The project I chose to learn more about is Inventing Abstraction, 1920-1925 Exhibition put up by the Museum of Modern Art.
What (or who) are the nodes and what are the edges?
The nodes represent the artists in the Inventing Abstraction, 1920-1925 exhibition. The edges connect the artists who were documented to have been acquainted with one another during these years.
How are the relationships characterized and categorized?
The relationships are color-coded, where the nodes labeled in orange represent artists who had over 24 connections within the documented network, and the nodes labeled in black represent artists who had less than 24 connections.
What interactions does the project allow? How does this impact their effectiveness and/or your engagement?
On clicking on an individual artist node, a smaller network is revealed with the artist at the center and edges that lead to all the other artists they were acquainted with. The smart animations, the ability to break up the big network into smaller networks, and attention to detail make the project very accessible and fun/easy to navigate. It manages to capture a lot of information about the artists in its interactive presentation and data visualization. The focused scope of the project in terms of the period (1920-1925) also makes the information a lot more manageable and easy to understand.
Does the project combine network analysis with any other information or technique, like spatial analysis or text mining?
The project combines network analysis with a digital exhibit of metadata on each artist and their artwork in the museum’s inventory. In addition to smaller networks, clicking on individual nodes also provides more information about the lifetime of the individual artist, their birthplace, the places they worked, their interests, and the artist’s works MoMA has in its inventory. You can also click on the artwork to be taken to a new tab that displays the work along with its metadata (name, year, caption, and description).
If you click on some of the artists labeled in orange, you also get additional information on how their work was influential in changing the landscape of art and developing a new modern language for the arts.
