Digital art history

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Digital art history is an area of ​​research that deals with the development, application and theory of digital methods and procedures in relation to questions and tasks relating to art history .

With this orientation, the research area is usually viewed as part of the humanities discipline of art history; There are also close substantive and personal relationships with the young, interdisciplinary subject of digital humanities .

Related, but not identical, are the terms art historical IT, cultural IT, digital art and media art .

History / development

In the history of art, the first activities in the field of "digital humanities" emerged as part of research projects such as the Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known To The Renaissance or Marilyn Aronberg-Lavins The Place of Narrative: Mural Painting in Italian Churches , known today as The Piero Project / ECIT - Electronic Compendium of Images and Text .

In the 1990s, archives and libraries began to record their existing holdings in digital databases and to digitize image material. The Bildarchiv Foto Marburg ( German Documentation Center for Art History ) played a leading role in German art history , and from the 1990s onwards it digitally prepared the older film versions of the extensive image holdings of leading German archives, libraries and museums on microfiches , the so-called Marburg Index , and ended made accessible online in the 1990s. This digital collection of art-historically relevant image material was expanded after the turn of the millennium into the generally accessible National Image Archive of Art and Architecture .

This more centrally organized cooperation model was supplemented in 2001 by prometheus - the distributed digital image archive for research and teaching , with which university activities in the field of digital art history also took shape. Prometheus was implemented as part of a funding program 'New Media in Teaching' launched by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research , which at the same time enabled the first intensive efforts to promote e-learning in art history (cooperation project under the title School of Seeing ).

The Munich Institute for Art History founded the digital review magazine Kunstform in 2001 in close cooperation with historians . In cooperation with the Central Institute for Art History, Arthistoricum.net was also created , today an important art historical internet portal with its own blog.

In 2012, the Digital Art History Working Group was founded in Nymphenburg near Munich, which has since bundled activities in the German-speaking area and is particularly shaped by actors from the university sector. Working meetings take place around twice a year at different locations. The working group also operates a wiki on which current information and references to relevant projects and publications are compiled.

Central fields of work

Digitization of images, source documents and art literature

The area of ​​digital provision of originally analogue images, source documents and literature does not initially differ technologically or methodologically from corresponding digital edition projects in literary studies and other historical sciences; But it was an early motor for the use of digital instruments in art history (electronic analysis of Vasari's vitae and other art-historical documents by Paola Barocchi since the 1980s). Today this field of activity is predominantly taken over by libraries. In the German-speaking area, Heidelberg University Library is particularly active with offers on art literature on architecture and garden art. By expanding the technical possibilities, image data and links to other forms of documentation can now be included.

In the area of ​​art-historical slide libraries and other image databases, the Prometheus image archive offers the possibility (partly for a fee) of central access to the databases of its numerous members.

An early experiment in image-based development of an art-historical object was the preparation of the Ebstorf world map at the University of Lüneburg in 1992. This resulted in work on Anna Oppermann's complex ensembles and finally the HyperImage technology and the Meta-Image service in “prometheus”.

Scientific documentation of objects and facts

Gathering information about art historical objects is a fundamental task for further analysis and interpretation. Until now, digital documentation has mainly been carried out by individual institutions (museums, image archives, monument offices, research institutes). Interactive systems mean that these institutions are more closely linked to one another and researchers and the public are more closely involved. The theoretical aspect of the field lies in the design of data models and recording standards.

  • Inventory databases

There is now a large number of individual catalogs accessible on the Internet, which, however, mostly function according to different standards. The distribution of the MIDAS system from Foto Marburg initially ensured a certain standardization in some areas (Discus network), but was not accepted across the board. In countries with a central cultural administration such as France, digitization under state sovereignty has led to standardized catalogs in which the precision of the data can still fluctuate ( Base Joconde ). The trend is now towards networked work or - in the case of heterogeneous individual databases, usually with a considerable loss of complexity - towards meta databases.

An example of networked work is the joint development of the former ducal copper engraving cabinet by the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel and the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Braunschweig as part of the virtual copper engraving cabinet project . The set up on the initiative of the EU metadatabase Europeana be summarized to cultural goods of all kinds in a European metacatalog a properties under development attempt to form and content heterogeneity digital catalogs.

Another project, which is also managed as a meta catalog, is the [portrait index] coordinated by the Photo Archive Photo Marburg.

The ECHO initiative as a collection of digitized content and tools, which is funded by the EU in the 5th Framework Program and is not only related to art history, but also to cultural history in general, shows the particularly large heterogeneity of interdisciplinary collection and research databases.

