The problem of distance in digital art history
A ResearchSpace case study on sequencing Hokusai print impressions to form a human curated network of knowledge
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Abstract
Technology is used to compress time and space but at the cost of ‘nearness’. This means it maintains a distance and disjoint between qualitative and quantitative techniques, and therefore between humanists and technology. The knowledge representations that humanists require to investigate a given subject are not the same as those mandated by technologists and database systems more concerned with scale and the efficiency of data processing and retrieval, rather than context and meaning. This perpetuates a humanist perception of information systems as either, useful but ancillary, or problematic. This paper describes an intervention that seeks to combine the qualitative with the quantitative through collaborative research, expressive structured data, and a human-centered and participatory approach to the ‘knowledge graph’. Its design is based on an understanding of the history of historical textual narrative and the benefit of approaching quantitative issues from the bottom up, or qualitatively, incorporating different levels of generalisation, perspectives (different vantage point on reality), and approaches to connections across time and space. A specialist question based on the designs of the artist, Katsushika Hokusai is used as a basis to illustrate how ‘micro’ research questions contribute, in part, to bigger questions and higher quality quantitative analysis.
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References
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Wilson, Woodrow. ‘The Variety and Unity of History’. In International Congress of Arts and Science, edited by Howard J. Rogers, 2:3–20. Saint Louis, Mo.: University Alliance, 1904.
Atkins, Daniel, Kelvin Droegemeier, Stuart Feldman, and Hector Garcia-Molina. ‘Revolutionizing Science and Engineering through Cyberinfrastructure: Report of the National Science Foundation Blue-Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure’. National Science Foundation, 2003. https://arizona.openrepository. com/arizona/handle/10150/106224.
Bishop, Claire. ‘Against Art History’. Text. Franklin Humanities Institute (blog), 9 March 2017. https://humanitiesfutures.org/papers/digital-art-history/.
Bradley, John. ‘Silk Purses and Sow’s Ears: Can Structured Data Deal with Historical Sources?’ International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing 8, no. 1 (April 2014): 13–27. https://doi.org/10.3366/ ijhac.2014.0117.
Burawoy, Michael. ‘Marxism as Science: Historical Challenges and Theoretical Growth’. American Sociological Review 55, no. 6 (December 1990): 775. https:// doi.org/10.2307/2095745.
‘Collaboration, n.’ In OED Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed 25 November 2018. http://www.oed.com/ view/Entry/36197.
Day, Ronald E., Jonathan Furner, Michael Buckland, and Markus Krajewski. Indexing It All: The Subject in the Age of Documentation, Information, and Data. S.l.: MIT Press, 2018.
Dixon, Keetra Dean. Digital Design Theory: Readings from the Field. Edited by Helen Armstrong. 01 edition. New York, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2016.
Doerr, Martin, Stephen Stead, and Christian Emil Ore, eds. ‘Version 6.2 | CIDOC CRM’. International Committee for Documentation. Accessed 25 November 2018. http://www.cidoc-crm.org/sites/default/files/cidoc_crm_version_6.2.pdf.
Drucker, Johanna. ‘Is There a “Digital” Art History?’ Visual Resources 29, no. 1–2 (June 2013): 5–13. https:// doi.org/10.1080/01973762.2013.761106.
Ehrlinger, Lisa, and Wolfram Wöß. ‘Towards a Definition of Knowledge Graphs’, n.d., 4.
Geertz, Clifford, and Robert Darnton. The Interpretation of Cultures. 3rd Revised edition edition. New York: Basic Books, 2017.
‘GIGO, n.’ In OED Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed 26 November 2018. http://www.oed.com/view/ Entry/243123.
Ginzburg, Carlo. ‘Microhistory and World History’. In The Cambridge World History, edited by Jerry H. Bentley, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, 446–73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1017/ CBO9781139022460.019.
Harvey, David. A Companion to Marx’s Capital. London ; New York: Verso, 2010.
Haxthausen, Charles W. The Two Art Histories: The Museum and the University. Williamstown, Mass.: Yale University Press, 2003.
Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology: And Other Essays. Reissue edition. New York; London Toronto: Harper Perennial, 2013.
Hobsbawm, E.J. ‘The Historian between the Quest for the Universal and the Quest for Identity’. Diogenes 42, no. 168 (December 1994): 51–63. https://doi. org/10.1177/039219219404216805.
