AIDAinformazioni Anno 42 – N. 3-4 – luglio-dicembre 2024

AIDAinformazioni

RIVISTA SEMESTRALE DI SCIENZE DELL’INFORMAZIONE

NUMERO 34

ANNO 42

LUGLIODICEMBRE 2024

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Proprietario della rivista:

Università della Calabria

Direttore Scientico:

Roberto Guarasci, Università della Calabria

Direttore Responsabile:

Fabrizia Flavia Sernia

Comitato scientico:

Anna Rovella, Università della Calabria;

Maria Guercio, Sapienza Università di Roma;

Giovanni Adamo, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche †;

Claudio Gnoli, Università degli Studi di Pavia;

Ferruccio Diozzi, Centro Italiano Ricerche Aerospaziali;

Gino Roncaglia, Università della Tuscia;

Laurence Favier, Université Charles-de-Gaulle Lille 3;

Madjid Ihadjadene, Université Vincennes-Saint-Dénis Paris 8;

Maria Mirabelli, Università della Calabria;

Agustín Vivas Moreno, Universidad de Extremadura;

Douglas Tudhope, University of South Wales;

Christian Galinski, International Information Centre for Terminology;

Béatrice Daille, Université de Nantes;

Alexander Murzaku, College of Saint Elizabeth, USA;

Federico Valacchi, Università di Macerata.

Comitato di redazione:

Antonietta Folino, Università della Calabria;

Erika Pasceri, Università della Calabria;

Maria Taverniti, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche;

Maria Teresa Chiaravalloti, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche;

Assunta Caruso, Università della Calabria;

Claudia Lanza, Università della Calabria.

Segreteria di Redazione:

Valeria Rovella, Università della Calabria

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Fondata nel 1983 da Paolo Bisogno

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AIDAinformazioni

Anno 42

N. 3-4 – luglio-dicembre 2024

cacucci

editore

bari

  

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Via Nicolai, 39 – 70122 Bari – Tel. 080/5214220

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Ai sensi della legge sui diritti d’Autore e del codice civile è vietata la

riproduzione di questo libro o di parte di esso con qualsiasi mezzo,

elettronico, meccanico, per mezzo di fotocopie, microfilms, registra-

zioni o altro, senza il consenso dell’autore e dell’editore.

Sommario

Contributi

A A, Il nuovo regolamento eIDAS e alcune “quisquilie”

archivistiche 9

F B, M T, Exploration du réseau numérique

YouTube autour de la santé des militaires: quelles sont les thématiques des

discours, les sources d’informations et les acteurs de la communication? 29

E C, L F, Assisted morbidity coding: the

SISCO.web use case for identifying the main diagnosis in Hospital

Discharge Records 51

V F, A humanistic approach to datafication 79

R P, Testimonianze di un impegno culturale per

l’Università di Salerno. Le carte di Alfonso Menna 101

F S, A B, E G,

S M, CompL-it: a Computational Lexicon of Italian 119

Rubriche

C G, Non solo libri 151

Contributi

AIDAinformazioni

ISSN 1121–0095

ISBN 979-12-5965-456-4

DOI 10.57574/596545644

pag. 79-100 (luglio-dicembre 2024)

A humanistic approach to datafication

Two case studies: digital and digitized

Valeria Federici*

Abstract: The term datafication has the ability to embrace a series of aspects that span from

the field of computer science to social and cultural studies. While the process of datafication

(taking aspects of life and turning them into data) is surrounded by a lure of abstraction

and neutrality; similarly to other computational processes, datafication reflects cultural biases,

flaws, and implications that affect knowledge and knowledge production. This article explores

datafication as related to the semantic web, web ontologies, and other systems of classification

as both method and structure of art historical analysis. By analyzing two digital repositories

that run on MediaWiki, the goal of this investigation is to incentivize a model that, under the

umbrella of digital art history, unifies aspects pertaining to digital curatorship and digital pres-

ervation. The two case studies are: The History of Early American Landscape Design (HEALD)

and The Educational Encyclopedia of Digital Arts (EduEDA).

Keywords: Datafication, Semantic Web, Web Ontologies, Digital, Digitized.

1. Introduction

In her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff defines

datafication as «the application of software that allows computers and algo-

rithms to process and analyze [data]» (Zuboff 2019, 187-188). Datafication is

«a technological process that turns several aspects of the life of an individual, a

group, or a society into data. Data is then turned into information that acquires

new values, including economic value» (Treccani 2020, Emphasis added)

The term datafication thus has span from the field of computer science to

social and cultural studies (Zuboff 2019). This article explores datafication

in relation to the use of the semantic web, web ontologies, and other classi-

fication systems as both methods and structures of art historical analysis. In

* Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington,

D.C., USA. v-federici@nga.gov.

Also, the term Datafication appeared in the Italian newspaper “La Repubblica” as early

as 1986 (Translated by the author).

80 Valeria Federici

particular, it investigates two case studies: the HEALD, which is a project by

the Center of Advanced Study in the Visual Arts of the National Gallery of

Art in Washington, D.C.; and The Educational Encyclopedia of Digital Arts

(EduEDA), a collective effort with numerous media partners, supported by

both the Academy of Fine Arts of Carrara and of Florence, Italy. Since these

two projects are both built using MediaWiki, the open access software than

runs Wikipedia, they are analyzed in conversation with one another, in order

to investigate the potential and the limits of data-driven analysis as offered by

an open access platform. Specifically, the article delves into the implications

of using the semantic web and standardized vocabularies to apply meaning to

data, making it readable first by machines and then by humans.

