On Methods to Analyse and Visualize Data

CODING DÜRER’17

Nuria Rodríguez Ortega [email protected]

University of Málaga

On Methods to Analyse and

Visualize Data

(A general framework)

CODING DÜRER’17

Nuria Rodríguez Ortega [email protected]

Universidad de Málaga

CODING DÜRER’17 Questions

WHERE CAN WE FIND DATA?

HOW TO MANAGE DATA?

HOW TO INTERPRET DATA?

WHERE TO FIND DATA?

CODING DÜRER’17 WHERE TO FIND DATA?

Questions

Already existing data collections and databases

Cultural domains without structured datasets available = aggregation of structured data and metada is needed

User-generated, social-produced data on Internet

CODING DÜRER’17 HOW TO MANAGE DATA?

Data representation

HOW TO MANAGE DATA? Skills needed

1. Data representation / Modelling cultural phenomena

1.1. Questions to bear in mind/ Decisions

What are the boundaries?

What are the objects?

What are the attributes?

How do objects interrelate among them?

1.2. Transforming analog objects and concepts into discrete data

Object’s decomposition into attributes and variables

Evolución temporal de los géneros

Source: Suárez, J.L. et al. «Towards a Digital Geography of Hispanic Baroque Art», LLC, n. 13, 2013.

http://www.cultureplex.ca/publication/towards-a-digital-geography-of-hispanic-baroque-art/

CODING DÜRER’17 HOW TO MANAGE DATA?

Data representation

Change of perspective: from the object as entity to a set of correlated attributes

Baroque pictorial production represented as semantic maps configured

by clusters of commun attributes

CODING DÜRER’17 How to manage data?

Data representation


1. Data representation / modelling cultural phenomena

1.3. Bias & Transparency: potential and/or real biases, complete datasets and algorithms should always be made available

1.4. Understanding of data as cultural construct

New questions & new decisions:

- How to express cultural complexity in terms of structured data?

- How to build more flexible structured datasets?

- How to categorize uncertain and ambiguous concepts?

- How to express missing data?

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CODING DÜRER’17 Understanding of data as cultural construct

Data representation

How to express the multiple sexual identities beyond the

traditional binary categorization?

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Data representation

How to express hybrid identities beyond a

list of different nationalities?

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Data representation

How to express the multiple conversations and perspective

that converge on cultural objects beyond the «objective» attributes?


Techniques and methodologies


2. Techniques and methodologies

Conceptual understanding of the techniques’ internal logics

Integration of computational thinking model into the intellectual approach to cultural problems

2.1. Methodology concerns how cultural phenomena are approached. It is a matter of concept that goes beyond the use of specific techniques






2. Techniques and methodologies

Conceptual understanding of the techniques’ internal logics

Integration of computational thinking model into the intellectual approach to cultural problems

2.1. Methodology concerns how cultural phenomena are approached. It is a matter of concept that goes beyond the use of specific techniques

2.2. Experimentation and exploration: researching on new techniques and analysis strategies to face specific art-historical issues


Visualizations


3. Visualizations

3.1. Generative and interpretative models: new hermeneutics based on heuristic visualizations

3.2. Experimentation and exploration: new types of visualizations for displaying cultural complexity

Source: http://dh.stanford.edu/topotime/

CODING DÜRER’17

Temporality expressed in a more complex way than linear timeline

How to manage data?

Visualizations


Visualizations


3. Visualizations

3.1. Generative and interpretative models: new hermeneutics based on heuristic visualizations

3.2. Experimentation and exploration: new types of visualizations for displaying cultural complexity

3.3. New forms of communication (hipermedial, interactive, dynamic, etc.) are needed to expand comprehension and to engage people

Source: https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/inventingabstraction/

CODING DÜRER’17

From interactive platforms…

How to manage data?

Visualizations

https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/inventingabstraction/?page=connections

Source: Schich, M. et al. (2014), «A Network Framework of Cultural History», Science, 345 (6196), 558-562.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gIhRkCcD4U

CODING DÜRER’17

… to animations….

How to manage data?

Visualizations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gIhRkCcD4U

CODING DÜRER’17

Let collaborate with digital artists, visual designers, digital literature practitioners…

How to manage data?

Visualizations

CODING DÜRER’17 HOW TO INTERPRETE DATA?


How to make new arguments, how to pose new questions, how to build new stories…?

Quantitative analysis + critical narratives: data needs to be placed within frameworks of meaning

Source: Lincoln, M. & Forx, A. «The Temporal Dimensions of the London Art Auction, 1780-1835», British Art Studies (Nov., 2016).

http://britishartstudies.ac.uk/issues/issue-index/issue-4/london-art-auction-1870-1835

CODING DÜRER’17 HOW TO INTERPRET DATA?