Hobsbawm, Eric. ‘Eric Hobsbawm: In Defence of History’. the Guardian, 15 January 2005. http://www.theguardian. com/books/2005/jan/15/news.comment.
https://en.wikipedia.org. ‘Main Page’. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 23 October 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org.
https://www.europeana.eu/portal/en. ‘Europeana Collections’. Accessed 22 November 2018. https://www. europeana.eu/portal/en.
https://www.wikidata.org. ‘Wikidata’. Accessed 22 November 2018. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page.
http://www.artstor.org/. ‘Artstor’. Accessed 22 November 2018. http://www.artstor.org/.
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, IT, Open Knowledge Foundation, National Technical University of Athens, Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, and European Association for Jewish Culture - FR, ExLibris. ‘DM2E’. Digitised Manuscripts to Europeana. Accessed 17 November 2018. https://dm2e.eu/.
Keyes, Roger S. ‘Pink Fuji: The Print Hokusai Saw’. Impressions 29 (2008 2007): 68–75.
Lachman, Gary. Lost Knowledge of the Imagination. First Edition edition. Edinburgh: Floris Books, 2017.
Langmead, Alison, Tracey Berg-Fulton, Thomas Lombardi, and David Newbury. ‘A Role-Based Model for Successful Collaboration in Digital Art History’. International Journal for Digital Art History, no. 3 (July 2018): 29. https://doi.org/10.11588/ dah.2018.3.34297.
Oldman, Dominic, and Diana Tanase. ‘Reshaping the Knowledge Graph by Connecting Researchers, Data and Practices in ResearchSpace’. In The Semantic Web – ISWC 2018, edited by Denny Vrandecic, Kalina Bontcheva, Mari Carmen Suárez-Figueroa, Valentina Presutti, Irene Celino, Marta Sabou, Lucie-Aimée Kaffee, and Elena Simperl, 325–40. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer International Publishing, 2018.
Ollman, Bertell. Dance of the Dialectic: STEPS IN MARX’S METHOD. Urbana, Ill: University of Illinois Press, 2003.
Pepi, Mike. ‘Is a Museum a Database?: Institutional Conditions in Net Utopia’. E-Flux 60 (December 2014). https://www.e-flux.com/journal/60/61026/ is-a-museum-a-database-institutional-conditions-in-net-utopia/.
pjw1003@cam.ac.uk. ‘Early Modern History — Faculty of History’. Specialty. Accessed 25 November 2018. https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/directory/subject-groups/early-modern-history?classification=uto.
Reisz, Matthew. ‘Surfdom’. Times higher Education, 8 December 2011. http://www.timeshighereducation. co.uk/story.asp?storycode=418343.
Robinson, Ian, Jim Webber, and Emil Eifrem. Graph Databases: New Opportunities for Connected Data. 2 edition. Beijing: O’Reilly Media, 2015.
Sayes, Edwin. ‘Marx and the Critique of Actor-Network Theory: Mediation, Translation, and Explanation’. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory 18, no. 3 (2 September 2017): 294–313. https://doi.org/10.108 0/1600910X.2017.1390481.
Stember, Marilyn. ‘Advancing the Social Sciences through the Interdisciplinary Enterprise’. The Social Science Journal 28, no. 1 (January 1991): 1–14. https://doi. org/10.1016/0362-3319(91)90040-B.
Thomas, Keith. ‘Diary’. London Review of Books, 10 June 2010, 36–37.
Wilson, Woodrow. ‘The Variety and Unity of History’. In International Congress of Arts and Science, edited by Howard J. Rogers, 2:3–20. Saint Louis, Mo.: University Alliance, 1904.
Issue
Section
Language
English
Keywords
network analysis, interdisciplinary collaboration, data-driven narratives, mixed-method, research environment
How to Cite
Oldman, Dominic, Diana Tanase, and Stephanie Santschi. 2019. “The Problem of Distance in Digital Art History: A ResearchSpace Case Study on Sequencing Hokusai Print Impressions to Form a Human Curated Network of Knowledge”. International Journal for Digital Art History, no. 4 (December):5.29-5.45. https://doi.org/10.11588/dah.2019.4.72071.