In the first case study, I analyze how the latest upgrade to the digital re-

pository HEALD enhanced the use of semantic web to foster investigation

of the material available on its platform and to support its preservation. HE-

ALD can be considered as a repository of digitized items, i.e. physical objects

that underwent a process of digitization to be made available digitally. Since

developments in digital technology are rapidly evolving, the upgrade helped

address technological obsolescence as an endemic issue in digital formats and

frameworks. Such developments often bring changes and mandatory updates

that impact the way we can or cannot use a platform that originally seemed to

serve our digital goals well, and for the longest time. Despite our best inten-

tions, at an early stage of a digital project’s life, we might be already looking

for alternative digital formats, new databases, or an entirely new host in order

to give our project a new virtual life. On the one hand, a solution can be to

create a dataset that uses standardized parameters and ontologies in order for

content to remain available in the future, and/or to be safely migrated to a new

platform. On the other hand, standardization would carry over some implica-

tions as well as the question of how to preserve the work’s original context, i.e.

the digital environment in which the project, or the artwork, was first created.

Overall, this analysis offers a way to deal with these implications.

In the second case study, I explore EduEDA, The Educational Encyclopedia

of Digital Arts. Originally called WikiARTpedia – a project that received an

Honorary Mention at the Ars Electronica Festival of Linz, Austria in 2009 –

in 2012, WikiARTpedia became EduEDA, an encyclopedia of new media arts

and a research platform for networks dedicated to information technology

cultures. As expressed on the project website, the main goal of EduEDA is «to

create a national and international network of people and institutions in order

to collaboratively promote and disseminate digital arts» (EduEDA 2022). The

idea of an interconnected repository of new media art is certainly in line with

the vision of early Internet communities as expressed initially by the creator

of the World Wide Web Berners-Lee, since it fosters collaborations as well as

horizontal and collective forms of knowledge production. A vision then car-

A humanistic approach to datacation 81

ried out by the project Linked Open Data, which had been joined by several

cultural institutions and museums over the course of the years (Berners-Lee

2006). As illustrated by the initiator of EduEDA Tommaso Tozzi – who is an

artist and a pioneer of new media art – in order to maintain the collective

character of the project, it was necessary to adopt an open source software that

allows everyone to contribute. EduEDA does not contain artworks, but links

to websites that store the artworks, built by artists themselves or by institu-

tions. The platform also includes a link to the artwork’s profile page, which at

times features still images. EduEDA is here considered mainly for its crossed

research tool, as well as for being an example of early digital curatorship. It is

only partially a repository of digital items, or so-called digital-born objects.

As we will see over the course of this article, EduEDA hosts links to either

reproduced or duplicable items (Ippolito 2008, 118)

. This distinction is of

particular interest for digital curatorship.

Others have discussed digital curatorship at length, giving many possible

solutions to display and investigate digital work. Christiane Paul’s curatorial

approach for digital art is certainly still a beacon for this discipline (Paul 2008).

In addition, I consider Ippolito’s characterization of digital work in relation to

the possibility of reproducing or simulating obsolete technology. In general,

I endorse a case-by-case approach to the artefact, where a strategy for display

and conservation is developed, whenever possible, in collaboration with artists

and makers. When this is not possible, such as in the case of HEALD, it is still

necessary to clarify that the work has been digitized and to provide details of

the process. I will return to the issue of digital vs digitized later in this article,

and in the conclusions. Broadly speaking, since operating within the digital

realm implies similar challenges for artists, curators, digital humanists, and re-

searchers, this article attempts to offer a roadmap for the investigative fruition

of digital content.

This digital art historical study draws from a lineage of scholarship rooted

in media studies, which can provide an insightful analysis of the practices and

methodologies employed in the field of digital art history and, most impor-

tantly, their ramifications. Stemming from this approach, datafication is here

intended both as a structural aspect of information technology, as well as a

cultural one. By considering the epistemological umbrella under which data

acquires value, this approach invites a reflection on how data is collected and

made available in the field of the digital humanities and digital art history, and

advocates for an active role of the humanists in shaping digital methodological

practices. This translates into a non-hierarchical and dialogical relationship

between information technologies and the humanities, meaning that objects,

Ippolito writes: «We chose the term “reproduced” for any medium that loses quality

when copied, including analog, prints, photographs, film, audio, and video […] In contrast,

we reserved the word “duplicable” for media that can be cloned».

82 Valeria Federici

object production, and consumption through information technology, are

considered in material and historically contextualized terms. Drawing from

existing tools and experiences, the goal of the article is to find a path – through

a humanistic lens on datafication – to reconcile practices and methodologies

that regard digital and digitized artworks as distinct, even though they share

the same data-driven mediums and are influenced by the same lucrative tech-

nological solutionism (Morozov 2013). This approach is not conclusive; rather,

it attempts to demonstrate how theories rooted in media studies can enhance a

humanistic approach to digital tools and help explain the premises and outco-

mes of digital art history projects.

The field of media studies has eloquently illustrated how the digital re-

alm has been characterized by a series of catchy words and phrases that rarely

have clear meanings. Datafication, network, media, digital, and algorithms

are terms that have multiple connotations but remain elusive, often adopted

interchangeably. For instance, Wendy Chun (2011) noted as the term network

is used as a placeholder for interconnectivity, sociality, or simply the Internet.

Chun explains how through a series of linguistic metaphors all media become

more transparent. By becoming more transparent, they tend to blend with the

environment and to become invisible, and their significance becomes even

more occult. Transparency is here intended not only as the ability of media to

fit within our surroundings (for instance by being portable), but also as their

ambition to predict our actions or reactions, in order to be smoothly assimila-

ted into our life (Schäfer and van Es 2017). This alleged transparency allows

media to run without their process being fully explained or questioned. Rather,

the process is often regarded as magic or outside of human control (Morozov

2013), while the working of machines has been mythologized, and locating

agency within digital tools remains an open controversy (Bucher 2018, 52,

60). As I argued elsewhere, a similar process applies to data (Federici 2022).

