Abstracts
Tuesday, September 20
Johanna Drucker (UCLA): Keynote presentation: "Humanistic Approaches to Digital Scholarship"
Abstract: Parallax Views and Other Incommensurable Conditions
Digital humanities has come of age. Developed repositories, mature projects, working platforms, a suite of tools and possibilities for their use, conventions, papers, and specialized journals as well as designated grants provide abundant evidence of this condition. New challenges arise, some old ones persist. How are we to demonstrate convincingly that the intellectual issues fostered by digital intervention in humanities work are really significant? What are the take-away ideas or insights that are useful to scholars working more broadly. If we compare the digital humanities to the wave of critical theory and its impact on scholarship in the 1980s, then what can we point to that shows how we construct our fundamental notions of epistemology or hermeneutic practices differently as a result of digital projects? If we can’t do this, then are we merely creating online access and storehouses, boutique projects that are of greater interest to their creators than to anyone else? And what of the humanistic methods that are central to our disciplines? How do these come into play in the digital environment? What is the humanistic work of the digital humanities? This paper argues that parallax is a central tenet of humanistic interpretation, and that the registration of a non-self-identical condition of knowledge is one crucial methodological contribution the humanities can make in its design of platforms that shift from universe to multiverse, from singularity to relativity, and from reification to refraction. Such platforms do and do not exist, and have their precedents in print forms, but the development of digital platforms that engage with the partial, situated condition of knowledge, collaborative and aggregate discrepancies, and actually allow study and expression of incommensurable points of view are still ahead.
Session 1: Digital Humanities and Digital Art History: General Overview
Juan Martín Prada (University of Cádiz): “Some Considerations on the History of Internet Art”.
Nuria Rodríguez Ortega (University of Málaga) and Murtha Baca (Getty Research Institute): “Digital Art History: Current Status, Future Challenges”. Abstract: This presentation will highlight the opportunities that working in the digital realm offers to art historians, as well as the challenges (intellectual, logistical, technical, professional) for a profession that has lagged behind other fields of study, particularly the hard sciences, in exploiting the Web as a venue for both research and publication. Finally, open questions that art historians are facing will be discussed.
Abstract: Nuria Rodríguez will recall some problematic and critical issues that concern the development of Art History as specific humanistic discipline
in the digital realm. The presentation will center on some key questions, among them: what do art-historians do with digital resources and how do they interact in the digital media? Which kind of digital resources for art-historical research can we find in Internet? Do these resources respond to the epistemological and methodological specificities of Art History? Which art-historical narratives are scholars developing on the web? Are these narratives expression of the art-historical interpretative parameters currently accepted? Even, do these help us to foster the critical and theoretical debates to new paths? The reflection on these issues will lead us to the last question: is it possible and convenientto think about Digital Art History as specific research field?
Wednesday, September 21
Session 2: Data Visualizations in Art History
Johanna Drucker: “Framing Data Visualizations”.
Christian Huemer (Getty Research Institute): “Patterns of Collecting: InfoViz for Art History”. Abstract: For decades it has been the goal of the Getty Provenance Index® to enhance access to source material relevant to research in the history of collecting. Currently, the databases contain 1.1 million records extracted from primary source material such as archival inventories, auction catalogs, and dealer stock books. Instead of using this large data collection merely for the retrieval of individual records (e.g. provenance research), new software and computer interfaces enable us to explore complex relationships between many variables interactively. Otherwise unrecognizable patterns of collecting and a new set of questions suddenly emerge. This paper discusses ongoing challenges, methodological issues, and preliminary results of the Provenance Index® Visualization Project – a collaboration with Maximilian Schich, Lev Manovich, and Piotr Adamczyk.
Bernard Frischer (University of Virginia): “Visualizing Sculpture”. Abstract: This talk presents several of my lab's projects concerning sculpture.
Alejandro Bía (Universidad Miguel Hernández de Elche): “Visual Modeling of Document Structures Using UML and Mind Maps”.
Abstract: We very often use UML diagrams in research and development projects that require modeling, even for modeling XML DTDs and Schemas, but recently we started exploring other types of diagrams and unconventional methods which can be both useful for designing and modeling semistructured data, and as teaching aids or thinking tools. This experience also served to open our minds to tools and methods other than the recognized mainstream practices.In this paper, we describe our research on non-UML diagrams and the available diagramming tools. We also explain how we managed to use Mind Maps and a modified Freemind tool to successfully model, design, modify, import and export XML DTDs, XML Schemas (XSD and RNG) and also XML document instances, getting very manageable and easily-comprehensible folding diagrams. In this way, we converted a general purpose mind-mapping tool, into a very powerful tool for XML vocabulary design and simplification, as well as for teaching XML markup or document analysis and structuring.
