Multivocal Exhibition — a linked open data springboard for conversation about cultural diversity
When you look at Vermeer’s “Girl with the Pearl Earring” — one of Europe’s most famous paintings, what do you see? A Dutch person may look at the pearl in the girl’s earring and think about it as a symbol of femininity. A Chinese person might look at the same thing, but think about it as a symbol of immortality.
What’s the “Multivocal Exhibition”?
It’s an application where users can create their own, interactive, 3D virtual exhibition by exploring how one concept (e.g. “courage”) is symbolically expressed in different cultural contexts. In the background, the app uses linked, open cultural heritage data.
The Multivocality Context.
In the museum context, “multivocality” or “polyvocality” often refers to the fact that cultural objects contain multiple layers of meaning and there is more than one way to interpret or describe it. This is becoming an increasingly important topic for museums that show heritage with a colonial background, because the descriptions may take the perspective of a western context — while their meaning in the original cultural context is not appropriately depicted. For visitors it is difficult to realize that all these different dimensions exist…
We wanted to give people — no matter their background or expertise — a simple way to explore how the meanings of symbols depicted in artworks shift across cultures. The idea is to foster an open dialogue about uniqueness and similarities in cultures using linked open data (LOD).
By allowing the user to take control over the cultural contexts and concepts they choose to exhibit, the app tries to empower visitors to showcase what is interesting and important to them, personally.
Creating the backend
We used three different datasets: Wikidata, the National Museum of World Cultures (NMvW) object collection and HyperReal (a knowledge graph that contains data about cultural symbolism). Based on HyperReal’s listed symbols, artworks that contain those symbols have been retrieved from both Wikidata and NMvW collection.
First, we extracted information about artifacts and what they depict from Wikidata (English and Dutch) and the NMVW collection (Only Dutch). We also extracted information about symbols, their symbolic meanings, and the cultural contexts in which those meanings exist in HyperReal (a knowledge graph that contains data about cultural symbolism). We have then reconciled the depicted elements of artworks in Wikidata to the symbols in HyperReal by matching the corresponding labels. To associate the artifacts in NMVW with the symbols in HyperReal we translated the latter in Dutch using the Google Translate API and then performed a string search on the whole NMVW collection on both titles and descriptions of the artifacts.
Creating the frontend
Firstly, a small GUI was developed to let users choose a concept (from all the symbolic meanings present in HyperReal) and up to three cultural contexts of interest. The GUI uses PyQT and, once the user has made their choices, compiles a JSON file with the final selection of artifacts to be exhibited. These artifacts, which can stem from Wikidata or NMVW are picked by the algorithm, such that for each of the selected cultural contexts, some artworks will depict symbols whose meaning relates to the chosen concept.
Once the JSON file is compiled, it is loaded by an interactive application made with the Unity Game Engine, which automatically generates a 3-room 3D exhibition. Each room is dedicated to a different cultural context. All artifacts come with (i) a description that specifies which symbols, in the corresponding culture, refer to the concept chosen by the user, and (ii) a direct link to all their metadata from either Wikidata or NMVW collection. The user can “walk through” their exhibit using their keyboard and mouse, and click on codes next to paintings to be shown the website where they were retrieved from for further information.
The Project Team
This application was developed in the context of the HackaLOD 2022 hackathon in Utrecht, The Netherlands. It received the “Meerstimmigheids Prijs” (polyvocality award), an initiative of and provided by National Museum of World Cultures.
