arthistoricum.net

Texts can be understood and illustrated as stories – then we speak of art. However, texts can also be understood as data and visualised regarding certain characteristics - then one speaks of science. However, data can also be understood as material and transferred into a visually appealing form – then we speak of data art. We have come full circle: In the project ‘Grimm4Geeks’ the Children’s and Household Tales of the Brothers Grimm, which represent an important cultural asset, are employed to investigate how data processing methods can be used to generate images that meet both artistic and scientific criteria. This means that the generated images should look ‘beautiful’ as well as ‘say’ something about the text. To use the images as an instrument of knowledge they must be comparable. If the generated images are similar, so are the texts. Under this assumption, it can be examined, for example, which fairy tales are stylistically similar or have been adapted to each other over the various editions. However, the aim of the project is not to answer such questions in detail but to develop an exploratory approach to artistic data visualization that allows such comparisons.