Anne Helmreich (Getty Foundation): “Network Analysis and the Art Market”.
Abstract: Art history has long privileged close reading; attention to the individual work of art is shared by diverse methodological approaches, including connoisseurship and social-historical analysis. The development of new tools and techniques for research made possible by emerging technologies has, in other disciplines, given rise to the practice of ‘far reading’, referring to examinations conducted across a large data set. What might far reading look like in art history? We do not, as yet, have a strong set of responses to this provocative question.
This paper proposes one possible response by examining the flow of goods in the art market in the modern period, focusing on networks formed by the Goupil firm. Goupil was originally founded in France in 1829 as a print publishing firm and in the late 1840s added original works of art to its repertoire of reproductive prints. Shortly thereafter it began an explicit program of international growth by establishing branches in other major urban centers, including New York, the Hague, and London. Much of the firm’s business (although not all) was tracked via stockbooks (c. 1860s-1900), which have been preserved and now digitized by the Getty Research Institute.
This unique set of data provides an opportunity to develop a model project for the study of the flow of art objects across time and space. This data set is particularly well configured for a network model as these goods circulated within the system of international branches created by Goupil before passing into the hands of individual buyers. Network analysis of the art market not only offers the opportunity to develop new research methodologies based on emergent technologies but also contributes to the reconfiguration of art history outside the out-moded paradigms of national schools by revealing the dynamic flow of art works.
Session 3: Art-historical scholarship in the Digital Age
Johanna Drucker: “Scholarship in the Digital Age: Framing the Question”.
Anne-Lise Desmas (J. Paul Getty Museum): “Willing to Benefit from the Digital Age: A Curator/Scholar's Experience and Voice”.
Abstract: While everyone is aware that we are in the digital age, the ambitions of the institutions and the means at disposition to fully practice digital art history are still often insufficient and/or inadequate. Through various experiences of databases and of online publications I have been working on in either the context of my personal research or the context of my professional positions, my presentation will aim at showing the challenges an historian of art has to face with digital art history.
Anna Bentkowska-Kafel (King’s College London): “Scholarship of Digital Visualization of Cultural Heritage”.
Abstract: Heritage visualization is arguably amongst the most complex applications of digital technology to art-historical research. The term 'visualization' is misleading. Digital visualization transcends the visual. It has the potential to engage various senses and embrace space, time and behaviour – all critical for experiencing and representing cultural artefacts and phenomena. The limits of visualisation technologies are being pushed further and further. The range of applications is bewildering and growing in scope. This paper addresses a few points concerning the scholarly value of visualization techniques currently available, and considers the impact of virtual artefacts on the discipline of Art History.
Susan Chun (Universita della Svizzerà Italiana and Johns Hopkins University): “Teaching Art Historians to Think Visually”.
Martin Warnke (University of Lüneburg): “Networking Image Motifs”.
Abstract: In the digital domain techniques of marking and interlinking of image details had to be invented once again. What Aby Warburg did with pins and woolen threads – expressing pictorial relationships explicitely – now has been taken to the internet. The presentation shows "HyperImage", our solution to this problem. Will techniques like these affect iconography?
Thursday, September 22
Session 4: Documentation for Digital Resources in Art History
Murtha Baca (Getty Research Institute): ‘Documentation Issues for Art-historical Materials”.
Abstract: This presentation will provide an overview of data standards and Web access strategies for museum collections and art-historical resources. The "Deep Web" versus "visible Web," multilingual access, metadata harvesting, and "the Google and Wikipedia factors" will be addressed.
Bill Ying (Vice President of Technology for ARTstor): “Application of a Knowledge Organization System in ARTstor and Shared Shelf: A Digital Library and a Networked Image Cataloguing and Management Solution” .
Abstract: Essential to the successful implementation and use of any digital library is the organization of that library, by one or more knowledge organization systems (KOS). KOS includes classification and categorization schemes that organize materials at a general level, subject headings that provide more detailed access and authority files that control variant versions of key information. KOS also includes highly structured vocabularies, such as thesauri, and less traditional schemes, such as semantic networks and ontology. This presentation will explore how ARTstor Digital Library over the years has improved it’s usefulness to the scholarly community by applying different increasing sophisticated Knowledge Organization Systems.
