Early Adopter Blog

Welcome. This blog will be used, in part, to explore one of Early-Adopter’s areas of interest: a system of classification for the fine art world. This type of system could augment the way people access information about artists, works of art, and galleries. The primary goals of this blog over the next few months are to research past attempts to create this type of system, to discuss the current state of art information, to examine existing systems of categorization and archiving of other media, and to discuss ideal data models for this system.

Early-Adopter is proposing is a unified, international protocol that would provide a system of identification for artists, works of art, and galleries. The system could be used by artist, academics, curators, and collectors to track records relevant to every piece of art, artist, and gallery identified by the system. The system would need to be standardized and used by a majority of practitioners in the field in order to be successful. Early-Adopter believes that there is a need for this type of a system and that it will be instrumental in the future of art information.

To date, the fine arts have been cautious with the Internet. Sites like www.artnet.com, www.artinfo.com, and www.artfacts.net have only recently been able to make any headway in this area. These sites have unique characteristics but are largely offering the same services. As a result, no single site has been able to corner the market of online art information. This blog will look at the successes and shortcomings of these and other art information sites.

It is worthwhile for us to have a strong awareness of preexisting systems of identification and categorization. This blog will report on the standardization process and mechanics of some precedents including the Dewey Decimal System, barcodes, HTML, RSS, and ISBN. In addition, we will discuss blogs and articles that support our claim of a need for a unified identification system for the fine arts.

We will rely heavily on the input we receive through interviews and responses to this blog. Anyone with suggestions or knowledge of similar projects is encouraged to post on this blog or to write to Dan at dan@early-adopter.com.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at 5:38 am and is filed under Art information. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.