museumsandtheweb.com - art history

Rhizomatic Art Stories - Balancing between Innovation and Usability

Merete Sanderhoff — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 22:28:39 +0000

MW2011

Annette Rosenvold Hvidt and Merete Sanderhoff, SMK National Gallery of Denmark, Denmark

http://www.smk.dk/kunsthistorier

Abstract

In 2008 SMK, the National Gallery of Denmark, initiated a 5-year digital strategy. A core project of this strategy is Art Stories: an innovative online resource that offers stories and background material about artworks, artists and how they connect. The ambition is to make art history come alive on the Web, utilizing the possibilities offered by digital media. Art Stories was developed over a three-year period in a highly iterative process. Our vision has been to create an 'art history on the terms of the Web' which implies structuring the content in a complex, 'rhizomatic' way. We have repeatedly invited users to discuss and test the concept, hoping to ensure an engaging and intuitively navigable online art experience. This paper goes through the process of developing the site in dialogue with users – but also sometimes against their immediate demands and expectations.

Keywords: Art history, persuasive design, usability, iterative process, lessons learned

Program Item Reference:

Rhizomatic Art Stories – balancing between innovation and usability

Event-driven Access to Heterogeneous Distributed Museum Collections

MvanErp — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 17:45:31 +0000

MW2011

Keywords:

art history

Keywords:

access

Keywords:

browsing

Keywords:

resource discovery

Keywords:

events

Keywords:

data integration

Abstract:

This demonstration is the first prototype of the event-driven collection browsing platform that is being developed within the Agora project. In this demo, we show how museum collections can be accessed by users based on historical events.

We have enriched the collections of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision with information about the events that are depicted in or related to the object (for details on that, see our MW2011 abstract). The event information provides us with meta-data about participants, dates, locations and event types, which can all be used to browse collections in a more context-driven way than unstructured collection meta-data can provide.

Not all meta-data elements are to be treated equally. In the demonstrator, alongside each object we show the object information along four dimensions: biography, material, semiotics and associated events. The biographical and materiality dimensions contain the information on the object as present in most collection databases, e.g., creator, time period, type of work, technique. The semiotic and event dimensions are the novel collection access dimensions added by Agora. For expert users, such as historians, the combination of the four dimensions provides finegrained access to collection objects that allows them to gain a deeper understanding of the provenance of the object. The interface also allows them to discover related objects in the collection along any of the dimensions in a fast and automated way, which was previously a time-consuming manual process. For lay users, such as secondary school students, the event-driven browser can help educate them about the way objects in museum collections are related, and illustrate multiple facets of historical events as expressed through the objects. Whenever the user wants to know more about an event, she can bring up information about the event that is automatically linked to the objects from external sources. These types of automatic enrichment provide museum collections with more grounding in history than they were previously unable to provide on a large scale. The event information provides users a handle to the history behind the object. It also provides yet another exploration path of the collection, as other objects that are also related to this event can be accessed directly.

Finally, the event browser keeps track of the objects viewed during a session and how the user went from one object to the other (i.e., through which dimension the user browsed). This navigation history forms the personal context to the objects the user viewed, creating a personal narrative that can be shared by users and will be studied by (art)historians to investigate the meaning of historical narrative in the modern Web-based collection access.

Type:

Demonstration - show your project

Demonstrations IV

Site:

http://agora.cs.vu.nl/eventdemo

Authors:

Lourens van der Meij

Marieke van Erp

Lora Aroyo

Roxane Segers

Rhizomatic Art Stories – balancing between innovation and usability

Merete Sanderhoff — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 14:09:30 +0000

MW2011

Published Paper:

Rhizomatic Art Stories - Balancing between Innovation and Usability

Keywords:

online resources

Keywords:

rhizome

Keywords:

serendipity

Keywords:

syndication

Keywords:

usability

Keywords:

art history

Abstract:

In 2008 SMK National Gallery of Denmark initiated a 5 year digital strategy. A core initiative is Art Stories: an innovative online resource that offers exciting stories and background material about artworks, artists and how they connect. The ambition is to retell the story of art and make it come alive on the web, exploiting the possibilities offered by digital media.

The Gordian knot we have tried to cut is: How do we develop an innovative digital art experience based on a chaotic, ‘rhizomatic’ structural principle, and at the same time keep it intuitively navigable and user-friendly?

Art Stories is a research-based resource founded on the principle of serendipity. Layers of information are hidden in the images, and content can be entered from many different angles. Art Stories is intentionally in the plural and its stories are told by many – often opposing – voices within the art world. Lesser known artists and artworks are shown side by side with more familiar material in order to challenge the traditional notion of a canonized body of ‘highlights’. The idea is to present art history as a ‘rhizome’ – a non-hierarchical network of connections crossing traditional art historical categories – echoing the structure of www. We deliberately eschew a linear structure, hoping users will get lost in the content (in a positive, ‘serendipitic’ sense).

Users create their own tracks through the web of interrelated artists and artworks, and these tracks can inspire other users to find their way through Art Stories. Instead of perceiving SMK’s collections as a ‘walled garden’, the resource is based on syndication and links from SMK to related artworks and content in museums and institutions all over the world.

Art Stories targets adult users with an initial interest in art. User surveys show that they demand more online content that deepens visits to SMK, as well as offering digital art experiences in their own right. During the development of Art Stories we have conducted 5 different user-tests of concept and prototype. Taking into account recent development within the field of art history, it was key for us to create a rhizomatic interface. But several times we faced the dilemma: Users explicitly advised us to adjust the interface to their common expectations and habits. At the same time, we felt strongly about carrying out our original vision. Consequently, we needed to explore how we could make ‘navigating the rhizome’ user-friendly.

Did we achieve this? Only time can tell. Art Stories version 1.0 launches in November 2010, containing more than 700 individual artworks and 500 written pages. Post-launch more content will be added to the ever-expanding stories. Our paper will draw on results from pre-launch tests and focus on the process of developing the concept and design in dialogue with users – but also sometimes against their immediate wishes and expectations. At the time of MW2011, we have been online for 5 months and will present results from new user-tests and surveys that reflect the actual reception and use of Art Stories.

Type:

Paper - in formal session

Collections Online

Authors:

annette hvidt

Merete Sanderhoff