A mastodon (well, some sort of mammoth) figurine visiting SMK

Last week, on an early spring Friday, we took our first baby steps into the Fediverse, the collection of platforms connected by the ActivityPub protocol. We did this by setting up an account on the cosy Danish expressional.social server populated by friendly-seeming natives (with an endearing love of image alt texts).

Now, that previous paragraph contains the words ‘protocol’ and ‘server’ and admittedly the Fediverse does require some acclimatisation: it’s just a slightly more abstract concept than your average centralised service. But such is the price of openness and flexibility. When you can “do” the Fediverse almost any way you please, choose your own server and choose your own app, things immediately become a bit complicated.

Slightly technical as it may be, it’s also very promising. The early adopters stand ready to help, all the features (and more) that you may want from a Twitter/X-like platform are available and the non-algorithmic focus imparts a feeling of control. On Mastodon you may be slightly confused, but you’re also very much in charge.

Of course, what you’re not getting is content going viral to a massive audience. Mastodon is thinly populated at this time. So we’re decidedly not there for the reach but because we see clear affinities with our openness ambitions, because the platform’s open architecture may allow for really interesting re-use/automatisation and because there might be a time where the current social media behemoths lose steam. In which case our mastodon riding skills may well come in handy.

We’re starting small. But we see great potential – not least for joining forces across museums and other fine cultural institutions. French cultural institutions are getting together at ReseauCulture.fr – and perhaps Danish/Nordic ones should look very closely at that model. Hit us up if you’d like to talk! 🤗

🏠 SMK on Mastodon (we speak Danish)

Our first Mastodon post

At the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, a new course, the 3D Technologies in Sculpture Conservation was launched in the 2024-25 academic year. In this course, students practiced 3D additions and reconstructions on artworks, as part of their conservation project throughout the year. My project was to complete and reconstruct a piece of art that I found online, since as a second-year student I didn’t have any physical objects to restore. When I selected the sculpture, I made sure that the 3D model was downloadable from an online platform and contained enough polygons to ensure adequate quality and shapes. For me, the quality of 3D models available on SMK Open, the digital platform of the Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark) seemed the best, so I’ve chosen a sculpture from this site. My choice was the Niobida Chiaramonti, which has many missing parts, like the arms and parts of its drapery.

The project began with researching the sculpture’s history and looking for reference photos of other Niobida sculptures. Based on this information, sketches were made to plan the reconstruction. The 3D models of the additions were created in Zbrush according to these plans. To present the reconstructed model, pictures and an animation were rendered in Blender. Another way of the presentation was a 3D printed version of the reconstructed model. The original 3D scanned sculpture and the additions were printed using different resins, so that the parts would be distinguishable. The additions were printed with a transparent, while the sculpture was printed with a grey colored resin. The printing was carried out by the Digital Form Creation Laboratory within the Department of Artistic Anatomy, Drawing and Geometry of the university.

 My conclusion from the project is that this technology is a great way to reconstruct fragmented sculptures without causing any damage. It provides new opportunities for conservators to create additions (or color reconstruction), offering several possibilities for both physical and digital presentation.

The process of creating the additions

The 3D additions were made in Zbrush. These elements were not directly reconstructed on the base model; instead, each addition was created by using separate forms. The recunstruction process began with the statue’s left hand. First of all, a spherical shape was inserted, which was scaled down, elongated, and positioned in place of the palm. This form was selectively masked, leaving an oval opening at the wrist, to prevent any deformation in that area during further sculpting. Using the Gizmo tool, the shape of the wrist was extruded, and the same method was used to model the fingers (see Figure 1).

The stretching process caused polygon distortion and surface noise. In order to continue the sculpting, Dynamesh was applied. This retopology helps to get a new, cleaner surface, with uniform polygons. Then the mass of the hand was sculpted by using a variety of brushes and the direction of each fingers were adjusted segment by segment.

To enable the sculpting of finer details (such as fingernails and sharp creases) additional Subdivision levels were used (see Figure 2). Finally, the model was duplicated and processed with ZRemesher to generate a cleaner topology, which followed the model’s shape better. For the right arm, the previously completed left hand was duplicated and mirrored to ensure the same scale and form. Due to the fact, that the entire forearm was missing, it was constructed separately. After that the hand was positioned into the planned pose and then it was merged with the forearm.

Following the reconstruction of the hands, the remaining missing parts (including the right little toe and some broken sections of the drapery) were similarly reconstructed one by one.

Figure 1 - Steps of sculpting hand (Source: Sculpting Hands in Zbrush)

Figure 2 – Subdivision levels, increasing details of the model

Figure 3 – The 3D model before and after the reconstruction

For years, at SMK, we’ve almost solely kept our eyes on the open web.

We’ve sought to amplify the museum’s work and increase the reach of the collection far beyond our physical walls. The original working title for this endeavour was SMK Open, and that kind of stuck.

This multi-year project has not only been worthwhile. We actually – in all modesty – consider it quite the success, with significant take-up, much re-use, a democratisation of access, and a very notable de facto crowdsourcing of metadata.

We love open access and open protocols, and we enjoy making the collection as accessible, explorable and usable as possible.

But now we’re ready to take on an altogether different challenge. To develop an inspiring, attractive and actually useful digital companion to the physical museum visit. We think of it (and like I mentioned, these things tend to stick) as SMK Link.

What is SMK Link?

SMK Link is (or rather, will be) a browser-based mobile guide to the museum and the art on display. The interface is based on QR codes and the guest’s own device and the service lets the guest access all the relevant information and material that we have to offer.

We envision two main use-cases.

The guest arrives in the museum lobby looking for a tool to help navigating the museum. Introductions to the exhibitions are presented as are audioguides currently on offer. But more importantly the guest is placed on an interactive map of the museum providing a sense of size and layout.

Or:

The guest explores the galleries more freely and is drawn to particular artworks that he/she wants to explore in more detail – or simply wants to read about in his/her own language. Icons by a QR code tell the guest what to expect when scanning (audio, sign-language, video, in-depth descriptions etc.).

The latter scenario is probably the more interesting one. It’s certainly the one assuming the least pre-planning and prior knowledge on behalf of the guest.

What’s in a scan?

Now, as an SMK guest, a QR code scan is not only your gateway to information.

It’s also a signal to us that you care about a specific artwork (it’s a ‘like’ if you will). And so, scanning an artwork will place it in your collection – a list that you may delve into later in the museum cafe, in a comfortable chair in the next room, on the train-ride home or in your own couch.

It also signals the general direction of your interest. And so may be used to suggest where to go next (‘You seem really into ships, care for some suggestions?…).

