Komplexe Netzwerke in den Kunstwissenschaften - Beispielanwendungen zur Etablierung eines Forschungszweiges

• Antragsteller: Dr. Maximilian Schich
• Fachliche Zuordnung: Ägyptische und Vorderasiatische Altertumswissenschaften ; Klassische, Provinzialrömische, Christliche und Islamische Archäologie ; Kunstgeschichte
• Förderung: Förderung von 2008 bis 2012
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 98915558

• Erstellungsjahr: 2012

Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse

During the DFG Research Fellowship we were able to bring evidence that the study of complexity in the arts and humanities creates vigorous insights using large datasets, combining the qualitative with the quantitative and the general with the special. In three innovative proofs of concept arts and humanities are combined with the disciplines of information visualization, computer science, and physics, while a successful community building effort adds a another aspect. The first proof of concept uses an information visualization approach to depict an entire art research database, the "Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance", in a single map, revealing a network of complex networks that spans objects, people, locations, time ranges, and events. Emerging structure becomes visible within the predefined data model, innovating database project evaluation and providing a starting point for follow up projects in a large variety of disciplines. The second proof of concept introduces a computer science processing pipeline to create and explore a new big picture of classical archaeology, based on 50 years of "Archäologische Bibliographie". Source data is processed to refine regular subject co-occurrence and to map densly overlapping subject communities. Meso level results include algorithmically calculated cheat cheets for students, stories such as the evolution of portraits, and textbook-style class definitions. Global level structure replaces the usual featureless hairball of naive network visualizations. The third proof of concept presents a physics theory that explains dynamics of ranking processes in complex systems. Initially inspired by observations in art research data, the collaborators identify stable systems such as the frequency of words in English books, diseases in Medicare, or marketcapitalization of companies, versus unstable systems such as Twitter hash tags, Wikipedia site visits, and scientific citations. A newly developed continuum theory not only predicts the stability of the ranking process, but shows that a noise-induced phase transition is at the heart of the observed differences in ranking regimes, connecting stable icons and canons with cacophanies of fashions and fads. The fourth aspect of the project is a community building effort that brings together a large variety of practitioners and approaches dealing with „Arts, Humanities, and Complex Networks“. Results of this effort are an ongoing symposium series at "NetSci – The International School and Conference on Network Science", an ongoing special section in "Leonardo Journal", as well as a growing Kindle eBook at MIT-Press. Ongoing follow-up projects include cooperations with the Getty Research Institute, the invesitgation of large scale person data, and a wider audience book publication.

Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)

• Visual Subject Co-Popularity Networks in Art Research. 5th European Conference on Complex Systems (online proceedings), Jerusalem, September 3, 2008
  Schich, Maximilian; Lehmann, Sune; Park, Juyong: Dissecting the Canon
  
• Arts, Humanities, and Complex Networks. Leonardo Journal 43:3, June 2010, pp. 212; 44:3, June 2011, pp. 239-267; 45:1, February 2012, pp. 77-89; 45:3, June 2012, pp. 275-286
  Schich, Maximilian; Meirelles, Isabel; Edmonds, Ernest
  
• Revealing Matrices. in: Beautiful Visualization. Looking at Data through the Eyes of Experts. ed. Julie Steele and Noah Iilinsky. Sebastopol, CA: O‘Reilly 2010 pp. 227-254
  Schich, Maximilian
  
• Exploring Co-Occurrence on a Meso and Global Level Using Network Analysis and Rule Mining. MLG‘11 Proceedings of the Ninth Workshop on Mining and Learning with Graphs. ACM KDD San Diego, CA, USA.
  Schich, Maximilian; Coscia, Michele
  
• Dynamics of Ranking Processes in Complex Systems. Physical Review Letters (2012)
  Blumm, Nicholas; Ghoshal, Gourab; Forró, Zalán; Schich, Maximilian; Bianconi, Ginestra; Bouchaud, Jean-Philippe & Barabási, Albert-László
  
• Netzwerke komplexer Netzwerke in der (Kunst)Wissenschaft. in: Die Dynamik sozialer und sprachlicher Netzwerke. ed. Job, Barbara; Mehler, Alexander & Sutter, Tilmann. Wiesbaden: Springer VS 2012
  Schich, Maximilian