Session 5: Social Participation in the Digital Realm
Peter Boot (Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands): “Investigating Usage and Users of Digital Resources”.
Abstract: For book publications, though we know whether people buy them, we never know whether they actually read or use them. For digital resources, however, using techniques such as log analysis, we can follow actual usage. This helps us find flaws in our design and hopefully build better sites. It can also help us find patterns in the way people use the site. In a case study, I will look at the usage of the Van Gogh letter edition that Huygens ING and Van Gogh Museum recently published (http://vangoghletters.org).
Elisabel Chaves Guerrero (Museo del Patrimonio Municipal): "An Involving Partnership for Social Presence on a Networked Local Museum Audience: Museo del Patrimonio Municipal (MUPAM)".
Nuria Rodríguez Ortega, with Murtha Baca: “Digital Mellini: an Experiment in Art-historical Collaboration”.
Abstract: Digital Mellini project is a joint initiative of the University of Málaga and the Getty Research Institute whose objective is to explore new methods and tools with which to reinvent the concept of scholarly work and publishing in the field of humanities and in particular in the context of art history, in which the convergence of text and image is essential and provides an interesting context for research. For that, the team of Digital Mellini Project is working on the development of a collaborative digital publication that incorporates texts, digital facsimiles, images, computational tools for linguistic analysis and visual communication, and forums for exchanging ideas. The ultimate goal, then, is that this model can also be utilized by the international community of specialists and applied to a variety of art-historical projects. The presentation will go deep in the reasons, motivations and purposes of this project; will explain the design and conception of the digital environment under development; and will also discuss some problematic issues concerning these kind of collaborative projects, like the lack of a systematic methodology and the difficulties founded in the involvement of scholars.
Johanna Drucker (UCLA): Keynote presentation: "Humanistic Approaches to Digital Scholarship"
Abstract: Parallax Views and Other Incommensurable Conditions
Digital humanities has come of age. Developed repositories, mature projects, working platforms, a suite of tools and possibilities for their use, conventions, papers, and specialized journals as well as designated grants provide abundant evidence of this condition. New challenges arise, some old ones persist. How are we to demonstrate convincingly that the intellectual issues fostered by digital intervention in humanities work are really significant? What are the take-away ideas or insights that are useful to scholars working more broadly. If we compare the digital humanities to the wave of critical theory and its impact on scholarship in the 1980s, then what can we point to that shows how we construct our fundamental notions of epistemology or hermeneutic practices differently as a result of digital projects? If we can’t do this, then are we merely creating online access and storehouses, boutique projects that are of greater interest to their creators than to anyone else? And what of the humanistic methods that are central to our disciplines? How do these come into play in the digital environment? What is the humanistic work of the digital humanities? This paper argues that parallax is a central tenet of humanistic interpretation, and that the registration of a non-self-identical condition of knowledge is one crucial methodological contribution the humanities can make in its design of platforms that shift from universe to multiverse, from singularity to relativity, and from reification to refraction. Such platforms do and do not exist, and have their precedents in print forms, but the development of digital platforms that engage with the partial, situated condition of knowledge, collaborative and aggregate discrepancies, and actually allow study and expression of incommensurable points of view are still ahead.
Session 1: Digital Humanities and Digital Art History: General Overview
Juan Martín Prada (University of Cádiz): “Some Considerations on the History of Internet Art”.
Nuria Rodríguez Ortega (University of Málaga) and Murtha Baca (Getty Research Institute): “Digital Art History: Current Status, Future Challenges”. Abstract: This presentation will highlight the opportunities that working in the digital realm offers to art historians, as well as the challenges (intellectual, logistical, technical, professional) for a profession that has lagged behind other fields of study, particularly the hard sciences, in exploiting the Web as a venue for both research and publication. Finally, open questions that art historians are facing will be discussed.