And finally, since we know where the artworks is placed, the scan gives us your location. This in turn unlocks a broad range of opportunities related to the ancient museum art of wayfinding. We can immediately show your location on a map. But we can also show you where you’ve been (or at least where you’ve scanned) and where you haven’t been. This could help answer two very real questions posed by many visitors: A) Have I missed something? and B) Are we done soon?

It’s easy to imagine this being gamified to a degree, and maybe that’s something we’ll pursue.

But I don’t want this!

Recently, Rosa Sala Rose, CEO of the company Nubart, published findings indicating that very few guests use museum apps.

I’m not surprised. I very rarely use them myself. I expect at least some hassle installing and more hassle figuring out some arbitrary interface. But in an unfamiliar museum setting I also very rarely crave more information. Typically, I’m somewhat overwhelmed as it is.

But also I very rarely see a clearly stated reason to install that would make up for any of these shortcomings.

A digital companion to a museum visit is no easy sell, at least not beyond the occasional superfan. But I also think one of Nubart’s final comments rings true:

Museums are experts at removing obstacles to cultural experiences. But in the digital realm, many have unintentionally put one of the biggest obstacles in the way: requiring a download. The institutions with higher digital engagement are showing that sometimes, the best app is no app at all.

Or in other words: What you’re offering needs to be actually relevant, extremely clearly communicated and utterly easy to use. No-one wants to study a new interface and no-one wants a service just because it exists.

This means no pop-ups, no newsletter sign-ups or other marketing, no latency, and very little need for navigation. In fact, SMK Link will have to feel so natural, and be so unobtrusive that you will be led to believe that it was easy to build. We don’t expect it to be but we really can’t wait to get started.

And once we’re done, we hope you’ll drop by SMK and hold us to all our promises 🤗

This post was written by: Jonas Heide Smith (jhs@smk.dk)

Image generated from Constantin Hansen, Prometheus Moulding Man from Clay, 1845, SMK

In 2021, I was invited to participate in Artware8, an art exhibition held in Lima, Peru, where several artists explored how cultural identity could be incorporated into code-based generative art.

My contribution was based on the fact that Danes are one of the most registered people in the world. Since 1968, all Danish citizens have been assigned a ten-digit CPR number, which is used on a near-daily basis throughout society: in administrative offices, banks, hospitals, libraries, workplaces, and schools — to name a few. However, the purpose is always utilitarian, such as to reserve, pay, order, confirm, sign, etc. I was curious to test whether the CPR number could also act as a catalyst for creating a society-owned yet personalized aesthetic experience. And don’t worry: no sensitive information was compromised and no government servers were hacked in the process.

Prompted by the Artware8 exhibition’s theme of cultural identity, my idea was to pair the CPR number’s unique sequence of numbers with objects from the rich history of Danish art. To that end, SMK Open turned out to be a free and immensely useful resource. My initial tests proved that with some math, code, and a few queries to a database, I could easily assign each Dane a specific artwork from SMK’s collection based on their social security number.

Spurred by my initial experiments, I purchased a handheld barcode scanner — the kind you see in supermarkets and stores. At the press of a button, it scanned the barcode on a health insurance card and returned the CPR number as a text string. I subjected this text string to a series of mathematical operations, which converted the ten digits into a number between 0 and 2147483647. This huge number was then — using more math — converted to a corresponding work by a Danish artist from the SMK collection. All this happens behind the scenes. End users will simply scan their health insurance card and receive the associated artwork.

Now, merely displaying an image from SMK Open on a screen was obviously not enough. I wanted to use the image as a basis for generating a new artwork with its own visual expression. Cut it up and paint with it. Remix it. Use it in a new context.

After many experiments in several directions, I arrived at an algorithm that — briefly explained for the technically inclined — works like this:

• Instantiate 50–100 code-based autonomous agents
• Place each agent at a random location on a digital canvas
• Assign each agent a lifespan and an initial size
• Draw each agent using either a solid color or a round cutout sampled from the original artwork received from SMK Open
• All agents follow the same motion pattern (drifting rotating spirals) but with different settings
• When the system is put into motion, a chaotic jumble occurs as the agents move around and get smaller as their “age” grows toward their predetermined lifespan
• The traces made by the agents eventually form the final piece

This video illustrates the process as it unfolds:

The process is deterministic, meaning that a given CPR number will always generate the same artwork.

Here are some examples made by feeding randomly generated CPR numbers to the algorithm.

Seen collectively, the aesthetic “fingerprint” of the generated works is pretty uniform. Individually, however, there is significant diversity caused by the colors and textures sampled from the SMK Open images.

My contribution to Artware8 has sparked several questions and ideas in many dimensions:

• The temporal dimension: imagine the work changing its appearance over time. It might look different when you are 5, 15, 50, or 100 years old.
• The aesthetic dimension: currently, just a single algorithm is used to generate the artwork. But with little effort, the main idea can easily be turned into an open piece to allow code-savvy people to contribute custom “rendering engines” for a wealth of different looks and styles.
• The commercial dimension: will you be willing to sell your unique artwork, owned and linked to you through your social security number, as an NFT?
• The ethical dimension: Is it okay to use social security numbers for art projects? How is my CPR number being used? Who scans it? Where does it go? Is it deleted afterward? And if the CPR numbers are generated randomly — something anyone can do — they are still pointing to a real person who may be quite unaware that his/her CPR number has been used to create digital art.

For now, the project is tucked away in a corner of my hard drive. But maybe in the future, when visiting SMK, all Danes will be able to scan their health insurance card and see their personal, unique artwork unfold?

About Stig Møller Hansen

Stig Møller Hansen is a Senior Associate Professor, PhD at The Danish School of Media and Journalism based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Stig teaches, researches, and speaks about the intersection of visual communication, programming, and pedagogy. He shows designers how to invent and build their own design tools using code as a creative medium. Keep up with Stig’s activities here: https://linktr.ee/stigmollerhansen

Carl Kylberg, Meditation, 1925, KMS3913, public domain

Another new year, another Public Domain month! Always a good occasion to celebrate when more great art enters the public domain where everyone can enjoy and build on our common cultural heritage. But it’s also a moment to meditate on some of the representational gaps in our collection.

In January 2023, we’re taking a closer look at a few of the new-struck Open Access artists in SMK’s collection. Often, Public Domain month is an opportunity to get acquainted with some exciting new names in the wide and deep expanses of art history. Also, it sheds light on the fact that artists on the outskirts of the canon are underexposed in more than one sense of the word.

• They tend to be a lot less researched and described, in print as well as online
• It’s rare to find contemporary, updated expert interpretations of their work — the few descriptions of their life and oeuvre often originate from their own lifetime, more than 70 years ago
• Works held in the museum collection are rarely digitized — and when they are, the quality tends to be below standard.