As Artificial Intelligence moves into the realm of the Digital Humanities,

these aspects become more and more relevant. For instance, while speaking

about Artificial Intelligence, Jonnie Penn traced this metaphorical trend back

to 1976, when it was noted that «words […] served as “incantations” for a de-

sired result, rather than sober descriptions of a mechanism or function» (Penn

2021, 338). Data, network, and algorithms are often surrounded by a lure of

abstraction and neutrality. Abstraction is here intended as a process through

which it seems possible, or enticing, to conduct scientific analysis divested of

human subjectivity. Similarly, neutrality refers to the alleged ability of data

to represent evidence through indexicality – a direct connection between the

object represented and its record – as if there were no interpretation in the

process of displaying content and visualizing data. However, as shown in this

study and elsewhere, the opposite mechanism takes place when working with

data, and in particular with the semantic web. In fact, notwithstanding the

A humanistic approach to datacation 83

misleading narrative around information technology and its processes, the

mechanisms behind those afore-mentioned terms are achieved through com-

plex preparation, selection, and elaboration. In other words, they are highly

mediated. For instance, standardized vocabularies, or ontologies, which are

used to apply semantic meaning to data for the machine to read and interpret

a given information, are achieved through a linguistic selection that is, above

all, cultural, and entails compromise, and standardization. The same linguistic

selection can, at times, obliterate historical presence or exclude underrepre-

sented individuals or groups.

Standardization in computational process derives from the nineteenth

century pursue of mechanical objectivity (Daston and Gallison 1992; Porter

1995) and it requires the same scrutiny as any other operations in the digital

realm. Such scrutiny is possible through an understanding of how these pro-

cesses work. As it has been noted, in order to successfully combine quantita-

tive research within the humanities, digital art historians have been relying

on old models of art historical investigation (mostly revitalizing Panofsky’s

concept of iconography or Warburg’s approach to image association) that have

been surpassed by new theories in art history. These old methods are linked to

a determinist approach to computing and its use for quantitative analysis, that

precludes new paths of investigation (Näslund and Wasielewski 2021). In ad-

dition, such approach prevents a thorough analysis of how digital tools operate

or can operate. This reflection on the deterministic outcomes of standardiza-

tion should impinge the mythological aura that surrounds media in general,

and digital tools in particular. Dialogically, it should also help to question

methodologies in the humanities, in order to flag biases and assumptions.

Along with media theories and art historical methodologies, the premises

of this article are indebted to the many who have poignantly analyzed the ma-

nifold aspects and interconnections between the Digital and the Humanities,

the so-called digital turn (or computational turn), under a methodological and

ontological lens. Fundamental is certainly the distinction that Joanna Drucker

drew between data and capta (Drucker 2011), the former indicating the in-

formation given (potentially available), and the latter the information taken

(collected and elaborated in order to be made available). Drucker invites us to

consider data as something constructed, extrapolated, originated by choices,

compromises, and therefore prepared. Data cannot be considered as an abso-

lute value, and the term capta serves to clarify its actual forms and uses. Capta

is therefore the data that has been turned into information, it is the data we

work with.

The contributors to the volume Raw data is an oxymoron have exposed that

there is no data divested of meaning (Gitelman et al. 2013). A concept carried

on further by Taina Bucher’s analysis of the algorithm (which, as she argues,

should be rather considered in the plural form algorithms) as well as by Evgeny

84 Valeria Federici

Morozov’s observations on the afore-mentioned technological solutionism, or

the belief that computing has a solution to everything (Bucher 2018; Moro-

zov 2013). On a similar note, as observed by Sven Spieker, the «archive does

not record experience so much as its absence» (Spieker 2008, 3). Therefore,

as part of a critical approach to data, it is mandatory to consider not only

what data shows, but also what it does not show. A claim that has also been

made by Stephanie Porras when speaking about the network visualization of

archives (Porras 2017). Manovich’s approach to data as a medium, along with

his concept of Cultural Analytics, emphasizes the implications of computing

as a technology of culture (Manovich 2020) while Theodor Porter had previ-

ously defined quantification as a social technology and clarified that it emerged

much earlier than the digital turn took place, revealing a longstanding tradi-

tion of quantitative analysis that spans over three centuries (Porter 1995, 50).

It has been extensively observed how the computational turn in the human-

ities forced us to rethink how to utilize digital tools and methodologies by

attempting to incentivize interdisciplinarity and push for human intervention.

The edited volume Research Methods for the Digital Humanities has already

introduced a compelling scope to «expand the field [...] rather than establish

definitive boundaries» (Levenberg et al. 2018, 2).

Finally, the «decolonial turn

in data and technology» as highlighted by Nick Couldry and Ulises Ali Mejais

(2021), is another stepping stone for conducting research in the realm of the

digital and digital knowledge production. This leads us to reflect on and re-

think standardization as it is currently possible through datafication.

This article and its outcomes stand on the shoulders of those analyses and

approaches, with a particular focus on MediaWiki for its employment of the

semantic web and its characteristic of being an open access platform based on

the possibilities of sharing information, creating communities for scholarship,

and working collectively. I explore these aspects further in the sections that fol-

low. The two case studies under consideration serve to discuss, and eventually

to attempt to come to terms with aspects of the digital realm that pertain to

both digital-born (digital) and non-digital-born (digitized) artefacts, in order

to contribute critically to the making and usage of digital tools by embracing

complexity rather than standardization, by emphasizing processes, and by op-

erating openly within the limitations of the tools used. This investigation thus

suggests the possibility of intertwining digitized art history, digital art history,

digital curatorship, and digital preservation. While the first two concepts, bor-

rowed by Johanna Drucker, have been extensively analyzed, all these fields of

investigation remain separate from one another (Drucker 2013; Brown 2020).