Abstract: Nuria Rodríguez will recall some problematic and critical issues that concern the development of Art History as specific humanistic discipline
in the digital realm. The presentation will center on some key questions, among them: what do art-historians do with digital resources and how do they interact in the digital media? Which kind of digital resources for art-historical research can we find in Internet? Do these resources respond to the epistemological and methodological specificities of Art History? Which art-historical narratives are scholars developing on the web? Are these narratives expression of the art-historical interpretative parameters currently accepted? Even, do these help us to foster the critical and theoretical debates to new paths? The reflection on these issues will lead us to the last question: is it possible and convenientto think about Digital Art History as specific research field?
Wednesday, September 21
Session 2: Data Visualizations in Art History
Johanna Drucker: “Framing Data Visualizations”.
Christian Huemer (Getty Research Institute): “Patterns of Collecting: InfoViz for Art History”. Abstract: For decades it has been the goal of the Getty Provenance Index® to enhance access to source material relevant to research in the history of collecting. Currently, the databases contain 1.1 million records extracted from primary source material such as archival inventories, auction catalogs, and dealer stock books. Instead of using this large data collection merely for the retrieval of individual records (e.g. provenance research), new software and computer interfaces enable us to explore complex relationships between many variables interactively. Otherwise unrecognizable patterns of collecting and a new set of questions suddenly emerge. This paper discusses ongoing challenges, methodological issues, and preliminary results of the Provenance Index® Visualization Project – a collaboration with Maximilian Schich, Lev Manovich, and Piotr Adamczyk.
Bernard Frischer (University of Virginia): “Visualizing Sculpture”. Abstract: This talk presents several of my lab's projects concerning sculpture.
- Data Capture. A new approach known as “structure from motion” makes it possible to capture data using a digital camera as opposed to an expensive dedicated scanner. We are using this approach to create an archive of Classical sculpture.
- Restoration. Once we have a 3D model of the current state of a statue, we must often restore it to its original condition, repairing the surface, restoring lost parts, and adding color. This is illustrated by our project on the portrait of the Emperor Caligula.
- Online Publication. It is currently not possible to publish online large real-time 3D models. A new solution exploiting WebGL will be presented.
Alejandro Bía (Universidad Miguel Hernández de Elche): “Visual Modeling of Document Structures Using UML and Mind Maps”.
Abstract: We very often use UML diagrams in research and development projects that require modeling, even for modeling XML DTDs and Schemas, but recently we started exploring other types of diagrams and unconventional methods which can be both useful for designing and modeling semistructured data, and as teaching aids or thinking tools. This experience also served to open our minds to tools and methods other than the recognized mainstream practices.In this paper, we describe our research on non-UML diagrams and the available diagramming tools. We also explain how we managed to use Mind Maps and a modified Freemind tool to successfully model, design, modify, import and export XML DTDs, XML Schemas (XSD and RNG) and also XML document instances, getting very manageable and easily-comprehensible folding diagrams. In this way, we converted a general purpose mind-mapping tool, into a very powerful tool for XML vocabulary design and simplification, as well as for teaching XML markup or document analysis and structuring.
Anne Helmreich (Getty Foundation): “Network Analysis and the Art Market”.
Abstract: Art history has long privileged close reading; attention to the individual work of art is shared by diverse methodological approaches, including connoisseurship and social-historical analysis. The development of new tools and techniques for research made possible by emerging technologies has, in other disciplines, given rise to the practice of ‘far reading’, referring to examinations conducted across a large data set. What might far reading look like in art history? We do not, as yet, have a strong set of responses to this provocative question.
This paper proposes one possible response by examining the flow of goods in the art market in the modern period, focusing on networks formed by the Goupil firm. Goupil was originally founded in France in 1829 as a print publishing firm and in the late 1840s added original works of art to its repertoire of reproductive prints. Shortly thereafter it began an explicit program of international growth by establishing branches in other major urban centers, including New York, the Hague, and London. Much of the firm’s business (although not all) was tracked via stockbooks (c. 1860s-1900), which have been preserved and now digitized by the Getty Research Institute.
This unique set of data provides an opportunity to develop a model project for the study of the flow of art objects across time and space. This data set is particularly well configured for a network model as these goods circulated within the system of international branches created by Goupil before passing into the hands of individual buyers. Network analysis of the art market not only offers the opportunity to develop new research methodologies based on emergent technologies but also contributes to the reconfiguration of art history outside the out-moded paradigms of national schools by revealing the dynamic flow of art works.
Session 3: Art-historical scholarship in the Digital Age
Johanna Drucker: “Scholarship in the Digital Age: Framing the Question”.