I don’t know about you, but Elsa Ström-Ciacelli (1876–1952) is completely new to me! She was a Swedish painter, illustrator and graphic artist who grew up in a socially privileged environment in Stockholm, but would go on to travel and develop her artistic language with strong influences from contemporary art movements, and with a distinct Southern European flavour. After having studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm from 1897 to 1905, she moved on to pursue further training and explore her talent in France, Germany, Spain and notably Italy. Here, her art developed along the lines and waves of cubist and futurist movements, and she met her husband to be, the Italian artist Arturo Ciacelli, whom she married in 1909. Throughout her career, she exhibited extensively in her home country Sweden, but also abroad, for instance in London and Philadelphia. Two striking woodcuts by Ström-Ciacelli in SMK’s collection serve to illustrate the geographical span of her living, one being a motif from the Swedish forests, the other a view of Florence. But they don’t do justice to the strong colouristic verve found in her oil paintings.

Elsa Ström-Ciacelli, “Skogen” (The Forest), 1920–33, KKS12747, public domain

Elsa Ström-Ciacelli, Corbignano (Florence), 1920–33, KKS12748, public domain

If you’re following the Danish art auction scene, the name Axel Bentzen (1893–1952) may be familiar to you. His colouristic paintings are often offered at attainable price levels, and his work is also fairly well represented in Danish art museums. In the SMK collection, we have seven fine examples of his characteristic painting style with broad, lush brushstrokes capturing landscapes, figures and interiors. From a young age, Bentzen was into art. An autodidact artist, he never received formal training but already as a boy, he spent many hours here in the galleries of SMK, copying the old Italian and Dutch masters in pencil drawings. In 1919, he traveled to Italy for the first time, and from then on his artistic language evolved towards the modernist nature-abstraction in bold colours he is most known for. Like Elsa Ström-Ciacelli, he also married an Italian, Maria-Francesca Nurzia. Tragically, she died at the young age of 26, but Bentzen maintained strong, lifelong bonds with the country. Some of his most well-known motifs, however, are from the neighbourhoods of Frederiksberg and Valby on the outskirts of Copenhagen — back then much more quiet and rural than today.

Axel Bentzen, Platanvej. Summer, 1929, KMS3976, public domain

Axel Bentzen, Daffodils in a Window, 1934, KMS4065, public domain

Axel Bentzen, Selfportrait, 1925, KMS4790, public domain

An additional example of how the areas around Copenhagen have been heavily urbanized in the last 120 years is provided by another one of the newly “public domained” artists in our collection, namely Peter Rostrup Bøyesen (1882–1952) whose painting The Outskirts of Nørrebro from 1905 shows one of today’s most vibrant parts of Copenhagen as a landscape with open fields and high skies. Only in the far background you see urban buildings.

Peter Rostrup Bøyesen, The Outskirts of Nørrebro, 1905, KMS1946, public domain

The outskirts of Nørrebro today. Photo by Jens Rost on Flickr, CCBY-SA

Other artists in SMK Open, whose works have entered the public domain at the turn of the year, count the sculptors Siegfried Wagner and Rasmus Harboe, and the Swedish artist Carl Kylberg whose paintings and drawings are well represented in the collection with 61 pieces — albeit for the most part not yet accompanied by photographs.

As always, there’s much ork ahead of us in order to keep exploring and exposing more nuances of art history. Our continuous work to digitize the collection is an important piece in the puzzle, but as you’ll notice, far more objects in our database are registered than photographed. On January 1st 2023, 139,279 works are registered and just 52,865 photographed. Even though it’s frustrating not to be able to compliment all registered artworks with pictures, we can see that it’s helping people out there discover works they are interested in and requesting us to get more works photographed. Keep pushing us forward!

On open.smk.dk users can explore the SMK collection and download material for re-use

Practically all SMK collection data including images (to the extent allowed by copyright) gets instantly published for free use — for humans on open.smk.dk and for machines via our API. The goal is maximum openness in order to increase the value and usefulness of the museum’s collection.

In the OpenGlam spirit we encourage good old-fashioned use. We invite everybody to consult the vast trove of art historical data, to explore connections between artworks, and to download photos and 3D models for use in everything from school assignments to presentations, PhD theses, and books. This invitation was picked up, as underlined for instance by considerable interest in Erik Henningsen’s social realist painting Evicted Tenants from 1892 — not least from primary and high school students delving into the so-called Modern Breakthrough.

But we also strongly encourage re-use, the creative appropriation of the SMK collection for the user’s own purposes. We often talk of the collection as creative raw material and the data as Lego bricks (flexible, open) as opposed to cathedrals (nice but non-configurable). This implies surrendering all control in the sense that we do not presume to know what the data can be used for nor presume to specify what it should be used for.

As you can imagine, such art data laizzes-faire leads not to order but to a chaotic jungle landscape most of which we never see. But news of some initiatives do reach us and here are some recent examples that stand out.

Award-winning short film

As the Covid pandemic raged, Italian film-maker Lucio Arese mixed 3D scans of SMK sculptures into the multiple-award-winning short film Les Dieux Changeants (The Gods are Changing). It’s Nietzsche meets Chopin meets The Royal Cast Collection, powered by our collaboration with 3D repository MyMiniFactory. For context and details see my colleague Merete Sanderhoff’s interview with Arese.

The Laocoon group is destroyed in Lucio Arese’s short film

Fanciful electronic music Instagram mashups

In Germany, Ansgar Te AKA Captain Cosmotic mixes electronic music with classical painting with style, humor and wondrously counterfactual captions. The good captain has played with several SMK artworks such as Peter Ilsted’s At the Piano (reworked), Carl Bloch’s Still Life with Fish (reworked), and Peder Balke’s Tree in a Wintry Forest (reworked).

Carl Bloch’s Still Life with Fish a la Captain Cosmotic

Image recognition the API way

Danish museum art recognition app Vizgu lets you point your phone camera at an SMK artwork to instantly get more info. The magic happens by a direct connection to our API instead of (as would have been the traditional way) someone manually inputting all relevant data into yet another system.

Using the Vizgu app at SMK

3D models in all shapes and forms

Since uploading our first experimental batch of 3D scans to Sketchfab in 2016 and subsequently building up a respectable digital collection on MyMiniFactory, it’s been obvious that interest is massive. Our models are viewed but also downloaded, printed, and integrated into creative projects of all scales. We work closely with Jon Beck of Scan the World to expand our offering (thanks, Jon!) and are carefully (i.e. slowly) working to set up our own internal infrastructure for producing and storing 3D files.