As mentioned, this article ultimately ponders the benefits of a cross-pollina-

tion among them to potentially become one expanded field that draws from

the experiences and implications of working within the digital realm.

A humanistic approach to datacation 85

2. HEALD – History of American Landscape Design

The digital resource HEALD pertains to «the language of early American

landscape aesthetics and garden design in the colonial and national periods»

(HEALD 2021a)

. HEALD combines thousands of texts with more than 1700

images from collections across the United States. The goal of the project is

to «trace the development of landscape and garden terminology from British

colonial America to the mid-19th century». As mentioned, HEALD runs on

MediaWiki, an open access software based on JavaScript (and its derivatives).

HEALD main structural features (database, editor, interface) were upgraded

in order to adopt standardized semantic ontologies to ensure the usability,

interoperability, and longevity of data (HEALD 2021b)

. HEALD online con-

tent is organized into three main categories: keywords, places, and people. Con-

tent was enriched with metadata (by using Semantic MediaWiki or SMW) in

order to represent the complex relationships between these three categories,

while the MediaWiki software was customized through extensions. Extensions

are parts of the MediaWiki software, often coded or edited by computer scien-

tists and a community of software engineers that keeps MediaWiki up to date

and functional. For the most part, in line with MediaWiki open access policy,

extensions are shared openly and widely (MediaWiki 2024a)

In HEALD, a specific term (keyword) is described through its usage in

common texts (letter, inventory, surveys, diaries) or by citations in dictiona-

ries, treaties, and published material; as well as through its relationship to

visual sources, which are categorized into inscribed, associated, or attributed

The relationship between keywords and historic visual documents was first

established in the book on which the repository is based (O’Malley 2010),

while additional relationships were formulated following an analysis of the

specificity of the content in a digital environment. At the same time, similarly

to a dictionary or an encyclopedia, the repository includes descriptive pages

pertaining to keywords, places, and people. A descriptive page for a keyword

helps define how and when the term emerged and how it changed overtime.

A descriptive page of a place and/ or of a person, traces and contextualizes

their history. Descriptions have been written by multiple contributors over

This investigation stems from my experience working on HEALD in collaboration

with the Director of the project and former Associate Dean Therese O’Malley and the Digital

Research Officer Matthew J. Westerby. HEALD digital repository is based on the publication

by Therese O’Malley (2010).

A full description of this upgrade is available on the HEALD website.

According to one’s familiarity with MediaWiki, it might be necessary to consult with a

software developer in order to use, install, update an extension.

An inscribed image incorporates the word; An associated image is related to the term

less directly, by a contemporaneous description of the feature; attributed images, are those for

which there are no inscribed terms or associated texts.

86 Valeria Federici

time

. A person (under the category People) is featured for using a keyword

in writing or for their relevance to the overall topic of the project. A loca-

tion (under the category Places) is featured in reference to a person or to a

keyword (for instance, The National Monument). Keywords, Places, and People

are interconnected throughout the repository not only via descriptions, but

also via internal hyperlinks, an indexical way to establish connections among

items included in a MediaWiki page. This feature is native to the software

markup language (MediaWiki 2024b). Although the content in HEALD is

organized so to prioritize Keywords, the written texts intertwine and are in

conversation with images of paintings, drawings, architectural plans, ceramics,

photographs, and more.

Regarding the semantic values added to HEALD following the upgrade,

standard vocabularies (Getty AAT, TGN, ULAN

; Library of Congress (LOC)

Name Authority) were used, when applicable, to label people’s and locations’

name, dates, coordinates, etc. Other novel attributes interlace an image to a

person (through the value [has person]) or to a location (through the value [has

place]) or both. Inserting values within square brackets is also a native aspect

to the WikiMedia markup language. In order to record whether a keyword is

inscribed, associated, or attributed to an image, such detail was added as a se-

mantic value, which is exportable (see RDF

string below). Both standard and

customized semantics are applied with the MediaWiki extension Page Form

Last, cited publications are gathered in a dedicated Zotero library (Zotero

2021). When applicable, a Zotero ID appears in the image page so to allow a

direct link from a visual source to a publication

. The layering of attributes

makes the content accessible by multiple points: via its descriptive texts; via

the image collection; via the relationship between images and keywords, places,

or people; via its extended bibliography.

As mentioned, MediaWiki is set to interact with new software thanks to

a community of worldwide developers invested in the tenet of open access.

In line with this principle, and with a recent trend in museum openness, the

customized code used for HEALD is available on GitHub (GitHub 2021).

MediaWiki, as utilized by HEALD, integrates a clean interface with SQL, a

widely used database language. All these characteristics make HEALD a dig-

ital product easy to maintain, to implement, and to possibly migrate. The

semantic web is used to turn data into information and to preserve content

At the time of writing, there are approximately more than 220 content pages.

Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus, Thesaurus of Geographic Names, Union List

of Artist Names.

Resource Description Framework.

Page Forms has been developed by Wikiworks.

See “HEALD: Anonymous, Two Ornamental Ice Houses Above Ground, 1846”

(HEALD n.d.a).

