Back to τεχνή (techné): Negotiating captions and representing Art in museums digitalized catalogues.

Alessandro MongiliUniversità di Càgliari, Italy

4 - S EASST Confe re nce

Acting with Science, Technology and Medicine20-23 , 2008, , August Ro t t e rdam NL

29 , 2008May th

My last books

The case study• An articulation process for an integrated system of

softwares (XM): two testbeds in Tuscany and Wales.

• Standardizing small museums collections

• Aiming to shape an infrastructure working for a seamless interchange of images and information

• Hybridizing museums’ Collection management tools with multimedia and authoring solutions

Actors, EU Projects, chains• The XM Articulation process was funded by an

EU Project (“Regord”). Partners: Software houses from Italy and UK, Local Bodies, Marketing unit (NL), Knowledge management unit (E)...

• In previous collaborations they designed the XM integrated system, imagining applications in Museums, as well as in Libraries, Archives and Theaters.

Dramatis personae• Software Houses executives and managers; EU Project manager;

Software engineers; the XM integrated system; Software developers; the XM Collection Management System; Graphic designers;

• Content people; Heterostandard experts; the ICCD standard; the Rhetoric of Art representation in Italian museums

• Bureaucrats from Test-beds Local Bodies; Bureaucrats from Soprintendenze system; Academic entitled experts (Historian of Art, Anthropologists, Historians... “Professors”); Non-academic entitled experts (Curators, Museums staff).

Metamorphosis of the Other’s one into own’s one

• Translating datasets, introducing discretized images in catalogues.

• Merging and expanding databases fields and naming original structure.

• New standards and new classifications enable the discretization of art works comprised in museums into a new form of collection.

The Alpha system

Standards and narratives• The articulation process (2002-2005) found two

main salient reverses: in XM databases standard sets (XM Collection Management System) and in narratives for captions (XM Narrative Module).

• Increasing the importance of images and their discrete form VS existing forms of filing (cards) and of discoursive representation (texts).

Representing art in a “scientific” way

• XM standards (Xsims), previews exchange of XML metadata, in particular, standards for image acquisition density, resolution, color depth, chromatic certification, color space...

• Existing Italian (mandatory) ICCD (Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione) standard: image is not a substantive part of the cataloguing card (dimensions, attributions...)

An ICCD card

the XM Project and its enemies• Designers (software engineers, executives)

previewed an ICCD module (including their “oddities”) into XM architecture.

• From a digital derivation of extant catalogs to a new form of cataloguing centered on image

• Soprintendenze people defend ICCD standard from a technical and a moral point of view (interoperable/assuring scientificity)

Arrangements• Because of the mandatory (from 1983)

status of the ICCD standard in Italy, Software delevopers had to design another device in order to export data from XM to ICCD.

• Mutual fields mapping and enrolling experts of ICCD standard into the original “chain”.

Results/I• A new representation of Art produces a new

discretization, adding images formats and resolutions to measures and attributions.

• The new discretization performs a new “reality”, where the image of the Art pieces is treated equally to the art pieces itself.

• Circulation of images through hi-definition digitalization and centralized management by a TSC, a pivot in images brokering

Results/II• Changes in the XM database fields and in

their naming: absorption of ICCD fields and taxonomy into XM architecture.

• Improving ICCD-type catalogs in Museums to file images.

• Moving data and increasing professional role of software developers, standards experts, law experts.

Talking about Art in a “scientific” way

• XM Narrative Module previews different types of linkable Narrative Units about Art pieces (Hierarchical, Associate, User-created).

• These texts are introduced in XM database as the salt of the new cataloguing way, considered more communicative than the old feature.

• Entitled experts don’t accept that their captions (didascalie) texts are for entertainment purposes.

Industrialization• The Storyboard is a tree-structure to plan a

multimedia product, divided in sections/subsections, in order to preview the general architecture of an MM product and the single screen-shot layout, sorting everything out (images, texts, titles, captions).

• For Graphic designers and Software developers everything different from Storyboard is an exception and a scocciatura (bother)

“Didascalization” vs Theatralization: who must describe Art Works?

• Texts from entitled experts are edited, reduced and simplified by Content people and inserted in some rolls-on or captions.

• Entitled experts try to impose formats, styles, narratives and their visible place

• Texts as formless mass for computing people

Difficult negotiations• A trading zone between Computing people, Content people

and Entitled experts is hard to achieve.

• Status gap and some difficulties to plug-in the new information infrastructure and representations to existing ones.

• The product is full of exceptions and Graphic designers and Content people are embarrassed (figuraccia) with their colleagues (usability matters, industrialization at risk).

• Marginalizing texts touches expertise of the “Professors”.

Results• Eventually, texts become a less incumbent element and

actors cooperate in authoring.

• A product full of exception became an opportunity for computing people as well

• Representation of Art became more theatralized keeping “didascalic” (caption-like, bookish) elements

• Science is safe but MM product is a battlefield.

Articulation is crucial

• Articulations of different modules of the same system (with same actors) drive to different results, changing original XM design

• Status gap matters

• Texts and standards work differently in order to link a convergence

Representation(s) of Art

• ICCD/XM interoperability implies two concurrents forms of discretization of Art (measures vs image standards), and their fusion.

• Narrative discussion implies two styles (evocative vs “didascalic”), two moral references (science/knowledge vs communication/entertainment)

• Linking devices seems to be easier than linking Professors with Computing people

Convergence and arrangements

• Participation to a network (strengthened by an EU Project frame) gives opportunities for improving a convergence among actors.

• Convergence encourages people to find arrangements, and founded arrangements strengthen convergences in an iterative way

• Convergence ensures persistence of a chain more than sudden success

New skills, new identities

• Convergence produces a heterogeneous cultural repertoire, where didascalization and theatralization are mixed up.

• Using different classifications simultaneously generates a blurred form of discretization.

• A texture of continuous interchange of ideas, formats, data, texts, words, priorities, new relationships, friendships and mutual confidence is the main social product.

• Professional borders are blurred and the role of mediators such as Graphic designers, Software developers, Content people and Heterostandard experts notably increased.