Copy of Caryatid C, Erechtheion of the Acropolis at MyMiniFactory

19th century painting on Steam

Presenting itself enticingly as a ‘Romancepunk, typing-game tragedy’, the Danish PC game Inkslinger [link no longer active] used 19th century paintings from SMK’s collection for its visuals. It’s a strange and haunting experience available through the Steam gaming platform.

Screenshot from Inkslinger

Atmospheric TV screen backdrops

The makers of Netflix’ Alias Grace (based on Margaret Atwood’s novel) turned to SMK Open [link awaits] when decorating walls of their 19th century manor houses. Usable without restriction, it suddenly seemed as if British nobility were dedicated fans of the Danish Golden Age of painting.

Christen Købke’s Morning View of Østerbro from 1836 adorns a manor house wall in Alias Grace.

Danish crime series Forhøret (The Interrogation) actually also used The Fall of the Titans to illustrate the ascent to the underworld in the form of a depravated subterranean Copenhagen nightclub.

The Fall of the Titans marks the entrance to a night club.

To Wikipedia and beyond

Easy access and clear licensing has enabled Wikipedians to add a considerable number of SMK artworks to the Wikimedia Commons repository (where media files for Wikipedia live). It’s an inspiring and truly useful collaboration and our next planned step is setting up a system for mass upload which can also handle changes to our core data.

SMK art on Wikimedia Commons

Old art becoming new art

Thankfully — if perhaps unsurprisingly — free access to centuries of art has also directly inspired new artworks. Danish artist Amalie Smith’s Enter is a poetic meditation on the digitized SMK collection, and Ida Kvetny has reworked SMK 3D models into her wild-growing XR projects.

Screenshot from Amalie Smith’s Enter

Screenshot from Ida Kvetny’s Hermes [link no longer active]

Not to mention…

The examples above show a wide range of uses but are merely examples. SMK art can be experienced in its full original glory at the physical main museum in Copenhagen (or at The Royal Cast Collection or in SMK Thy) but through our open access work has also been made decidedly useful (or, if you will, re-useful).

Good people have accepted the invitation to reinterpret and re-use our art history and the results range from the weird to the downright inspiring. Friends, thanks for all the pixels and do keep up the good work!

© Ditte Ejlerskov, The Cult of Oxytocin, Nikolaj Kunsthal (2022). Photo: Jan Søndergaard

Gæsteindlæg af Diana Velasco, kunstner, medstifter af Radar Contemporary og direktør for Museum of Nordic Digital Art — MoNDA, i anledning af Kvinder, Kunst & Algoritmer [link no longer active] 8. marts på SMK, arrangeret i samarbejde med Ingeniørforeningen IDA og Algoritmer, Data & Demokrati-projektet.

Covid-19 lockdown & tech-boost

Det går som bekendt stærkt inden for den teknologiske udvikling af digitale oplevelser, og Covid-19 nedlukninger har uden tvivl været med til at give tech-industrien et boost. Med andre ord står vi i en brydningstid, hvor mange offentlige kunstinstitutioner under og efter nedlukninger har været nødsaget til at benytte digitale formidlingsformer, og hvor vi har vænnet os til digitale alternativer, f.eks. museumsrundvisninger, interview med kunstnere og visninger af kunstsamlinger, alt sammen online. Men hvad med den digitale kunst?

Forestil dig at du kunne være ejer af et Gustav Klimt værk. Det lyder måske usandsynligt, men ikke desto mindre er det blevet muligt med de nye digitale, såkaldte NFT’er. NFT er en forkortelse for non-fungible token, der oprettes gennem blockchain-teknologi, og er en unik kode, en slags kvittering, der kobles til et digitalt værk og sikrer, at der ikke findes kopier. NFT begrænser sig ikke til én type digital kunst. Der kan være tale om et billede, en film, musik, generativ kunst, tekst m.m. Kunstneren kan via kontrakten få procenter ved al videresalg og flere benytter sig af de mere miljøvenlige ’grønne’ NFT’er.

© Ida Kvetny, Hérmes (2022)

Mange nye værker og digitale kunstnere kommer til, men også værker af ældre dato og samtidskunst inden for mere klassiske kunstpraksisser bliver i disse dage bragt til live eller skabt som NFT-værker. I februar blev en digital version af Gustav Klimts kendte værk The Kiss eksempelvis sat til salg som NFT i 10.000 dele af det klassiske museum Belvedere i Wien. Du kan med andre ord købe en lille del af hele værket. Denne nye form giver mulighed for at distribuere ejerskab af kunsten. Som ejer af en unik del af værket kan man få adgang til de andre unikke dele og se hele værket i sin helhed og være en del af ejerkredsen — fællesskabet om man vil, med de fordele det måtte give. Siden har maleren Katharina Grosse fulgt trop med ét af sine seneste værker NUMBER ONE solgt som NFT.

Den digitale kunst står på skuldrene af video- og fotokunst samt 3D-renderede film skabt i 1990’erne, særligt fra New York, Chicago og Berlin. I dag er det fortsat Berlin og New York, der præger den digitale kunstscene og går forrest med post-fotografi som fotogrammetri/3D scan og animation, generativ kunst, glitch kunst, kunstig intelligens (AI), Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) og senest non-fungible tokens (NFT). I Danmark følger vi efterhånden trop med en perlerække af film- og fotokunstnere, og i de seneste fem år har vi set nye talenter dukke op, der arbejder med nye teknologier, både inden som uden for den etablerede kunstverden.

© Nana Debois Buhl, Sunrise Patterns (2021), installation. 2 weavings. 100x 100 cm, visual algorithm, duration infinite. Photo: Morten K. Jacobsen

Digital kunst på museer

Vi ser i disse dage aftegninger af, hvad der er muligt, og hvad vi kan forvente af fremtidens museum. Vi må derfor stille os selv spørgsmålet — og tage aktiv stilling til — hvad det er, vi ønsker af fremtidens kunstverden og aktører? Hvordan kan kunstnere bidrage, stille spørgsmålstegn ved, præge udviklingen og de digitale infrastrukturer? Hvem vil eksempelvis i fremtiden definere, hvad der er kunst, og hvem der er de nye adgangsgivere? Hvordan kommer de nye digitale udtryk til at påvirke kunstsynet? Vil der fremover være kunst i metaverset, hvor vi efter sigende snart bliver inviteret ind i en 3D-verden, fremfor de flade skærme, som vi benytter i dag — og i så fald, på hvilken måde ønsker vi det? Hvilken rolle vil de forskellige aktører have? Og til sidst, vil udviklingen fortsat gå i retning af demokratisering af kunsten?