A humanistic approach to datacation 87

since the descriptive metadata can be exported in RDF and retrieved. The use

of standardized vocabularies (AAT, TGN, ULAN, LOC) makes possible to

interlace the history of places and people as uniquely featured in HEALD with

potentially other datasets that use the same sets of attributes. Nonetheless, the

standardization posed a limit to the relationships expressed within the project,

in particular as it relates to keywords and images. This limit was overcome by

adding a string of property to be exportable as RDF:

<property:Keyword rdf:resource=”http://heald.nga.gov/mediawiki/in-

dex.php/Special:URIResolver/Icehouse”/>

<property:Keyword_relationship rdf:datatype=”http://www.

w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string”>Inscribed</property:Keyword_re-

lationship>

Even though the two strings are unique to HEALD, they exist within a

set of parameters (in this case, rdf:resource and rdf:datatype) that makes them

recognizable and reusable. In this case, in particular, the goal is to preserve

the relationship between the image and the keyword (inscribed) and to make

this information retrievable. To extend upon this example, a more articulated

section of the RDF export shows how information pertaining to the afore-

mentioned relationships, object details, as well as bibliographic references in-

tertwine:

<swivt:masterPage

rdf:resource=”http://heald.nga.gov/mediawiki/index.php/Special:URI-

Resolver/File-3A0999.jpg”/>

<swivt:wikiNamespace rdf:datatype=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XM-

LSchema#integer”>6</swivt:wikiNamespace>

<property:Keyword rdf:resource=”http://heald.nga.gov/mediawiki/in-

dex.php/Special:URIResolver/Picturesque”/>

<property:Keyword rdf:resource=”http://heald.nga.gov/mediawiki/in-

dex.php/Special:URIResolver/Icehouse”/>

<property:Keyword_relationship rdf:datatype=”http://www.

w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string”>Inscribed</property:Keyword_re-

lationship>

<property:Keyword_relationship rdf:datatype=”http://www.

w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string”>Associated</property:Keyword_

relationship>

File-3A0999.jpg is the object name; “Picturesque” is the term associated

with the architectural style depicted; “Icehouse” is the inscribed term con-

This string is taken from the RDF export of an image in the HEALD online reposi-

tory: File-3A0999.jpg.

88 Valeria Federici

tained in the historic publication. Then, a second part of the same extract

contains information about the publication:

<swivt:Subject

rdf:about=”http://heald.nga.gov/mediawiki/index.php/Special:URIRe-

solver/File-3A0999.jpg-23Publication”>

<property:Date rdf:datatype=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSche-

ma#gYearMonth”>1846-12</property:Date>

<property:Date-23aux rdf:datatype=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XM-

LSchema#double”>2395631.5</property:Date-23aux>

</swivt:Subject>

<owl:DatatypeProperty rdf:about=”http://heald.nga.gov/mediawiki/in-

dex.php/Special:URIResolver/Property-3AReference_ID”/>

The RDF above has been edited to reflect only the file name and the publi-

cation date (File-3A0999.jpg-23Publication), along with the publication ID

(Property-3AReference_ID), which refers to its record in Zotero.

One of the main concerns of implementing HEALD semantically, was to

avoid divesting HEALD content of its context, both digital (the current pla-

tform used) and historical (the elements described in the essays that explain

keywords, people, and places). It is clear that a process of reduction must occur

in order to create the strings of code necessary to capture the relationship

between these elements. Adding semantic values to textual descriptions im-

plied a reduction of the content to essential details, such as relationship, whi-

ch are expressed with the value Keyword_relationship. The semantic value has

been utilized as additional content to be read, analyzed, and considered in

conjunction with existing descriptions, and with the art historical research at

the core of the project. In other words, semantic values were taken and used

for what they could offer, i.e., retrievable and archivable data, and were elabo-

rated through the lens of the art historical research central to the project.

This way of recording content cannot be considered as a way of preserving

in its true sense, for it will not recreate the digital environment in which the

data was originally featured. However, it allows for both data and metadata

to be reloaded in a new digital environment, in order to be further utilized

for data visualizations or data analysis or else. By populating the semantic

data with additional information that speaks to the context within which the

history of American landscape design unfolds, users can export content for

further research or adopt or expand on the customized relational model for

their digital art history research projects. Along with data enrichment based on

the semantic web, the project will maintain fundamental aspects of HEALD’s

digital functionalities. The most relevant outcome pertaining to this analysis

is then to consider the semantics as additional values and not as a reduction of

content and context.

A humanistic approach to datacation 89

Based on this project, I continue to delve into aspects of digital obsolescen-

ce and digital curation by moving onto my second case study.

3. EduEDA, The Educational Encyclopedia of Digital Arts

In 2004, Tommaso Tozzi, a Florence-based net artist and activist, initiated

an online project called WikiARTpedia that received an Honorary Mention at

the Ars Electronica Festival of Linz, Austria in 2009 (Ars Electronica 2022). In

2012, WikiARTpedia became EduEDA, The Educational Encyclopedia of Digi-

tal Arts: an open research platform for networks about information technology

culture. The main goal of EduEDA, as expressed on its website, is «to create

a national and international network of people and institutions in order to

collectively promote and disseminate digital arts» (EduEDA 2022). EduEDA

is a collective effort with numerous media partners and supported by both the

Academy of Fine Art of Carrara and of Florence, among other institutions.

The platform is an incredibly vast repository of network art and art practices

that use information technology, and it includes instances of precursors to

such practices, such as conceptual art and Fluxus. EduEDA also includes ar-

tistic experiences and practices that remained marginalized in the overall art

historical narratives of digital art. Unfortunately, among these artistic experi-

ences, those pertaining to the Italian context, continue to be underrepresented

in the global histories of digital art

. The recently launched Net Art Anthology

by Rhizome at the New Museum has almost entirely bypassed the experience

of Italian Net Art, with the exception of Life Sharing (2000-2003) by Eva and

Franco Mattes, aka 01.ORG (Net Art Anthology 2017).

EduEDA, which like HEALD, runs on MediaWiki, only partially includes

image files and – for the most part – compiles links to artists’ or institutions’

websites. It resembles Wikipedia in the way it is organized, with a menu that

includes items such as artists, artworks, genres or artistic movements, cross search,

space, time, macro categories, and related descriptive pages. Equally to HEALD,

EduEDA is a collection of works that often reside in other locations, at times

preserved by different institutions, online or offline, and it features internal

hyperlinks. As mentioned, this is a core characteristic of MediaWiki markup

language, made possible by inserting the name of a page in the back-end editor

within double square brackets, as in the example that follows: [[name of the

page]] (MediaWiki 2024d).

