Object and Identity in a Digital Age
CHArt 25th ANNUAL CONFERENCE
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Object and Identity in a Digital Age
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Annette Ward, University of Dundee; Annsley Merelle Ward, Gallant Macmillan LLP; James Stevenson, Victoria and Albert Museum; Stephen McKenna, Ian Ricketts, University of Dundee
Art and Orphan Works: Ownership and Discovery
The shift from a material world to one that is becoming increasingly digital brings a new set of rules for the consumption and display of objects. As objects are digitized for mass consumption, their identity is examined as well as their relationship to other objects in a collection. Processing material objects into digital ones raises questions of ownership, especially for orphan works (i.e., works where the artist, author, or owner of copyright works is unknown).
Digitization requires photographing an object in a collection, usually a copyright work such as a painting, sculpture, and/or drawing. This act of photography and inclusion of a work on the Internet infringes an artist's or author’s exclusive economic and moral rights (i.e., namely the right of being attributed as the creator of the work) if their consent has not been legally granted. Consequently, tracing these authors and owners is vital. Where authors and owners are not found and without overcoming the issue of orphan works problems, these works are often relegated to a database with limited access; one that the public never sees. As a result, important cultural and curatorial information is denied to the public, subsequent creators, and thus fades into obscurity.
Innovative content-based image browsing (CBIB) developed through FABRIC (a Technology Strategy Board project with funding sponsored by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills) provides an efficient solution to sift through thousands of images to find visually-similar images and provide clues to the parentage of orphan works. CBIB displays images according to the physical attributes of an image such as colour and texture. This paper will discuss the implications of orphan works in a digital collection and demonstrate a novel browsing system for visually linking images when metadata is limited or non-existent. Application of technology to help in identifying ownership and relationships is discussed.
Annette Ward, Scottish Power Research Fellow and Development Manager, has evaluated retrieval software at London Guildhall Library and Art Gallery, The British Library, and BBC. She has over 25 years as an academic in textiles, clothing, and design in US and India.
Annsley Merelle Ward is a lawyer at the London intellectual property and media litigation firm, Gallant Macmillan LLP, specializing in intellectual property with specialized emphasis in multi-jurisdictional intellectual property issues in the cultural heritage and fashion sectors.
James Stevenson, Manager of the Photographic Studio, Victoria and Albert Museum, leads a team of 15 photographers that produce images for its collection management, publication, and promotion programmes, including 2-D images and a range of multimedia formats for virtual access.
Stephen McKenna, School of Computing, University of Dundee, has research interests in computer vision and pattern recognition within domains such as intelligent human-computer interaction, content-based image browsing, medicine, and biology.
Ian Ricketts, School of Computing, University of Dundee, holds a personal chair in Assistive Systems and Healthcare Computing, has worked at Reuters and NCR, and was a founding member of School of Computing.