Nye aktører og spilleregler

Vi står i et paradigmeskifte inden for kunsten, hvor vi med digital kunst og blandt andet NFT’er ser nye kunstnere, værktyper, målgrupper, samlere og gatekeepers — de adgangsgivere, der udvælger kunsten — dukke op. Disse nye aktører og adfærdsmønstre er med til at udfordre den traditionelle forståelse af kunsten og dens aktører. Sidste år var vi eksempelvis vidne til at en forholdsvis ukendt digital kunstner, der går under navnet Beeple, solgte sit NFT-værk for 430 millioner kroner, som derved blev det tredjedyreste kunstværk i historien hen over hovedet på den etablerede kunstverden. Hans succes skyldes formentlig, at han foruden at have arbejdet seriøst med digital kunst i tyve år også har oparbejdet et stort og støttende online fællesskab. Fællesskabet er centralt for en digital kunstners synlighed og ikke mindst inden for de nye digitale organisationer som DAOs. DAO står for decentrale autonome organisationer, og er som navnet antyder online organisationer, der er decentralt styret af fællesskabet og derved åbner op for en demokratisering af kunstverdenen.

© Louise Alenius, Tête (2019), Louise Alenius ved værket. SMK & Eighteen Gallery. Photo: Justin Hummerston

SMK — Kvinder, Kunst og Algoritmer

SMK-arrangementet Kvinder, Kunst og Algoritmer [link no longer active], som finder sted på Kvindernes Internationale Kampdag den 8. marts, er vigtig og relevant i dag, fordi det kan bidrage til nye spændende debatter og vidensdeling, og skabe grobund for at kvindelige kunstnere, forskere og nye teknologier kommer på banen og bryder med tendensen inden for tech-verdenen med de overrepræsenterede tech-bros, samt den generelle kønsubalance i kunstverdenen. Nu vil tiden vise, om digital kunst skabt af kvinder også finder vej til de permanente samlinger — som et lille bidrag til at ændre på medie- og kønsstatistikken. SMK har i dagens anledning inviteret fire toneangivende kunstnere på hver deres felt inden for digital kunst og algoritmer som talere, nemlig Ida Kvetny, Louise Alenius, Nanna Debois Buhl og Ditte Ejlerskov. Her en kort beskrivelse af deres kunstneriske praksis fra programmet til Kvinder, Kunst & Algoritmer 8. marts:

**Ida Kvetny **arbejder i et interdisciplinært kunstnerisk felt. Gennem VR, AR og NFT sammensmelter hun værker af ler og maling med det digitale, så der opstår multimodale visuelle verdener, man virtuelt kan træde ind i og lade sig opsluge af. Her er normale naturlove ophævet, kroppe og køn er flydende og foranderlige, og intuitionen er i førersædet. Hun bruger på den måde VR og cyborgs til i sin kunst at skabe modverdener til en rationelt organiseret virkelighed og udforske underbevidsthedens kreative potentialer. Ida Kvetny er desuden medstifter af den kunstnerdrevne udstillingsplatform Radar Contemporary. Hun er aktuel med virtuelle og fysiske udstillinger i Paris og Lissabon og hun vil også deltage i den internationale gruppeudstilling CryptoPong om fænomenet NFT i Nikolaj Kunsthal til september 2022.

Louise Alenius er autodidakt komponist indenfor klassiske og elektroniske genrer og arbejder i et krydsfelt mellem musik, installationskunst og eksperimentel teknologi. Med sin nyfortolkende og uortodokse tilgang til traditionen og de klassiske kunstarter hacker hun formater og udfordrer tilskuere, fx i den immersive koncertsal for én person Tête, der bl.a. kunne opleves på SMK i 2019, og i den prisnominerede kammeropera Silent Zone om det tabubelagte emne incest, der blev udstillet som AR-værk på Den Frie i 2021. Louise Alenius er aktuel med verdenspremiere på stykket Manual på Det Kongelige Teater med dansk sang, der kan opleves i en dobbeltforestilling med Kurt Weills De syv Dødssynder sunget på tysk.

Nanna Debois Buhl undersøger i sin kunstneriske praksis computerhistorie og møder mellem analoge og digitale teknologier gennem vævning og algoritmebaserede værker. Et omdrejningspunkt er kvinders ofte underbelyste rolle i historien, fx de kvindelige vævere og programmører, der var med til at udvikle computerkodning og muliggøre udviklingen af rumfart i det 20. århundrede. Hun er i gang med en praksisbaseret Ph.D. og er dette forår tilknyttet MIT i Boston, hvor nogle af de kvindelige pionerers virke udfoldede sig og er arkiveret. Med afsæt i materielle eksperimenter bygger hendes kunst bro mellem videnskabelige, æstetiske og spekulative perspektiver bl.a. for at skabe modfortællinger til den etablerede historiekanon. NB: Nanna Debois Buhl medvirker med et videoindlæg fra MIT. Hendes kunstneriske praksis udfoldes nærmere på Louisiana Channel’s kunstnerportræt tilgængelig online.

Ditte Ejlerskov har fra begyndelsen haft en kunstnerisk praksis, der interagerer med internettet, og hun er en af de første kunstnere i Danmark, der begyndte at udforske NFT’er (Non-Fungible Tokens) som kunstform. I NFT-værket The Wrestlers, som Museet for Samtidskunst for nylig har erhvervet, bruger hun fx AR til at udfordre og transformere traditionelle kønsopfattelser i kunsthistorien. Hun er optaget af digitale teknologiers evne til at frisætte kreativitet og understøtte en kritisk offentlighed, og hendes kunstneriske brug af blockchain-teknologier som NFT kan ses som en udløber heraf. Ditte Ejlerskov er i øjeblikket aktuel med udstillingen The Cult of Oxytocin på Nikolaj Kunsthal.

Radar Contemporary Kunstnerdrevet udstillingsplatform med fokus på kunstnere, der arbejder med digital kunst som en udvidelse af deres kunstneriske praksis med online såvel som udstillinger i ARoS Public, Charlottenborg Kunsthal og til september i Nikolaj Kunsthal med den internationale gruppeudstilling CryptoPong om fænomenet NFT.

Museum of Nordic Digital Art — MoNDa Er et kunstnerdrevet digitalt museum med fokus på visning af nordisk og international samtidskunst udviklet med nye teknologier på blockchain med ønsket om at indsamle, vise samt opbevare vigtige digitale værker til eftertiden. Museet bliver lanceret under Chart Art Fair 2022.

Arrangementet Kvinder, Kunst & Algoritmer [link no longer active] foregår på dansk, derfor er dette gæsteindlæg ligeså på dansk.

Still image from Lucio Arese’s prizewinning short film Les Dieux Changeants featuring a 3D scan of Hermes Belvedere from SMK Open

Merete Sanderhoff, SMK: We were happily surprised when back in April, you contacted us to let us know that you had made a short film using 3D scans from SMK — we always love hearing how the collection is used outside the museum walls. How did you come across the scans in the first place?

