Recently, researchers have shown an increased interest in the semantic modeling and description of artworks. Thanks to the thoroughness with which data and their relations can be expressed, the semantic web is an appropriate means to represent the complexity of the art history domain. Currently, several ontologies (e.g. VIR ontology[1], Simulation Ontology[2], vocabularies (Getty Vocabularies[3], Iconclass[4]), and knowledge graphs (e.g. ArtGraph[5], Hyperreal, Wikidata) describing art-related topics are available. Although the presence of such examples, some relevant aspects of the art historical research are poorly represented. Among them, we can cite the iconographical and iconological ones, which focus on artworks’ subjects (i.e. iconographies) and meanings (i.e. symbols, and cultural aspects).
„Sofia Baroncini: Artworks interpretations in Linked Open Data: an ongoing project on Panofsky’s iconological studies“ weiterlesenDaniil Skorinkin: People between prosecution and war: record linkage in prosopographical databases of 20th-century Russia
When it comes to 20th-century Russia, the largest prosopographical sources are centred on some of the most catastrophic events: World War II, Stalin’s terror, and, to a lesser extent, World War I. These events involved millions of people and heavy bureaucracy. Today digitisation of these sources enables computer-aided analysis of millions of life-paths with computational methods.
Russian WWII archival data has been extensively gathered and digitised by state-funded organisations, with the Russian Ministry of Defence as the main driving force. Their OBD (‘Объединенный банк данных’, Unified data bank) now includes dozens of millions of entries from war-time conscription lists, field reports, award documents, and alike.
„Daniil Skorinkin: People between prosecution and war: record linkage in prosopographical databases of 20th-century Russia“ weiterlesenKeynote: Danielle van den Heuvel – The Power of the Anecdotal (Data for History Lecture at the Golden Agents Conference)
On the 9th and 10th of November 2022 the Huygens Institute in collaboration with the City Archives of Amsterdam and the Data for History consortium will organize a conference to present the results of the Golden Agents project and a workshop to discuss shared challenges in extracting data from archival sources, and subsequently processing and modeling data for use in digital humanities and social sciences. A hybrid keynote on Wednesday, 9 November 2022, 3-4 pm, on the topic of “The Power of the Anecdotal” by Dr. Danielle van den Heuvel (Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam and p.i. of the Freedom of the Streets project) in the context of the Data for History Lectures series concludes the conference.
„Keynote: Danielle van den Heuvel – The Power of the Anecdotal (Data for History Lecture at the Golden Agents Conference)“ weiterlesenMatthias Razum et al.: TOPORAZ – Ein digitales Raum-Zeit-Modell für vernetzte Forschung am Beispiel der Stadt Nürnberg
Stadtraumforschung und Kunstgeschichte gehen bei ihrer Analyse üblicherweise vom ortsgebundenen Objekt aus – z. B. einem Gebäude oder Straßenzug. Bislang fehlt aber meist der direkte Bezug der Objekte zu archivischem und sonstigem Quellenmaterial, das über ihre Entstehung, Funktion und Bedeutung Aufschluss gibt. Mit dem Projekt TOPORAZ (Nürnberger Topographie in Raum und Zeit, 2015-2017) entstand mit der gleichnamigen virtuellen Forschungsumgebung (VFU) ein digitales Raum-Zeit-Modell für vernetzte Forschung am Beispiel des Nürnberger Hauptmarkts. Konstitutiv war dabei ein wissenschaftlich fundiertes 3D-Modell in vier Zeitstufen. Die einzelnen Bauwerke darin sind mit historischen Quellen wie Fotos, Grafiken, Bauakten, Dokumenten und Sekundärliteratur verknüpft. Diese Verknüpfungen belegen sowohl die Rekonstruktion der Bauwerke wie auch andere Aussagen in der VFU und heben TOPORAZ damit von anderen 3D-Modellen historischer Städte ab.
„Matthias Razum et al.: TOPORAZ – Ein digitales Raum-Zeit-Modell für vernetzte Forschung am Beispiel der Stadt Nürnberg“ weiterlesenTill Grallert: Zur Erschließung arabischer Periodika aus spätosmanischer Zeit – Herausforderungen einer multilingualen und multiskriptoralen Digital History
Digitalität wohnt ein großes egalitäres Heilsversprechen inne: der uneingeschränkte Zugang zum Wissen der Welt – für jede_n, an jedem Ort, zu jeder Zeit. Erweitert für die Digital History versprechen wir uns die Beantwortung zentraler Forschungsfragen durch die Anwendung computationeller Methoden auf das digital(isiert)e Kulturerbe der Menschheit. Die Grundlage für den Glauben an ein solches Heilsversprechen ist die Verschleierung der Zugangsvoraussetzungen für die Teilhabe an dieser schönen neuen Welt. Apple mit seinem Versprechen “it just works” und dem Skeuomorphismus der Benutzeroberfläche in den frühen Versionen des Betriebssystems für sein iPhone ist hier nur das krasseste Beispiel. Metaphern in Interfaces und Zeichenkodierungen, d.h. die Möglichkeit geschriebene Sprache digital abzubilden, sind die Basis sämtlicher Mensch-Maschine Interaktionen und begründen einen fundamentalen Digital Divide zwischen hegemonialem, anglophonen Globalen Norden und Globalen Süden.