Metrics do not means anything by themselves… so…

it is time to discover the stories behind…



How can we interrogate the data sources? Which are the new questions?

How are traditional questions reshaped?

Which interpretative frameworks could we apply?


Some examples


From the particular to the structures, patterns and underlying logics

Cluster 1: Picasso’s

solo and group shows

Clusters 11, 12, 13, 14: Dalí, Goya, Miró and

Tàpies solo shows and some group shows

Cluster 4: Old

Masters exhibitions

Cluster 8: 19th-

century masters

exhibitions

Clusters 2, 3, 5, 6, 7

9, 10, 15: Modern and

Contemporary Art exhibtions

Hierarchical clustering = Expofinder corpus (Occurrence ≥ 21)

(Ward's method with Chi-squared distance)

Sources: www.exhibitium.com

www.expofinder.es

© Exhibitium Project

Is the chronological

parameter one of the main

factors underlying selection

processes in curatorial

practices?

Is there an interplay

between the association

processes and the

understanding of western art

tradition?

http://www.exhibitium.com/

http://www.expofinder.es/

Scatter plot (clusters 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 y 15)

Mapping 508 exhibitions and 358 artists (≥6 ocurrence)


www.expofinder.es





Multiscale perspectives

Source: Pamela and Helmreich, Anne. “Local / Global Mapping Nineteenth-Century London's Art Market”.

Nineteeth-century Art World-Wide. A Journal of nineteenth-Century Visual Culture, 11, 3 (2012).

Available in: http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/index.php/autumn12/fletcher-helmreich-mapping-the-london-art-market#_ftnref14

Micro-local + macro-global perspectives about London art market: what is made

visible and what is obscured in each case?

http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/index.php/autumn12/fletcher-helmreich-mapping-the-london-art-market

















Formal models and regular laws: exploring connections and disconnections with systems’ operating logics

Source: Bender, K. «Distant view in Art History. A Case Study of Artistic Productivity», Digital Art History

Journal, n. 1, 2015, pp. 100-110.

Available in: http://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/dah/article/view/21639

Lotka’s law underlying artistic productivity: materials for the development of

socieconomic models of creativity in the artistic production field



Subverting traditional art-historical categories through network analysis

Source: Lincoln, Matthew D. “The Art Historian's Macroscope: Museum Data and the Academy."

Matthew Lincoln, PhD (blog), 21 May 2015.

http://matthewlincoln.net/2015/05/21/the-art-historians-macroscope.html


From artistic excellence

to centrality and

mediation

From individuality to

relationality

From independent objects

to large cultural systems

The unknown

Jonas Suyderhoef issue


Extensive approach vs aprioristic selection processes

Source: Bode, K., Reading by Numbers (2013), 62-70


Challenging the scholarly accepted theory of the preminence of British publishing

industry over the Australian one when considering the vast corpus of pulp fiction

novels

Critical reflection on traditional

concepts of canon as well as on

the discursive conditions of

marginalities and peripheries


New concepts of spatiality

Evolución temporal de los géneros

Mapas semánticos

New Geographies of Art: Algorithmic Spaces vs Traditional Geographic Constrains

and Geopolitical Borders


Source: Suárez, J.L. et al. «Towards a Digital Geography of Hispanic Baroque Art», LLC, n. 13, 2013.

http://www.cultureplex.ca/publication/towards-a-digital-geography-of-hispanic-baroque-art/

Museo Reina Sofía’s

exhibition network

Exhibitions held in Spain

(2010-2016)

USA

Spain

Western Europe

Latin America

Others



Is this a Spanish space?

Challeging the

traditional national/international

categories


www.expofinder.es



Source: http://ubimark.info/usart/


Geographical distribution of large datasets: new ways to explore spatiality from

a heuristic perspective

Frédéric Bazille’s Studio 9 Rue de la Condamine (left) and Norman Rockwell’s Shuffleton’s Barber Shop (right)

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Image processing: Is the same to detect visual matches

than to establish artistic influences?

https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/when-a-machine-learning-algorithm-studied-fine-art-paintings-it-saw-things-art-historians-had-never-b8e4e7bf7d3e

https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/









1

• Representation and transparency

2 • Experimentation and innovation

3

• Quantification processes + qualitative inquiries

4 • Attributes and variables vs objects (independent entities)

5 • Structures and patterns + formal models and regular laws

6

• Relationality vs individuality (large cultural systems)

7 • Multiscale perspective

8 • New geographies and spatial concepts

CODING DÜRER’17 SUMMARIZING…

Data & Analytics

On Methods to Analyse and Visualize Data