People power in the service of painting

The Times, 15/10/11

By Simon Tait

An astrophysics program that uses the public to identify elements of the galaxy is to help thousands of amateur art lovers in compiling the largest online paintings catalogue in the world.

The works of art are the 200,000 oil paintings from public collections rarely if ever on show that the Public Catalogue Foundation (PCF), in partnership with the BBC, is putting on its new website, Your Paintings. The site was launched in June, but a unique “tagging” programme has been added that is being launched this month (September) to universities and schools as well as the general public.

“By looking at the paintings in detail,” said Andrew Ellis, director of the PCF, “taggers can help generate useful subject classifications for each work that wouldn’t occur to art historians, and give us important keyword information about people, places and events shown in paintings.

“Our challenge is that basic material – title, artist etc is just not sufficient to find one’s way around 200,000 paintings. What the public might search for may not be as simple ‘fashion between 1800 and 1825’, but it might be someone teaching a class of primary school children who wants red vibrant paintings that are abstract. Or something specific – Alsation dogs, top hats. If we can categorise the pictures in this way we can make them more easily searchable.”

The on-line technique of “crowd-sourcing” was perfected by the Oxford astrophysicists Arfon Smith and Chris Lintott who, in trying to map the galaxies, had millions of pieces of unconnected data. In 2007 they created the Citizens Science Alliance, a collaboration of scientists, software developers and educators, to put together an internet sweep that would glean the ordinary public’s assessment of some of the material, and encourage wider interest.

They launched Galaxy Zoo online and within 24 hours were receiving 70,000 new classifications an hour, and in a year had 50 million from 150,000 respondents. “Then we asked, could you go beyond astrophysics?” Dr Smith said, and adapted the programme, Ancient Lives (http://ancientlives.org/), to help archaeologists sifting the myriad papyri found at the site of the ancient Egyptian city of Oxhyrynchus in the early 20th century, and including everything from private letters to lost gospels.

It was launched in July and to date 20,000 people have examined 130,00 unpublished papyri fragments providing over four million individual character transcriptions. They include a small piece from Thucydides, the 5th century BC historian, in which he explains how some Greeks turned to piracy as their main source of income, a poem lamenting a warm drink on a hot day, part of Plutarch’s dialogue on the Cleverness of Animals, and a Simonides fragment in which the 6th century BC poet explains the use of ice to cool wine.

The Public Catalogue Foundation is hoping for similar success in sourcing insights into the enormous but little seen national oil painting holdings. Since its beginning in 2003 the PCF, a charity, has published 33 volumes of pictures in UK public collections, county by county, many of them in store or in unconventional exhibition venues such as fire stations and town halls.

The PCF has joined forces with the Citizens Science Alliance, the art history department at Glasgow University and museums, galleries and art scholars around the country to devise the tagger and bring, it is hoped, thousands of non-experts to the project, giving extra information about each picture as it is tagged.

The programme takes visitors through easy preliminary steps, with the process becoming progressively more sophisticated as the taggers become more adept. They are asked to add their own remarks and impressions.

“I never know what is coming next, and it’s amazing to see how many pieces of art are held by corporations, councils, libraries, etc, across the UK,” said Vivienne Bradshaw, an early tagger. “At first I wondered if you needed to have specialist knowledge, but the information given made me realise that it was open to all. Time really flies and in no time I had tagged a dozen or so paintings. I tag at odd times really, whenever I think of it and have some spare time. I find that I am drawn to anything with really finely detailed costumes, especially ‘power’ portraits with their fine satin and silk gowns, jewellery, feathers, gloves, etc.
“William Etty is a painter whose work I have been introduced to by tagging. I look out for his paintings and spend a bit longer studying them before moving on.”

The project has a dual purpose, Ellis said, encourage viewers to spend more time absorbing pictures, and to fill in missing information. “What’s so striking,” he said, “is that it does encourage you to look at paintings for longer, and that’s a wonderful pleasure and greatly satisfying.
“While the range of knowledge in range of knowledge of the paintings is wide, there are gaps in the smaller collections and our guess is that 10% don’t have firm artists’ attributions, that’s 20,000 paintings,” he said. “Tagging will also allow people to make suggestions like the missing names of sitters, and I think we’ll get a lot of response over time.”

But time is limited, and the compiling of you’re your Paintings website, including tagging, is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2012.
http://www.thepcf.org.uk