  • Research databases

The specific task of research databases is to store and make available primary research data (images, source texts, facts) that have not (yet) been published in text form, traditionally or digitally. In contrast to the inventory databases, they usually do not only refer to a specific collection inventory and are created for a higher-level subject area. However, as the structure and content of documentation systems become increasingly interconnected, the boundaries between existing and research databases are becoming increasingly blurred. Due to the great heterogeneity of the subject of art historical research (architecture and artefacts of all kinds and properties in their respective historical contexts) and the multiple connections to neighboring disciplines (archeology, general history, historical sociology), there are still considerable challenges in the processing of art historical objects and Issues in digital systems.

As the result of many years of conceptual and theoretical work dealing with the task of describing heterogeneous art historical data, a working group led by the Getty Research Center developed the Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA), which were also published in book form in 2009. Since it is too complicated for practical use, a "lite" version was developed as an xml file. Both instructions are based on a content-based, normative description catalog. At the same time, the International Committee on Documentation (CIDOC) of the International Council of Museums has developed the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model , a description model that is entirely based on the previous paradigm of listing description categories for the individual object, but describes the object in its historical form Context through a so-called event-based model. It is not limited to art historical use, but can also depict almost all historical facts.

One of the first art historical databases also went beyond simply recording and describing objects. The Census of Works of Arts Known to the Renaissance documents the reception of antiquity using Renaissance works of art and created a data model that depicts these relationships. The MIDAS (Marburg Information, Documentation and Administration System) set of rules also claimed to be able to scientifically record and manage cultural assets of all kinds, and due to the limited technological framework, required a strict set of rules and central administration that only limited networked work allowed. The Zuccaro database system, which emerged in the context of individual projects on Roman art history at the Bibliotheca Hertziana , MPI, tries to create a generic basis, based on the ideas of the CIDOC CRM, for the collection of art historical facts. So far only temporary working environments exist. A freely usable software, which should also enable networked and interactive work, is in development.

  • Regulations, thesauri, normative data

The Getty Research Institute contributes to the possibilities of digital art historical documentation in particular with the development of vocabulary and thesauri that can be used as reference data for art historical database projects ( Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names , Union List of Artist Names , Art and Architecture Thesaurus ). With these databases and in particular the Provenance Index for the provenance of works of art, Getty also compiles significant data on historical facts. The collection of iconographic content - an important field of research within art history, especially in the middle of the 20th century - has developed as a separate branch. With the Iconclass classification system derived from the Dewey decimal system , which Henry van de Wall has been developing since the 1950s, iconographic content can be recorded systematically and independently of language. Even if normative data are obliged to think “library” based on rules and regulations, they are once again given special importance as reference points in an open system of “linked data”. However, the prerequisite is that they are accessible online.

Room-related documentation

Spatial documentation is mainly used in the field of building research and monument preservation as well as the neighboring discipline of archeology . With geographic information systems (GIS systems), information from building surveys, find situations and excavations can be documented on a site-specific basis and at the same time connected to a database. This can be done either in two-dimensional maps or in three-dimensional systems. With a three-dimensional implementation, a building survey, which can otherwise only be consulted in a large number of plan drawings, can be brought into a clear form. Maps or three-dimensional reconstructions can also be added to photos and other information in the appropriate places.

Visual Methods in Research

  • Image analysis

The automated analysis of images is a field of application for formal examination and grouping. The technologies required for this, however, have not yet been developed specifically for a specific subject or are not freely accessible to science. The cultural-historical aspects, i.e. the recognition of the contents and meanings, can only be partially grasped by automatic analysis.

  • Virtual models and reconstructions

This category primarily includes digital (i.e. virtual) models of individual structures and groups of structures and their surroundings, which are also called CAD models. The concept of the virtual alludes to the difference to "real", i.e. H. physical models.

The most famous center for the virtual reconstruction of historical architecture, at least in Germany, is the chair of the professor of architecture, Manfred Koob (Department of Architecture at TU Darmstadt), who died in 2011. Under the title “Architectura Virtualis”, a veritable museum of reconstructed architecture has been created here since 1990, from the Cluny Cathedral, which was destroyed in the French Revolution, to the various construction stages and designs of the Speyer Cathedral, the Lorsch Monastery, the city of Bensheim, the Aacheners Kaiserpfalz and the Vatican Palace to synagogues destroyed during National Socialism to Dresden Castle. More recently, the virtual models have been converted back into material models by means of rapid prototyping and interactive maps have also been created. In 2000, a conference on CAD and art history was held in Darmstadt for the first time in the German-speaking area, at which the methodological implications of the medium were discussed.

With each such reconstruction, the source situation is different, existing parts of the building, historical photographs, non-executed design drawings, written sources and their different interpretations must be evaluated and implemented in research. In a project for the reconstruction of synagogues destroyed during National Socialism, oral statements from contemporary witnesses were even included to a large extent. It is precisely the critical examination of the heterogeneous sources and their comparison in the model or the visualization of alternatives or knowledge gaps that make CAD models so exciting, but also controversial.