In order to maintain the collective character of EduEDA, Tommaso Tozzi

adopted an open source software that allows everyone to contribute. However,

For instance, the BBS called The Thing, founded by Wolfgang Sthaele around the

same time than Tozzi made Hacker Art BBS is often cited as part of the history of Net Art

along with the netstrikes conducted by Ricardo Dominguez since 1998; while Hacker Art BBS

is absent from art historical accounts on the subject.

90 Valeria Federici

unlike HEALD, EduEDA does not use Semantic MediaWiki (SMW). Let’s

consider whether the project could benefit from semantic values and how. On

EduEDA, the works are listed in alphabetical order (which is a default setting

of MediaWiki that creates page lists by using a label called Category). As noted,

the platform does not use standard vocabularies, which means that it is not

currently possible to interlace, compare or contrast its content with similar

information available online, and it is not possible to export any of it via RDF

or to share it through Linked Open Data.

EduEDA features a crossed search section that allows users to find elements

in the repository that are intertwined. If one clicks on the crossed search tab,

they are taken to a page where it is possible to launch queries into a database in

which information is organized into categories: dates, locations, topics, pub-

lications, and so forth. This section of EduEDA has been implemented via

Prototype, whose last version was released in 2015 (Prototype 2015). This is

a significant tool within EduEDA, especially since search capabilities are often

problematic, given the complexity of data relationships and interconnections

among this kind of objects. The categories are ordered in a JSON file and are

retrievable. However, in order to be found, they require a less intuitive path

than an RDF export, as offered by SMW. Here below is an extract from a

JSON file pertaining to the crossed search within the category Net Art (EduE-

DA n.d.a):

if(cat == “arte_delle_reti”){

elementi = [“Arte digitale”, “Arte elettronica”, “Arte in rete”, “Arte telematica”, ”As-

cii art”, “Browser art”, “Software art”, “Web art”, “Conservazione dell’arte digitale”,

“Cracker art”, “Cyberfemminismo”, “Database art”, “Flood net”, “Form art”, “Game

art”, “Hacker art”];

Two important observations can be drawn from analyzing this portion of

the JSON file. First, this categorization shows that extensive manual labor

would be necessary to potentially retrieve this content for preservation pur-

poses or to utilize it on a different platform. Second, from a strictly digital art

historical standpoint, this categorization reveals the difficulty of classification.

It is compelling to see that, in order to strategically include as many cate-

gories as possible under the label of Net Art, a macro-label was created and

then subdivided into “elementi” (elements). Unfortunately, the crossed search

section of EduEDA does not seem to have been created for purposes other

than browsing its content online, and does not offer other insights into the

digital methodological approach to information visualization. This section of

EduEDA therefore allows for exploration of how its content interlaces, but it

does not currently enable exploration of those relationships computationally.

A series of changes could be applied to the current structure of EduEDA

or similar repositories. Whether or not these changes take place, they could

A humanistic approach to datacation 91

be helpful in suggesting a roadmap for digital repositories that can be used for

several inter-sectorial purposes within disciplines that share a common digital

ground of investigation. In addition, since MediaWiki is already set up for the

semantic web, it might be possible to upgrade EduEDA without necessarily

rebuilding it. I believe it is necessary for a current version of EduEDA to be

kept as an additional tile in the technological history of network culture. As

noted by Christiane Paul, «writing an history of new media and preserving the

art itself will require new models and criteria for documenting and preserv-

ing process and instability» (Paul 2008, 6). The scenario of new media art is

fragmented and these new models and criteria seem to be inevitably unstable,

transitory, and multifarious. In order to formulate a proposal to use the mate-

rial made available by Tozzi for research and exhibition purposes, I take into

consideration two factors: first, such a material can be divided into reproduced

and duplicable following the model laid out by Ippolito (2008). With regard

to the artistic practices similar to Tozzi’s, reproduced work consists of digitized

tapes of live performances, happenings, or events that were transferred to a

digital format. In contrast, duplicable work consists of those projects that were

born digital. Additionally, an element of the work is unreproducible, namely

the context in which these artistic experiences took place, specifically those

produced during the two decades prior to the 2000s.

That being said, the areas to edit or enhance would be the following:

1. Description of the work (adopting standard vocabularies);

2. Format of the available files;

3. Search feature and tagging (adding metadata; using Semantic Me-

diaWiki);

4. Usability of the content (RDF, CSV, XML exports).

A platform including more uniform descriptions, with details on file for-

mats, duration of the work, code structure, and enriched metadata, should

also enable the use of its content by exhibition makers. I will not go into de-

tails regarding points 1 to 3, which are rather self-explanatory. Rather, in order

to further investigate digital curatorship, I will focus on point 4: Usability of

the content.

This feature can be particularly useful for exhibition purposes. While put-

ting together a new media art exhibition, it should be possible to borrow ex-

tant projects from an online repository with proper acknowledgement of all

the stakeholders involved. Enhancing this feature could lead to the creation

of a shared new media art platform from which any institution could borrow

the work (by downloading it or by presenting it in a browser) for the duration

of an exhibition. Such a platform would then serve the much larger goal of

preserving, presenting, and researching new media art experiences as occurred

92 Valeria Federici

prior to the 2000s. The latter is historically illustrated in EduEDA by descrip-

tive pages whose content is not marked semantically.

This way, EduEDA will have more than just links to existing resources, as

it will include the work, or a simulation of it, in whichever available format. It

will still serve as the aggregator it is now – extensive and complex – and it will

build on its already well-established practice of working collaboratively with

multiple institutions. Another difference between this platform and existing

ones will be the inclusion of the neglected history of Italian new media art.