Lucio Arese, film maker: Thank you! It happened by chance last year, one day when I was looking for 3D models on the Internet. I stumbled upon an image of the Laocoon Group which immediately fascinated me, and I discovered the SMK collection on MyMiniFactory. I became aware of the SMK Open project which I found very interesting — I already had some vague notion of museums digitizing their collections, but from that point on I got really interested in the topic.

How did you get the idea for the film and the theme Les Dieux Changeants — “the gods are changing” or “the changeable gods”? Was it an idea you had already and then you found the right material to deliver it, or did the 3D scans ignite the idea for the film?

I would say that the scans transformed the idea from technical to artistic: for a while, I’ve been interested in dynamic simulations involving the fragmentation and destruction of 3D objects, but from a merely technical/aesthetic point of view. The moment I discovered the scans I thought to employ them in my tests and that made the project grow to a point much more evolved than a normal 3D work: working on the statues created in me many suggestions which in the end contributed to the realization of Les Dieux Changeants.

Watch Lucio’s short film Les Dieux Changeants

It’s funny because we always say that users can do everything they want with the digital copies of cultural heritage without breaking the originals — and you really take us up on it! What’s the deal with breaking the antique sculptural heritage in this film?

Depicting the destruction and collapse of some of the masterpieces of Western civilization surely could look like a bold statement, but I think it’s very obvious that this is not a filmic transposition of real events and NONE of this is supposed to happen in real life: everything in this work is represented in an allegorical form. None of what is depicted is to be interpreted literally, and the way the work is structured points this out very clearly.

I also received some feedback from people who don’t like what they see at all, but again, this is something that could happen only if the attention stops at the very surface of this work. I see the vast majority of people perceiving a positive or negative message out of it, but understanding perfectly that all this has nothing to do with reality.

The act of destroying something could acquire many different meanings, and this is what the philosophical concept of the work is about. The counterposition between negative and positive — annihilation and creativity is what I basically wanted to point out, and leave it up to everyone to make their own open interpretation.

Still image from Lucio’s film with the Laocoon group exploding

The film has a quite philosophical edge and ends with a quote by Friedrich Nietzshe — what’s the story behind this?

Over the last years, I’ve had a fascination for Nietzsche’s philosophy and read a good deal of his works. For sure, I somehow absorbed it. Besides the specific concepts of his thinking, what always strikes me in Nietzsche is his extremely powerful imagination. His texts are a very rich and magmatic corpus which can be seen and interpreted in many ways.

While producing the short, I didn’t have a plan for a specific philosophical significance of what I was doing: for sure, I had strong personal and emotional reasons to do it this way, and I operated between intuition and rationality with a precise technical drafting as is usual for me. Only after the work was completed did I go back to better understand what I had realized, and I felt it was necessary to make a closing statement for what’s depicted in the film. This is when Nietzsche came to my mind and after some research I found a quote from his Zarathustra which perfectly summed up what I wanted to communicate, and everything made sense to me as well. It really was the best description of what I wanted to transmit with this work, and an emblematic philosophical overlay in which everyone has to make their own sense of it.

It’s a fascinating thing for me to read many different impressions and interpretations of Les Dieux Changeants, even things I never thought about myself. It’s like everyone is giving a little piece of themselves to make their own impression of the short, and I guess that’s what makes it interesting and stimulating in a way much further than I predicted.

As for me, I prefer not to delve too deeply into a philosophical analysis of my own, which is of no importance in the end. I prefer to leave the enigmatic appeal which brings this short film to life.

Why did you give your film a French title? Is it a quote, like the one from Zarathustra?

No it’s not a quote, it’s a title of my own. It’s related to the musical choice of Chopin, which plays an essential role in the film. His Nocturne op. 27 no. 2, one of his most beautiful compositions, has an intimate sweet melancholy which, opposed to the kinetic brutality of the statues disgregating, creates a contrast that gives force and delicacy, primitive energy and decadence at the same time. Music and title contributes to give a French taste to the work which makes everything more gentle, with an element of counterintuitivity that I like.

Still image of Athena Pallas Giustiniani before the virtual transformation

The soundtrack is really beautiful and soulful, so it’s surprising to learn that the music was generated by a computer based on Chopin’s original score from 1837. Why did you make that choice?

I did that mainly to avoid any possible copyright issue that you may run into by using one of the known executions of Chopin in commerce. I’ve always been in love with the famous Arthur Rubinstein’s rendition of Chopin’s Nocturnes which is invaluably more human, heartfelt and beautiful than what I did with MIDI files and software: I really wanted to use this execution for the short film, but it would have created many potential complications with authorization requests and permissions to use from the music label(s). So I decided to create my own digital rendition of the Nocturne op. 27 no. 2, Chopin’s original music score obviously being free of any copyright whatsoever, in order to be completely free to use it in any way I might need. I’ve never been fond of MIDI digital piano music but I had to change my opinion. Today, with a good piano library and the right software it’s possible to get more than acceptable results. To me, it’s been a great way forward offered by today’s technologies. They provide new possibilities for creativity in making use of what’s freely available for everyone in the public domain.

The scans are completely neutral, but you’ve added a very beautiful patina or ‘skin’ to the figures — tell us a bit more about the aesthetic choices you’ve made?

The technical process is called texturing and it’s essential in the production of computer generated 3D imagery. It’s very much like painting an object in real life to create its look and details, different kind of materials etc. I did all the texturing with Substance Painter, a fantastic 3D texturing software of very common use today.

About aesthetic choices, I obviously wanted the 3D statues to be recognizable and comparable in their appearance to their real life counterparts but I realized it was pointless and too time consuming to create perfect photorealistic reconstructions. I collected large amount of pictures from every statue around the Internet and I tried to follow the tiny details of every one of them (signs of time, dirt, scratches, cracks in the marble here and there) but not in a perfectly precise way. I also took some artistic license in the colors and overall appearance. In the end the virtual marbles of Les Dieux Changeants are not perfect reproductions of the real statues, but quite similar 3D replicas.

Still image showing the beautiful patinated texturing of the Barberini Faun

Did you run into any technical difficulties using the scans?

Not at all, they’re all good multi-purpose 3D models which are perfectly usable in every 3D related software/environment.

What is the deeper purpose or mindset of working with digital cultural heritage for you?

The one and only purpose, for sure, is to transmit interest and love for those ancient masterpieces, and more generally for our cultural heritage and history.

Any advice how we could improve the reuse of our collection?

Looks to me that you are actually doing a great work with what you’re doing, and I wouldn’t know what to suggest or how to improve it. What I would like to do instead is to spread the word, and in that sense Les Dieux Changeants can be seen as a small artistic contribution to the diffusion of the SMK Open program to a public that potentially might know anything about it. I already received some feedback from people who discovered the program and other ongoing digitization initiatives through this short film. This is surely one of the things that makes me the most happy for the public outcome of this work.