The art historian Hubertus Günther therefore coined the term CACV, 'computer aided critical visualization', around 2001 to emphasize the large amount of research and critical reflection on these models. In Zurich z. B. a never realized project by Sebastiano Serlio for the construction of a loggia in Lyon realized as a virtual model. It turned out that the project would have been difficult to implement in Serlio's well-known planning. Günther points out that the development process of the model in particular allows various insights into the design phases, construction principles and building structure and is therefore extremely profitable, especially in training. The preoccupation with and conception of models improve the perception of spatial relationships, train sight and problem-oriented thinking. Since the plausibility of theses on the original appearance of the building can and must be checked immediately on the model, CAD visualization promotes correct scientific work.

  • Cultural and Visual Analytics

The Russian-Californian media theorist Lev Manovich founded the Software Studies Initiative at the University of California (San Diego) in 2007. a. the Cultural Analytics and Visual Analytics is dedicated. This is about the use of IT methods for the analysis of large amounts of data and flows, and especially the analysis and visualization of digital and digitized images.

Projects devoted to the visualization of networks are primarily based on the analysis of texts or metadata, such as Semaspace, a project by Dietmar Offenhuber and Gerhard Dirmoser, in which cultural, including art-historical contexts are visualized as interactive networks, or the projects of Potsdam media computer scientist Moritz Stefaner in the field of data visualization and information aesthetics.

  • Reception research

Digital technologies make it possible, in the sense of interdisciplinary research on reception, to record and analyze real reception actions of viewers. Since ancient times one can find descriptions of eye movements in art literature. Since the 1930s, attempts have been made to scientifically examine eye movements when viewing works of art and to evaluate them in terms of art psychology and art history. New camera systems (keyword eye tracking ) allow an analysis of the eye movements of the viewer and thus new information about individual strategies of viewing works of art.

Collaboration and mediation

  • Cross-media annotation and semantic linking

While the main focus of database projects in the cultural sector in the 1990s was on standardized documentation and digitization, from the turn of the millennium the focus initially shifted to the possibility of making the recorded data accessible online and summarizing it via portals, then to the question of how Data can be linked meaningfully to enable “intelligent” search queries. This was done under the heading of the Semantic Web , to emphasize that meanings are to be transmitted and generated via these links. In connection with the Semantic Web, there is also the demand for Linked Open Data , which focuses on the free accessibility and compatibility of the linked data. These developments are of particular relevance for the arts, as visual and textual information can be semantically linked in many ways in the digital medium (e.g. images with location data, biographies, sources) and thus made fruitful for scientific argumentation and knowledge transfer.

  • Publishing and Social Media

Digital publication media are also being used more and more in the field of art history, and in a second step they were increasingly given social functions.

The H-Arthist mailing list and the online review magazine kunstform were set up in 2011, followed by the themed portal arthistoricum.net in 2006 and the associated blog.

  • Transfer of database content via the Internet and on mobile devices (online, offline, interactive)

Virtual research tools and work environments

Degree programs and job profiles

The Digital Humanities courses currently being developed (Darmstadt, Würzburg, Trier) are mostly philological, but increasingly also include aspects of art history. Within the new modularized courses, many art history courses offer individual modules with content on "digital art history" in the BA or MA course.

Conferences on digital art history

  • Annually since 1985: CHART conferences (London) Computers and the History of Art
  • Since 1990 every two years: EVA conferences: Electronic Media @ Art, Culture, History, in Berlin since 1996, in London since 1990 The Electronic Information, the Visual Arts and Beyond (further conferences in Florence, Moscow and Jerusalem)
  • Since 1991: International Cultural Heritage Informatics Meetings (ICHIM)
  • Since 1991: International Committee for Documentation of the International Council of Museums Meetings (ICOM-CIDOC)
  • Since 1997: Museums and the Web (USA)
  • 2001 "The Common Eye: Cooperative Visual Research" (Cologne, Prometheus Conference)
  • 2002: "Digital and Digitized Art History" (Munich)
  • 2002: “How much culture is there through the wire? E-learning in cultural studies "(Cologne, Prometheus conference)
  • 2007: "Images - data - databases - this is how it works!" (Prometheus conference)
  • 2007: HyperImage - Image-Oriented e-Science Networks (Berlin)
  • 2010: “Networked Humanities. Art History on the Web "(Acquafredda, Networked Humanities Program, ESF)
  • 2011: “The digital perspective - a beautiful view?” (Prometheus conference)
  • 2011: "Wissenschaft (science) online", conference at the Art History Institute in Florence, Max Planck Institute, March 28-29, 2011
  • 2012: Founding meeting of the Digital Art History Working Group in Nymphenburg (further meetings of the AK can be found on a list on the AK Wiki )

Individual projects

HyperImage - Image-oriented e-Science networks :. With HyperImage, any number of details within an image can be precisely marked and described, and annotations of the corpus can be linked to one another and made accessible via indices. Intermediate results and final versions can be created at any time as hypermedia online or offline publications. This technology is now part of Prometheus as a meta-image .

