Text-mining metadata: What can titles tell us of the history of modern and contemporary art?
The use of statistical text-mining to investigate the linguistic structure of textual resources has received limited attention in digital art history. In this paper the question I address is that of what text-mining titles as given in metadata can tell us about the history of modern and contemporary...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at McGill University
2023-06-01
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| Series: | Journal of Cultural Analytics |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.22148/001c.74602 |
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| author | Mike Bowman |
| author_facet | Mike Bowman |
| author_sort | Mike Bowman |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The use of statistical text-mining to investigate the linguistic structure of textual resources has received limited attention in digital art history. In this paper the question I address is that of what text-mining titles as given in metadata can tell us about the history of modern and contemporary art. To investigate this question I constructed a dataset from the metadata for over 170,000 artworks, drawing on the online collections of 133 art museums in 30 countries. The use of topic modelling, parts-of-speech tagging and word counting allows me to identify large-scale and long-run patterns in the language used in the titles of those artworks. I set out an art historical reading of those patterns in which artistic interests signalled by the language used in titles come and go and are re-inflected, epistemic perspectives on the kinds of knowledge art can or should engender change, and artists engage with the ways that the title functions. My ‘distant’ reading is consistent with the canonical history of modern and contemporary art and cuts across the particularities of artist, period or movement which often feature in such accounts, providing a fresh perspective on that history. It also complements and extends the scholarship on the history of titles in the visual arts. The analytical framework and the dataset I have developed are not limited to answering the question addressed in this paper, and I consider some of the possibilities for future work. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-4a8395dcb6da42bfb670b080d73fce89 |
| institution | DOAJ |
| issn | 2371-4549 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2023-06-01 |
| publisher | Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at McGill University |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Journal of Cultural Analytics |
| spelling | doaj-art-4a8395dcb6da42bfb670b080d73fce892025-08-20T03:21:23ZengDepartment of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at McGill UniversityJournal of Cultural Analytics2371-45492023-06-018110.22148/001c.74602Text-mining metadata: What can titles tell us of the history of modern and contemporary art?Mike BowmanThe use of statistical text-mining to investigate the linguistic structure of textual resources has received limited attention in digital art history. In this paper the question I address is that of what text-mining titles as given in metadata can tell us about the history of modern and contemporary art. To investigate this question I constructed a dataset from the metadata for over 170,000 artworks, drawing on the online collections of 133 art museums in 30 countries. The use of topic modelling, parts-of-speech tagging and word counting allows me to identify large-scale and long-run patterns in the language used in the titles of those artworks. I set out an art historical reading of those patterns in which artistic interests signalled by the language used in titles come and go and are re-inflected, epistemic perspectives on the kinds of knowledge art can or should engender change, and artists engage with the ways that the title functions. My ‘distant’ reading is consistent with the canonical history of modern and contemporary art and cuts across the particularities of artist, period or movement which often feature in such accounts, providing a fresh perspective on that history. It also complements and extends the scholarship on the history of titles in the visual arts. The analytical framework and the dataset I have developed are not limited to answering the question addressed in this paper, and I consider some of the possibilities for future work.https://doi.org/10.22148/001c.74602 |
| spellingShingle | Mike Bowman Text-mining metadata: What can titles tell us of the history of modern and contemporary art? Journal of Cultural Analytics |
| title | Text-mining metadata: What can titles tell us of the history of modern and contemporary art? |
| title_full | Text-mining metadata: What can titles tell us of the history of modern and contemporary art? |
| title_fullStr | Text-mining metadata: What can titles tell us of the history of modern and contemporary art? |
| title_full_unstemmed | Text-mining metadata: What can titles tell us of the history of modern and contemporary art? |
| title_short | Text-mining metadata: What can titles tell us of the history of modern and contemporary art? |
| title_sort | text mining metadata what can titles tell us of the history of modern and contemporary art |
| url | https://doi.org/10.22148/001c.74602 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT mikebowman textminingmetadatawhatcantitlestellusofthehistoryofmodernandcontemporaryart |