„Till Grallert: Zur Erschließung arabischer Periodika aus spätosmanischer Zeit – Herausforderungen einer multilingualen und multiskriptoralen Digital History“ weiterlesenVincent Ducatteeuw: Developing an urban gazetteer: modelling historical platial information
This talk presents early results on the development of an urban gazetteer useful for Spatial Humanities. The digital gazetteer can store historical place information and is designed with the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) as the upper-level ontology. In accordance with the FAIR approach, the gazetteer data is available as Linked Open Data and can be queried using (Geo)SPARQL.
„Vincent Ducatteeuw: Developing an urban gazetteer: modelling historical platial information“ weiterlesenPeter Hinkelmanns/Manuel Schwembacher: ONAMA – Annotating Medieval Narratives using Linked Open Data
This talk presents results on developing an Ontology of Narratives of the Middle Ages (ONAMA) on the basis of exemplary text and pictorial sources of the Argonaut Saga. ONAMA enables cross-media research into the narratives and thus allows to overcome disciplinary boundaries between pictorial and textual traditions.
„Peter Hinkelmanns/Manuel Schwembacher: ONAMA – Annotating Medieval Narratives using Linked Open Data“ weiterlesenJascha Schmitz: Report on the conference – “Data for History 2021” – Day 7 (30 June 2021)
Panel Discussion
The last session of the Data for History Conference 2021 was a panel discussion between Ariana Ciula (King’s College London), Francesca Tomasi (University of Bologna), Harald Sack (Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure Karlsruhe) and Francesco Beretta (University of Lyon) on ‘Historical data and interoperability / Quo vadis interoperability’. The opening speech was held by one of the conference’s co-hosts, Torsten Hiltmann (Humboldt University of Berlin), who also took on the role of moderator for the following discussion.
„Jascha Schmitz: Report on the conference – “Data for History 2021” – Day 7 (30 June 2021)“ weiterlesenJascha Schmitz, Anna Grönig: Report on the conference – “Data for History 2021” – Day 7 (30 June 2021)
Session 13 – Integrating Different Medialities
Øyvind Eide and Zoe Schubert (University of Cologne) opened with a presentation on their project Kompakkt, entitled “Space, time, and agents in theatre: Digital documentation of the transience of performances through theatrical agents in time and space”.
First, Øyvind Eide introduced the main features of the meaning of space in theatre: While in the text spatiality is represented by linguistic expressions, in performance both the existing spatiality of the stage (and beyond) and linguistic expressions represent space. Hence, concerning theatre, different forms of documentation are necessary for both categories. Many decisions have to be made and ways found to encircle the non-existent centre of documentation, the performance itself, in order to make it part of a (theatre) collection.
Secondary objects and materials are used for this, such as notes, drawings, audio and video recordings. Digital methods now offer the possibility to make these objects/artifacts more available, describable and linkable.
To this end, they have developed Kompakkt, an online repository where artifacts used in performances are digitally available and explorable. For this purpose, they used a selection of artifacts from the theatre collection of the University of Cologne.
Julia Pabst, Anna Grönig: Report on the conference – “Data for History 2021” – Day 6 (23 June 2021)
Session 12 – Data from Annotated Texts
The sixth day of the Data for History conference started with Cristina Vertan’s (University of Hamburg) presentation “Representing vague and uncertain historical data on places people and events in historical texts – a case-study of historical texts of Dimitrie Cantemir”. The main focus was on the texts and translations of the universal researcher Dimitrie Cantemir, who was the only one to write a history on the Balkan region from a western perspective. The original work was written in Latin and translated into other languages only in the 18th century. Since there was no word for word translation, the project is now dedicated to such translations. It combines hermeneutic methods with the methods of computer science. There are three directions of investigation: reliability, consistency and vagueness. First, a model with a knowledge base was developed, which also takes into account vague or uncertain places and persons. After that, the detection was done, e.g. to annotate linguistic marks for uncertain places in each of the available languages, followed by the visualization. One of the central points of the modeling was the creation of an ontology. With this ontology, one can now answer queries about the translations and texts, while taking ambiguities into account. The presentation highlighted the complexity of working with texts and translations.
„Julia Pabst, Anna Grönig: Report on the conference – “Data for History 2021” – Day 6 (23 June 2021)“ weiterlesen