To serve this purpose, the platform should, however, be available in multiple

languages (EduEDA n.d.b)

Similarly to HEALD, the repository could have a point of entry to its con-

tent through image files rather than exclusively via text. HEALD image col-

lection allows users to start exploring its vast content by directly clicking on

one of the images contained in the collection (HEALD n.d.b). Images reveal

their relationship to other elements of the projects through icons, and through

a system of filters that guides user’s exploration. Last, I contend that what was

once considered the disturbing office-like aspect of early new media art exhi-

bitions, will no longer concern exhibition makers nor viewers (Federici 2019).

It is plausible to consider that, for the most part, viewers are now familiar with

information technology, and will be more inclined to explore simulations of

early new media artwork. The technological and temporal distance betwe-

en current devices and those employed prior to the 2000s may facilitate an

exploration of the latter in a gallery or museum setting due to the visual cues

that would allow the viewer to see the old devices as ancestors of more recent

apparatuses.

By combining knowledge, methods, and tools already available across dis-

ciplines and projects that deal with the digital realm, the investigation of dig-

ital objects can be further enhanced. All these disciplines already share the

same computational and datafied language. The purpose of this exploration is

to find a common ground from which they can all benefit. I will summarize a

possible common path able to serve projects as diverse as HEALD and EduE-

DA in the conclusions.

4. Conclusions

This article focused on the open access software MediaWiki, utilized by

both HEALD and EduEDA, which «is used by tens of thousands of websi-

tes and thousands of companies and organizations. [MediaWiki is] power-

ful, multilingual, free and open, extensible, customizable, reliable, and free of

charge» (MediaWiki 2023a). Nonetheless, it is not intuitive and arguably it is

At the time of writing, only 99 items in EduEDA have been translated into English.

A humanistic approach to datacation 93

not user friendly. However, the general consensus is that MediaWiki is a good

software insofar as it is free and open, well maintained, and widely used. It is

designed to allow users to edit, update, and delete content

. All textual con-

tent of MediaWiki.org is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/

Share-Alike License (CC BY-SA) and the GNU Free Documentation License

(GFDL) – software can be copied and modified – except for pages that expli-

citly state that their contents are in the public domain (MediaWiki 2023b).

A Creative Commons license entails that the software can be shared – copied

and redistributed in any medium or format – and adapted – remixed, transfor-

med, and built upon (Creative Commons n.d.).

Although it was never conceived as a digital art history tool, MediaWiki

embeds significant components and possibilities that can serve the discipline

well. One of these components is Semantic MediaWiki; while its extensions

can make the software quite versatile since their development is ongoing and

responds to an ever-changing digital environment. One example is the latest

implementation of an extension that works with IIIF (International Image

Interoperability Framework), a tool widely used in image-based research (Me-

diaWiki 2024c). The combined analysis of projects as diverse as HEALD and

EduEDA demonstrates how adaptable MediaWiki can be and how it can sup-

port a digital art historical investigation, since it allows for the handling of

complex object relationships between textual and visual content.

MediaWiki records a project’s development by retaining the history of how

and when each page of a digital repository is edited. This functionality can be

significantly helpful. Process history is generally accepted, or even in demand,

in database-driven tools for digital asset management (particularly in museu-

ms, in order to avoid losing an object’s provenance or exhibition history, for

instance). Nonetheless, it is often overlooked in the field of digital humanities

and digital art history, whose tools tend to replicate the transparency (obli-

teration) model mentioned in the introduction. This is particularly true in

case of data visualizations, which are highly mediated. Along with clarifying

the process through which a digital project is conceptualized, and eventually

displayed, the history of process itself is a rather critical aspect to consider. For

instance, it helps to track users’ interventions, in particular when a large team

is working on the same project over an extended period of time. In addition,

it testifies to the various steps, successes, and pitfalls that might characterize

the creation of large repositories, and perhaps it may lead to a specific change

of direction or compromise.

The overall goal is not to present MediaWiki as a panacea for the many

aspects discussed throughout this article that pertain to the larger field of digi-

tal art history and are highlighted in the cited literature, but rather to contem-

This functionality can be turned off, and in general users’ accessibility and editing

capabilities can be diversified.

94 Valeria Federici

plate the complexity of MediaWiki as an advantage. Given the structure and

potential of the software, one wonders whether it can be used to combine tho-

se aspects. Complexity and contextualization are necessary to unravel research

in the humanities. Along with standard ontologies, MediaWiki allows for the

use of additional unscripted semantic categories. As a result, the digital reposi-

tories analyzed here are an example of how to integrate elements of computing

with the multifarious landscape of research in the humanities – not necessarily

innovatively, but coordinately.

Another goal of this investigation has been to reflect on how data is turned

into information by looking at the interstices of this transformation rather

than taking it for granted. Accordingly, I explored possible ways to intervene

on how digital content is made and displayed. As a critical reflection on the

term datafication and the implications of using the semantic web and web

ontologies in digital art history, this article investigated the affordance given to

data, in general, and its impact on the humanities, in particular. In addition,

it touched upon aspects of digital curatorship and preservation, encouraging

an active use of existing digital tools and practices with the intent to shape the

digital realm through humanistic methodologies and approaches, rather than

yielding to computing unconditionally. The turning of data into information,

which is one of the main conundrums for humanists dealing with computa-

tional methods, can be done by shifting attention to the process, by highli-

ghting and discussing the choices made, and most importantly, by engaging

with the complexity of both computing and humanistic research. This appro-

ach, which is not novel, is not dismissive of quantitative research, but it does

not prioritize it. Rather, it considers its potential – such as the exportability of

data – without denying its limits.