ARTigo : Social software of the type "games with a purpose" aims to reach a broad audience and to make the knowledge of the other players usable. The image keywording game ARTigo was developed for art history, in which two people describe an image using tags, but only get points if both have chosen the same day.

HASTAC

Mailing list H-Arthist

Online review magazine Kunstform

Art History Open Peer Reviewed Journal

Artifact. Journal for Young Art History and Art :

literature

  • Hubertus coal (ed.): Art history digital. An introduction for practitioners and students , Berlin 1997
  • Marcus Frings (ed.): The model virtue. CAD and the new spaces of art history , Weimar 2001.
  • Hubertus Günther: Critical Computer Visualization in Art History Teaching , in: Marcus Frings (Hrsg.): Der Modelle Tugend. CAD and the new spaces of art history , Weimar 2001, pp. 112–122.
  • Hubertus Kohl, Katja Kwastek: Computer, Art and Art History , Cologne 2003.
  • Tobias Blanke, Mark Hedges, Stuart Dunn: Arts and humanities e-science – current practices and future challenges , in: Future Generation Computer Systems 25, 2009, pp. 474–480. doi: 10.1016 / j.future.2008.10.004
  • Stephan Hoppe , Georg Schelbert: For increased involvement in the digital humanities. The Digital Art History Working Group , in: AKMB-news 2/2013, pp. 40–42 online version
  • Hubertus coal: digital image science , Glückstadt 2013. Online version at Heidelberg University Library
  • Piotr Kuroczyński; Peter Bell; Lisa Dieckmann (Ed.): Computing Art Reader. Introduction to digital art history . Heidelberg 2018 (= Computing in Art and Architecture, Volume 1) Open Access on arthistoricum.net

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ http://www.census.de/
  2. ^ Image index of art and architecture
  3. ↑ Prometheus picture archive
  4. ↑ School of seeing
  5. ↑ http://www.kunstgeschichte.uni-muenchen.de/ifk/index.html
  6. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from August 11, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.arthistoricum.net
  7. ↑ arthistoricum.net
  8. ↑ http://www.digitale-kunstgeschichte.de/wiki/AK-Treffen
  9. ↑ Barocchi, Paola: Vasari e il lessico tecnico, 1996, in: Bollettino d'informazioni, 6.1996, pp. 25-35
  10. ↑ http://architectura.uni-hd.de/
  11. ^ Teutsche Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste . Sandrart.net. Retrieved March 13, 2019.
  12. ↑ http://www.leuphana.de/ebskart
  13. ↑ http://www.uni-lueneburg.de/hyperimage/HI_Kunsthalle/
  14. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from January 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / hyperimage.eu
  15. ↑ http://meta-image.de/
  16. ↑ Portrait index . German Research Foundation eV. Retrieved March 13, 2019.
  17. ^ ECHO - Cultural Heritage Online . Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Retrieved March 13, 2019.
  18. ^ Categories for the Description of Works of Art ( English ) J. Paul Getty Trust. Retrieved March 13, 2019.
  19. ↑ Karl-Heinz Lampe (Ed.): Definition of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model. Berlin: ICOM Germany, 2010
  20. ^ Census of Works of Arts Known to the Renaissance . Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and Humboldt University Berlin. Retrieved March 13, 2019.
  21. ↑ ZUCCARO. An information system for the historical sciences, in: IT Information Technology 51 (2009), pp. 207-215
  22. ↑ Straten, Roelof van: Iconography, indexing, iconclass. A handbook. Leiden Foleor Publ., 1994
  23. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original dated August 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.architektur.tu-darmstadt.de
  24. ↑ http://www.architectura-virtualis.de/
  25. ↑ http://www.cad.architektur.tu-darmstadt.de/synagogen/inter/start_de.html
  26. ↑ Marcus Frings (ed.): The models virtue. CAD and the new spaces of art history. Weimar 2001.
  27. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original dated June 30, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.easyknow.ch
  28. ↑ http://gerhard_dirmoser.public1.linz.at/
  29. ↑ http://www.arthistoricum.net/
  30. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated December 4, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.chart.ac.uk
  31. ↑ http://www.eva-conferences.com/
  32. ↑ http://www.archimuse.com/conferences/ichim.html
  33. ↑ http://arthist.net/reviews/1464
  34. ↑ http://www.uni-lueneburg.de/hyperimage/hyperimage/
  35. ↑ http://meta-image.de/
  36. ↑ http://prometheus-bildarchiv.de/
  37. ↑ http://www.artigo.org/
  38. ↑ http://arthist.net/
  39. ↑ http://www.kunstgeschichte-ejournal.net/
  40. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from January 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.artefakt-sz.net