A selection of festivals where Lucio’s short is nominated for — and has won — prizes

Les Dieux Changeants is receiving a lot of attention and praise.

As an experimental short film Les Dieux Changeants is receiving a lot of interest from film festivals, a whole lot more than I was expecting. The short is at the very beginning of its festival run and already got a Gold Award from Independent Shorts Awards in Los Angeles, and won as Best Low Budget Film and Best Art Design at Anatolia International Film Festival in Istanbul. At this moment, it’s a finalist in two additional festivals in Vancouver and Munich, and it got a bunch of official selections all over the world. I arranged a first pool of festival submissions that will deliver results until September 2021, so the outcome is evolving week by week.

I went to many festivals with my work in the past (like Ars Electronica or SIGGRAPH) but always related to the fields of digital arts. This is my first time in the film festival circuit, so this is exciting for me! It’s kind of all new and I’m having lots of fun with it.

I realized that this work has three main aspects converging which makes it a piece worth attention:

1. the strong visual impact and well crafted CGI,

2. the open philosophical meaning, and

3. the background connection with the digitization of cultural heritage to be reused to create new art — a very topical theme.

All this constitutes quite an unusual concept for a short film and gives it some kind of an ‘outsider’ appeal which makes it interesting for the experimental divisions of many festivals. That’s my own idea of what’s happening.

Do you plan to make more films based on content found in open museum collections? There are more than 1,000 open cultural heritage collections available, and the field is growing.

I would absolutely love to do further work in this field, but I will not destroy anything anymore, I promise! I guess once is more than enough.

Jokes aside, I would like to create something completely different from what I did with this work. I don’t have precise plans or ideas at the moment, but it’s definitely something I will seriously think about and consider in the future, and I would be open to any proposals as well.

Lucio Arese is an Italian artist and film maker, based in Cúneo. You can check out more of his work, both artistic and commercial, at his website and follow the reception of Les Dieux Changeants at its official page on Instagram.

Film maker Lucio Arese

A special thanks to Jonathan Beck from Scan The World for scanning the sculptures in SMK’s collection.

L.A. Ring, A Landscape near Bryrup, Jutland, 1888 (on the map).

In March 2021 we placed 4.000 SMK artworks on a map of Denmark. We did it by combining existing data with machine learning and the help of kind human beings. And we did it by leveraging the SMK API which will ultimately ingest the refined location data to allow future re-use.

The art map of Denmark at danmarkskort.open.smk.dk

That, dear reader, was the abridged edition. For the hows, the whys and the what nows, please scroll on!

The agony of size

The SMK collection holds some 260.000 artworks. Inspiring? Sure, but also potentially terrifying. Where to begin? How to navigate? As a regular Danish person, you may have no obvious point of reference.

Enter: The map. A map makes things decodable and very personal. You were born somewhere specific. You grew up somewhere specific. You live somewhere specific. A painting portraying one of these sites is immediately identifiable. It’s something you may know very well indeed.

Now, seeing a well-known place rendered through the eyes of art may induce memories. But it may also inspire you to see a landscape afresh. And in the time of COVID, it may let you travel virtually or supply new inspiration for your physical weekend trip.

Putting paintings in their place

Having established the virtues of cartography, how to proceed? SMK’s collection is registered in the national Danish collections database SARA, an acronym referring to the prosaic “collections registration and management”. Some artworks have rudimentary location data about what they depict such as “Northern Zealand” or “Copenhagen”. Often not very precise, but a place to start!

John Christensen, Folkeliv på Kapelvej, 1932 (see on map).

To narrow things down we analysed artwork titles using a Named Entity Extraction technique with a Multilingual Bert model*.

Machines were tasked with teasing out place names which, combined with the museum keywords, were run through Google Maps API and the artworks were placed on a Google map. For instance, John Christensen’s Folkeliv på Kapelvej (“Street life in Kapelvej”) was now placed, not just in the area Nørrebro in Copenhagen, but on the actual street named Kapelvej.

Importantly, we limited the results to Denmark (including Greenland and the Faroe Islands) and excluded certain location types such as cafes (which are often named after places, bound to cause confusion).

Vilhelm Hammershøi, Landscape on the Island of Falster, 1890–1891 (see on map).

The level of precision achieved? Useful, sometimes spot-on, but not always convincing. We found close to 4.000 places but often the location was very general.

For Vilhelm Hammershøi’s Landscape on the Island of Falster all we could find was “Falster” and so the painting was placed in the center of that fine island even though it actually seems to be painted by the sea.

Now, obviously the dataset wasn’t extremely daunting and we could have refined the locations manually ourselves. But while common sense might improve precision somewhat we are hardly experts on every specific hillside, park bench or cliffside. But out there, someone is bound to be! So we published the map and asked the public for help.

Artificial intelligence meets local expertise

On 17 March 2021 we published the map. At the same time we started up a dedicated Facebook group and sent out a general press release. In the Facebook group we invited members to join us on a trip across the country from East to West and as this trip (consisting of posts of highlights from the area) progressed we contacted local news outlets and relevant Facebook pages or groups. We emphasised two attractions of the map: See your hometown through the eyes of art (for the general public) and Help us improve the map (for the more dedicated user).

Together, these efforts stirred up considerable attention. A range of local media picked up the story, and as of 9 April 2021 we’ve had 16.000 visits. Even more interesting, I think, is the fact that our geographical reach is far more evenly distributed than we’re used to. We often tilt strongly towards Copenhagen but this time only 35% of users are in the capital (the home of 23% of the population).

The distribution of users (main hot spots)

Initial feedback was quite overwhelming. Also, it was chaotic. We’d — naively! — planned to manage dialogue either through the built-in features of the map interface or the dedicated Facebook group. A nice plan, but immediately emails started pouring in in the form of social media comments, DMs to our private accounts, emails to the museum’s main address and even to our director.

Sure, there were concrete suggestions for moving map pins. But also, of course, there were questions about digitisation practice, image resolution, requests for clarification and (sometimes kind, sometimes less kind) suggestions that we read up on geography. Honestly, they were all extremely welcome and I only hope that not too many fell through the digital cracks.

Many commented that locations with identical names had been mixed up. Many also commented that Google had sometimes guessed a little liberally when places no longer existed (“Sydstrup” no longer exists, so Google had guessed “Skrydstrup”). But perhaps the most interesting comments were ones that helped us clean up errors in our core data. Apparently, when transcribing venerable old paper cards, some museum worker — at some point in time — had assumed that “Femø” (south of Zealand) should be “Fanø” (west of Jutland). And somehow we’d typed in “Kalvø” instead of “Kalø” in the title of Janus La Cour’s A Showery Landscape. Kalø Vig, Jutland placing it around 160 kilometers too far South. We’ve essentially (and rather accidentally) crowdsourced the proof-reading of our metadata, and I do think this qualifies as something of an eye-opener.