Anne-Lise Desmas (J. Paul Getty Museum): “Willing to Benefit from the Digital Age: A Curator/Scholar's Experience and Voice”.
Abstract: While everyone is aware that we are in the digital age, the ambitions of the institutions and the means at disposition to fully practice digital art history are still often insufficient and/or inadequate. Through various experiences of databases and of online publications I have been working on in either the context of my personal research or the context of my professional positions, my presentation will aim at showing the challenges an historian of art has to face with digital art history.
Anna Bentkowska-Kafel (King’s College London): “Scholarship of Digital Visualization of Cultural Heritage”.
Abstract: Heritage visualization is arguably amongst the most complex applications of digital technology to art-historical research. The term 'visualization' is misleading. Digital visualization transcends the visual. It has the potential to engage various senses and embrace space, time and behaviour – all critical for experiencing and representing cultural artefacts and phenomena. The limits of visualisation technologies are being pushed further and further. The range of applications is bewildering and growing in scope. This paper addresses a few points concerning the scholarly value of visualization techniques currently available, and considers the impact of virtual artefacts on the discipline of Art History.
Susan Chun (Universita della Svizzerà Italiana and Johns Hopkins University): “Teaching Art Historians to Think Visually”.
Martin Warnke (University of Lüneburg): “Networking Image Motifs”.
Abstract: In the digital domain techniques of marking and interlinking of image details had to be invented once again. What Aby Warburg did with pins and woolen threads – expressing pictorial relationships explicitely – now has been taken to the internet. The presentation shows "HyperImage", our solution to this problem. Will techniques like these affect iconography?
Thursday, September 22
Session 4: Documentation for Digital Resources in Art History
Murtha Baca (Getty Research Institute): ‘Documentation Issues for Art-historical Materials”.
Abstract: This presentation will provide an overview of data standards and Web access strategies for museum collections and art-historical resources. The "Deep Web" versus "visible Web," multilingual access, metadata harvesting, and "the Google and Wikipedia factors" will be addressed.
Bill Ying (Vice President of Technology for ARTstor): “Application of a Knowledge Organization System in ARTstor and Shared Shelf: A Digital Library and a Networked Image Cataloguing and Management Solution” .
Abstract: Essential to the successful implementation and use of any digital library is the organization of that library, by one or more knowledge organization systems (KOS). KOS includes classification and categorization schemes that organize materials at a general level, subject headings that provide more detailed access and authority files that control variant versions of key information. KOS also includes highly structured vocabularies, such as thesauri, and less traditional schemes, such as semantic networks and ontology. This presentation will explore how ARTstor Digital Library over the years has improved it’s usefulness to the scholarly community by applying different increasing sophisticated Knowledge Organization Systems.
Session 5: Social Participation in the Digital Realm
Peter Boot (Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands): “Investigating Usage and Users of Digital Resources”.
Abstract: For book publications, though we know whether people buy them, we never know whether they actually read or use them. For digital resources, however, using techniques such as log analysis, we can follow actual usage. This helps us find flaws in our design and hopefully build better sites. It can also help us find patterns in the way people use the site. In a case study, I will look at the usage of the Van Gogh letter edition that Huygens ING and Van Gogh Museum recently published (http://vangoghletters.org).
Elisabel Chaves Guerrero (Museo del Patrimonio Municipal): "An Involving Partnership for Social Presence on a Networked Local Museum Audience: Museo del Patrimonio Municipal (MUPAM)".
Nuria Rodríguez Ortega, with Murtha Baca: “Digital Mellini: an Experiment in Art-historical Collaboration”.
Abstract: Digital Mellini project is a joint initiative of the University of Málaga and the Getty Research Institute whose objective is to explore new methods and tools with which to reinvent the concept of scholarly work and publishing in the field of humanities and in particular in the context of art history, in which the convergence of text and image is essential and provides an interesting context for research. For that, the team of Digital Mellini Project is working on the development of a collaborative digital publication that incorporates texts, digital facsimiles, images, computational tools for linguistic analysis and visual communication, and forums for exchanging ideas. The ultimate goal, then, is that this model can also be utilized by the international community of specialists and applied to a variety of art-historical projects. The presentation will go deep in the reasons, motivations and purposes of this project; will explain the design and conception of the digital environment under development; and will also discuss some problematic issues concerning these kind of collaborative projects, like the lack of a systematic methodology and the difficulties founded in the involvement of scholars.