #CodingDurer which is populated with many tweets not only from participants. Here you can contribute and get into a conversation, bring forward your own projects and ideas. We also try to keep you up-to-date on our blog. Have a look at it from time to time.

    We would like to have the global network be part of the event and interweave their talents into our group.

    You can also see an overview of Day 1 and Day 2 on Twitter.

    That’s it for the moment from me.

     

  • Project Groups (3) – Tracing Picasso

    Project Groups (3) – Tracing Picasso

    Photo by @airun72

    Throughout his life Picasso created a huge body of work, including paintings, drawings as well as sculptures, that travelled around the world. It seems impossible to grasp how and where the objects moved. One project group at Coding Dürer tries to solve this problem and help us understand the provenience of Picasso’s work by using digital tools. They use OpenRefine to handle the metadata provided by the Met Museum and the MoMA. D3 offers great timeline librarys to visualize time and place. Combined with information about Picasso’s life and exhibitions their interactive tool can show us how Pablo and his work moved throughout time.

  • Project Groups (2) – Albot

    Project Groups (2) – Albot

    Photo from Wikimedia

    You’re at a museum and want to find out more about an artwork you like? Then just ask Albot, the art history chatbot. He will access the museum’s metadata for you and answer simple questions about the artwork, like: Who’s the artist? What’s the title? Which people are depicted? At least that’s the vision of one of the project groups at Coding Dürer. They start with Albrecht Dürer’s “Allerheiligenbild” and try to formulate questions. By extracting keywords, Albot can understand questions and find answers. The team still tries to figure out which chatbot to use. Dexter or the Microsoft bot framework seem to offer great solutions.

  • Yale Center For British Art—Data Source Description

    Yale Center For British Art—Data Source Description

    JMW Turner, Inverary Pier, Loch Fyne: Morning

    The YCBA (@YaleBritishArt) has been sharing high-resolution images of its collection objects in the public domain since Yale University adopted its Open Access Policy in 2011, and today about 71,000 such images are available for download free of charge, including for commercial usage: http://britishart.yale.edu/collections/search

    The YCBA also makes its images available as IIIF assets. We publish a top-level collection that contains child collections for paintings, sculpture, etc.   The collections contain the IIIF Manifests for each object.   

    Machine readable YCBA data can be accessed currently by harvesting XML metadata (LIDO XML)and querying Linked Open Data semantic endpoint (data organized there with CIDOC CRM ontology). Access to or use of the Center’s data and services is subject to the Center’s Open Data And Data Services Terms of Use.

  • DAC Open Access Images—Data Source Description

    The Davison Art Center (DAC) at Wesleyan University in Connecticut (United States) holds more than 25,000 works on paper, chiefly prints and photographs. The DAC collection serves teaching, study, research, exhibition, and other educational purposes. This includes public sharing of high-resolution images of collection objects which are themselves free of copyright. These images have been provided in growing numbers since 2012 as DAC Open Access Images, which may be freely discovered and downloaded via DAC Collection Search.

    DAC Collection Search offers text-based catalog records for nearly the entire collection, along with (to date) 4,590 downloadable DAC Open Access Images representing most of the DAC’s European prints from the 16th through 19th centuries. High-resolution, zoomable images of those 4,590 prints also are available for viewing online. A shortcut relevant to Coding Dürer leads directly to links to all DAC Dürer holdings with images.

    Each DAC Open Access Image is provided for free public download and use in two versions: a publication-quality TIFF (4,096 pixels long dimension) and a presentation-ready JPEG (1,024 pixels). A ReadMe offers technical guidance for image users. These images may be freely used under the DAC Open Access Images policy, which applies to DAC images that have no known copyright restrictions. Please see that policy for details.

    DAC cataloging metadata for these images (as well as for other collection holdings) may be freely downloaded from the same DAC Collection Search pages in two forms: structured LIDO XML and a basic, human-readable text caption in English. In order to make it as useful as possible for projects working across multiple collections, this metadata is provided under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (public domain dedication) license.

    Most of the images of British, Dutch, and German prints (and thus, the Dürer images) were made in 2015 or 2016 during the first two of three summers of grant-funded digital photography of DAC collection objects. This digitization project was made possible in part by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

    Development of DAC Collection Search is ongoing. It may be offline on occasion for updates and improvements between 5:00 and 7:00 PM Eastern time (GMT -5:00h or -4:00h, depending on season).

    #musetech #museweb #opencontent #openglam #codingdurer #digitalarthistory @wesleyan_u @roblancefield