Where do you want to travel next?

We’re continuing our journey Westwards (and learning tons about Danish geography as we go along). When we’ve reached absolute (Danish) west, we’ll work on importing all the new coordinates into our API, and perhaps also into the collections database itself.

Meanwhile, many have asked why on earth other museum collections aren’t on the map.

Not surprisingly, people don’t really care which museum semi-arbitrarily stores which artworks — they care about art. Including other collections is way beyond the scope of our project, but the logic is totally sound. In Denmark, we’ve recently struggled to merge most museum collections databases into one and while I realise that this task was momentous in itself, of course the next step should be linking up the data in new and useful ways. We hope our little map may provide some inspiration for how to work with the nation’s museum data in the future.

Today we're launching 'Kunstens Danmarkskort' (The Art Map of Denmark) – placing @smkmuseum artworks on a Google Map 🍾 The map: https://t.co/gHXNfKUdnE (interface in Danish)#smkopen #openglam #dkmuseum pic.twitter.com/sZTtut29fM

— Jonas Heide Smith (@jonassmith) March 17, 2021

• I’ll be happy to pass on any technical questions you may have…

The team

• Christina Jensen
• Nikolaj Erichsen
• Merete Sanderhoff
• Jonas Heide Smith
• Michala Rosendahl

With very special thanks to Sofie Glargaard, Kim Brasen, Tanja Larsen and others.

C.W. Eckersberg’s A View through Three Arches of the Third Storey of the Colosseum (1815) on a laptop

In late November 2019 — in what seems like a different era– we enthusiastically launched SMK’s new online collection open.smk.dk with a bang.

Oh, the heady days of 2019

Friends, what fun we had. There was light, there was beer, there was last-minute scrambling with servers, and I did manage to jot down some thoughts on the whole thing.

In this post, I’ll dig into usage numbers, explain the changes we’ve made and briefly discuss our momentous, hybris-like plans for the digital future.

The numbers

The online collection is part of a grander scheme, but on its own it’s really just meant to be used — by students, scholars and the general art-interested public. That is to say, reach (in the form of visits or “sessions”) is not an unreasonable metric of success. Let’s see how many stopped by, what we know about them and what they were looking for.

First of all, this chart shows total sessions of which there were an average of 337 per day of 2020.

Number of sessions per month of 2020

In all likelihood this chart would have shown a fairly steady growth throughout the year had it not been for a certain pandemic-induced springtime lockdown. A lockdown that shone a sudden bright light on our digital offerings as even the locals had to go online to find the art.

On average, these intrepid online guests viewed 2,3 individual artworks per session totalling 288.000 artwork views.

Artwork pages such as this one were shown a total of 288.000 times in 2020

Of these visitors, 78% were in Denmark and a remarkable 72% were on desktop (mobile 23%, tablet: 6%).

43% came through the front door, i.e. their “landing page” was the front page of the website and the most popular artwork, by far, was Danish painter Erik Henningsen’s social realist Evicted Tenants from 1892 (see the top ten).

Erik Henningsen’s social realist Evicted Tenants from 1892

By the definitions of Google Analytics the “acquisition distribution” was (rounding up):

• Direct: 46%
• Organic search: 38%
• Email: 6%
• Referral: 6%
• Social: 5%

Nothing in these numbers may be utterly surprising, but the prevalence of desktop use (and the strong popularity of Evicted Tenants) strongly suggest an educational bias – the site appeals to students and their teachers.

What we’ve been doing

They say, depressingly and not untruthfully, that the day you launch your digital product is the day your works starts and there’s no denying we’ve been busy working out the kinks.

Fortunately we’ve also managed to add quite a few features.

Just after launch we added Themes, collections of artworks tied together by an SMK editor — such as this one on “The Danish Golden Age”. We kept them simple on purpose, but may opt to include special descriptions on how individual artworks relate sometime in future.

We also rushed to add 3D models, that are embedded directly from our accounts at MyMiniFactory (327 models) and Sketchfab (9 models).

The user can examine the 3D model of Discobolus directly from the artwork page

In the same vein, we connected audio and YouTube video files to artworks. Now, a video like the one below shows up directly on the artwork page of the painting The Fall of the Titans.

Worth mentioning is also that we tell the user, if the artwork is currently on display with a link to a map highlighting the relevant gallery.

Mainly, though, we’ve been wrestling with data. As we built the site, the SMK collection management system became scheduled for retirement as Danish museums were headed for a new, nation-wide solution: The SARA system.

This left us in something of a dilemma. Work with the old system and expect trouble up ahead. Aim for the new, unbuilt system and work partly blind-folded with very airy specifications. Boldly, we chose the latter and being an extremely early user (indeed we’re still the only user) of an API of a system utterly consumed by the noble, if Herculean, effort to include all Danish museums has not been a rose garden. It’s really no-body’s fault, but it does create a little too much excitement sometimes.

Nevertheless, data does flow, and it does move directly from the fingertips of SMK staff, through SARA and onto SMK Open. In this way, we have managed to add around 15.000 new artworks to the site since launch, with 93.495 works currently searchable (48.785 with photos). For instance this fine etching by Giovanni Battista Piranesi:

Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Interior view of the so-called Temple of Bacchus, now the church of San Urbano, outside Rome, 1767.

The open road ahead

We have plans, big plans. As is only natural, there are design decisions that we now wish to revisit and so we’re planning a major interface overhaul in early 2021. We’re also eager to turbocharge our search features to facilitate more fine-grained research into the large collection. And we’re considering ways to enhance our IIIF viewer to pave the way for more curated “storytelling”.

In parallel, we’re working with data visualisation and a range of partnerships. For instance, we’re using location data to place all artworks on a map of Denmark to show favourite spots of Danish artists and to let users see art from their home town.

SMK artworks placed on the spot that they depict

Collaboration with the library of Ringsted, Denmark. The library curates digital exhibitions based on SMK Open material.

Oh, and we’ve also played around some more with machine learning. For instance, we’ve trained tireless machines to generate “original” art by studying a particular genre of painting. On that note, here’s a flying tree.

Based on GAN principles, here’s a machine generated “artwork”.

So much to do, so little time!

With the current pipeline of ideas we have enough to keep us occupied for at least a year. We hope you’ll follow os on our art data journey, and we appreciate every little suggestion, comment, and retweet!

. . .

SMK Open is kindly supported by Nordea-fonden