By analyzing the recent upgrade to HEALD (HEALD 2021b), I highli-

ghted that web vocabularies are only one way to express meaning and do not

necessarily entail one way of interpreting it. Although the semantic web now

allows for HEALD’s online content to be retrieved, exported, migrated, and

further analyzed, it will not prevent the loss of the original digital environment

in which the project took form. This aspect speaks to digital preservation as

well as to digital curatorship. The latter, in particular, is another element that

tends to go unnoticed, even though digital projects are always delivered via a

web-based interface or a website available to the public, and they are often de-

veloped with an ideal user and/or a specific mode of navigation in mind. The

fact that users browse platforms differently and have varying needs in terms of

inclusivity and accessibility – which is a fundamental aspect that interests di-

gital curatorship greatly – is not always considered in database-driven tools. As

highlighted in the discussion on the HEALD upgrade and further suggested

by the investigation of EduEDA, allowing users to enter or explore content

A humanistic approach to datacation 95

from multiple points of access can unleash research potential, enhance content

exploration, and improve navigation experience.

It should also be noted that, for the most part, the case studies presented

here pertain to archives of reproductions. That means that much of the work

on display underwent a process of digitization. While all image files in HE-

ALD pertained to digitized objects, the work featured in EduEDA is either

digital or digitized. In the case of EduEDA, digitization was used as needed in

order to align the work under the same computational language. This inclu-

des, for instance, early performance work, and other artistic interventions that

were recorded on tape and then digitized, as well as works that used to run on

or were made with software that is no longer available. These works can re-live

as a simulation by using a software that acts like the old version of the one ori-

ginally used. Other have explored this path. For instance, the project ArtBase

by Rhizome offers emulations of “expired” software to reproduce an artwork

on a current framework (Rhizome 2021)

. The question yet to be answered

is not whether good tools for digital art history exist, rather whether we can

create models, structures, and roadmaps to avoid redundancy while embracing

interdisciplinary methods.

Therefore, I have juxtaposed aspects of seemingly distinct disciplines – na-

mely digital art history, digitized art history, digital curatorship, and digital

preservation – in order to glean insights that these fields can share as we na-

vigate the digital realm. HEALD and EduEDA shed light on, and eventually

helped to come to terms with, relevant aspects of the digital that pertain to

both digital-born and non-digital-born artefacts, namely the difference betwe-

en reproduced and duplicable items. This difference can be stretched further to

be considered close to the distinction that Drucker (2013) draws between di-

gitized art history and digital art history. Perhaps this distinction is more use-

ful at a granular level of object analysis rather than at macro disciplinary level.

Since the digital realm and tools allow for information to be reproduced,

duplicated, and replicated, we are no longer dealing with unique artefacts or

objects, but items that are ubiquitous and whose originality as a concept and

methodological approach has run into the sand. This is not to say that a cle-

ar distinction should not exist. The information pertaining to the origin of

content is still precious and should be included within the metadata as well as

indicated by labels. At the same time, specific scholarly competencies within

the different fields should be regarded. However, once the object enters the

digital sphere, it becomes ubiquitous, reproducible, and transferable, and our

approach to it should embrace these inherent aspects. For this reason, and be-

cause of the ways in which the digital realm has changed the work that huma-

nists do and how it is done, aspects of digital curatorship, digital conservation,

Rhizome has recently relaunched their project ArtBase in an attempt to continue

preserving digital born artefacts.

96 Valeria Federici

and digitized art history could exist under the umbrella of digital art history,

adopting those distinctions as they pertain to the object at a micro level. These

disciplines all operate on and with overlapping methodologies, and could all

benefit from a crosspollination rather than compartmentalization.

Finally, by highlighting HEALD upgrade and suggesting similar interven-

tions for EduEDA, I hope to have demonstrated how to practically move step

by step toward an extended and extensive, yet obviously not comprehensive

digital art history, characterized by datafication. The first step of this analysis

illustrated the use of freely available software (MediaWiki), particularly for

its ability to record process-oriented projects. Second, I showed how the rela-

tionships characterizing the material (reproduced or duplicable) have been con-

ceptualized, defined, and described (semantic web). By doing so, I observed

how information has been reduced to fit the process of datafication; Third, I

considered how to best represent these relationships for preservation purposes

(RDF export). Fourth, I addressed user interaction and project accessibility

(points of access); Fifth, I also considered the opportunity to share data via

existing open data initiatives (Linked Open Data; GitHub). Last, I discussed

the possibility of customizing the software to adapt its functionality to the

content under investigation (extensions). This path can offer different layers

of content fruition and different layers of object analysis. It can help maintain

a clear focus on how to approach the digital to serve different objectives and

incentivize the creation of additional shared models (similarly to the shared

vocabularies) for others to adopt.

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ISBN 979-12-5965-456-4 ISSN 1121-0095

AIDAinformazioni Anno 42 – N. 3-4 – luglio-dicembre 2024

AIDAinformazioni

Rivista semestrale di Scienze dell’Informazione

Anno 42

N. 3-4 – luglio-dicembre 2024

Contributi

A A

Il nuovo regolamento eIDAS e alcune “quisquilie”

archivistiche

F B, M T

Exploration du réseau numérique YouTube

autour de la santé des militaires: quelles sont les

thématiques des discours, les sources d’informations

et les acteurs de la communication?

E C, L F

Assisted morbidity coding: the SISCO.web

use case for identifying the main diagnosis in

Hospital Discharge Records

V F

A humanistic approach to datafication

R P

Testimonianze di un impegno culturale per

l’Università di Salerno. Le carte di Alfonso

Menna

F S, A B,

E G, S M

CompL-it: a Computational Lexicon of Italian

Rubriche

C G

Non solo libri

In copertina

Disegno di Paul Otlet, Collections Mundaneum, centre d’Archives, Mons (Belgique).