Sustaining a Global Community: Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings

1. Sustaining a Global Community: Art and
Religion in the Network of Baroque
Hispanic-American Paintings
Juan Luis Suárez, Fernando Sancho, Javier de la Rosa
jsuarez@uwo.ca, fsancho@us.es, jdelaros@uwo.ca

2. Introduction (1)
• Paper at Arts, Humanities, and Complex Networks — 2nd
Leonardo satellite symposium at NetSci2011.
– Multi-disciplinary collaboration.
– Multi-scale analysis.
– Hispanic Monarchy from the 16th through the 18th
centuries.
– Thousands artworks & their descriptions.
2 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
2 | Suárez, JL; only

3. Introduction (2)
• Origin:
– Filemaker and MySQL databases.
– Web based: http://baroqueart.cultureplex.ca.
3 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
3 | Suárez, JL; only

4. Introduction (3)
• Storing semantic information.
– Text fields.
– Ad-hoc descriptors.
– Formal ontology:
http://ontologies.cultureplex.ca.
4 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
4 | Suárez, JL; only

5. Methodology (1)
• Huge amount of data (aprox.):
– 100,000 total topics.
– 77,000 atomic descriptions.
– 11,000 artworks.
– 1,600 creators.
• We should have a network... But how?
5 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
5 | Suárez, JL; only

6. Methodology (2)
• Undertstanding the model (schema).
6 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
6 | Suárez, JL; only

7. Methodology (3)
• Undertstanding the objects (data).
7 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
7 | Suárez, JL; only

8. Methodology (4)
• And the relations among them.
• There's no only one possible graph:
– We chose the one created from descriptors and
artworks.
8 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
8 | Suárez, JL; only

9. Methodology (5)
• Step 1: Visualize artworks as nodes and take each pair of
them.
Artwork 2
Artwork 1
9 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
9 | Suárez, JL; only

10. Methodology (6)
• Step 2: Add descriptors as properties.
Descriptor 2
Descriptor 1 Descriptor 6
Descriptor 2 Descriptor 4 Artwork 2
Descriptor 3
Artwork 1 Descriptor 4
Descriptor 7
Descriptor 5
10 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
10 | Suárez, JL; only

11. Methodology (7)
• Step 3: Remove the distinct descriptors between each pair
of nodes.
Descriptor 2
Descriptor 2 Descriptor 4 Artwork 2
Artwork 1 Descriptor 4
11 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
11 | Suárez, JL; only

12. Methodology (8)
• Step 4: Create an edge between the nodes if there are
shared descriptors.
Descriptor 2
Descriptor 2 Descriptor 4 Artwork 2
Artwork 1 Descriptor 4
12 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
12 | Suárez, JL; only

13. Methodology (9)
• Step 5: Weigh the edge with the number of shared
descriptors.
Descriptor 2
Descriptor 2 Descriptor 4 Artwork 2
Artwork 1 Descriptor 4
Descriptor 2
2 Descriptor 4
13 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
13 | Suárez, JL; only

14. Methodology (10)
• Step 6: Remove the descriptors.
Artwork 2
Artwork 1
2
14 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
14 | Suárez, JL; only

15. Methodology (11)
• Limiations:
– Too many relational JOINs: PC's crashing!
– Close to billions of edges: Unmanageable.
• Solutions:
– Create edges if at least 6 shared descriptors.
– Split the entire dataset into 12 sections, each one
relative to 25 years: from 1550-1575 to 1825-1850.
– And...
15 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
15 | Suárez, JL; only

16. Methodology (12)
Visualizations
Visualizations
Visualizations
16 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
16 | Suárez, JL; only

17. Visualizations (1)
• Raw graphs.
– Layout algorithms: Philogeny3D, OpenOrd, Yigan Hu &
Force Atlas.
– Modularity classes analysis.
• Only those that represent at least 1% of the total nodes.
– Topological filtering.
• Degree range > 4.
– Partition and colouring.
17 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
17 | Suárez, JL; only

18. Visualizations (2)
• Raw graphs.
18 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
18 | Suárez, JL; only

19. Visualizations (3)
• Clustered graphs.
– From raw graphs.
– Clustering by modularity class.
– Dual circle layout.
• High degree nodes outside.
• Sorting by number of children.
19 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
19 | Suárez, JL; only

20. Visualizations (4)
• Clustered graphs.
20 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
20 | Suárez, JL; only

21. Visualizations (5)
• Semantic Maps.
– According to certain descriptors.
• Religious, Civil. Portrait, Saint, Virgin & Christ.
– Multidimensional scaling-like algorithm.
• Representation in a 2D space by similarity.
21 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
21 | Suárez, JL; only

22. Visualizations (6)
• Semantic Maps.
22 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
22 | Suárez, JL; only

23. Interpretation
• And now, what could we do with all this?
– Know what questions to ask.
– Interpret the data and the visualizations.
– Answer them!
• Support the solutions with statistics.
23 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
23 | Suárez, JL; only

24. Research questions
• Is it possible to create and sustain global communities
through a shared network of images and symbols?
• In the case of the network of paintings we are considering,
what type of religion and what type of art contribute to
the very existence of the network?
• Is art a candidate for one of the institutions that help
sustain large-scale societies and large-scale
interactions?
24 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
24 | Suárez, JL; only

25. Conclusions
• The descriptor “civil” takes over the first position in our
network.
• The importance of the descriptors “virgins” and “saints”
over most of the time studied here.
• The role of the “portrait” descriptor is especially relevant as
a bridge between the religious and the civil paintings.
25 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
25 | Suárez, JL; only

26. Further Work
• Improve the geo-locations of sources of paintings.
• Compare modularity classes to places.
• Reveal transfers of topics and culture across the space and
time.
26 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
26 | Suárez, JL; only

27. Thanks
Questions?
27 | Internal use Sancho, F; de la Rosa, J | Art and Religion in the Network of Baroque Hispanic-American Paintings
27 | Suárez, JL; only