Issue 287: FRBRoo / CRM for prints?

Posted by Regina Stein on 30/7/2015

Hi,

Did anybody go into depth with FRBRoo / CRM modelling or mapping for prints (visual works) (-> http://vocab.getty.edu/aat/300041273 ;-)) , or can point us to respective work on this kind of material? 

Posted by Christian Emil on 30/7/2015

Hi Regine
If I understand AAT correctly, it is a thesaurus and is as such a hierarchy of concepts and can be seen as a incarnation of a hierarchy under the E55 Type.
In a CRM/FRBRoo context a print is a physical object (one of the items of  a series), for instance a lithography, a  paper carrying an image  or more. A lithography would usually  be given the AAT type 'print'  (or belong to this type/be a member of the set of objects that can be said to belong to the hypothetical set of all prints).

This may not be what you have in mind?

Posted by Martin on 30/7/2015

Dear Regine,

There has been an implicit discussion in the CRM about prints as production with particular tools.
see:
E12 Production

Subclass of:         E11 Modification

                              E63 Beginning of Existence

Scope note:         This class comprises activities that are designed to, and succeed in, creating one or more new items.

It specializes the notion of modification into production. The decision as to whether or not an object is regarded as new is context sensitive. Normally, items are considered “new” if there is no obvious overall similarity between them and the consumed items and material used in their production. In other cases, an item is considered “new” because it becomes relevant to documentation by a modification. For example, the scribbling of a name on a potsherd may make it a voting token. The original potsherd may not be worth documenting, in contrast to the inscribed one.

This entity can be collective: the printing of a thousand books, for example, would normally be considered a single event.

An event should also be documented using E81 Transformation if it results in the destruction of one or more objects and the simultaneous production of others using parts or material from the originals. In this case, the new items have separate identities and matter is preserved, but identity is not.

Examples:

§  the construction of the SS Great Britain

§  the first casting of the Little Mermaid from the harbour of Copenhagen

§  Rembrandt’s creating of the seventh state of his etching “Woman sitting half dressed beside a stove”, 1658, identified by Bartsch Number 197 (E12,E65,E81)
So, the print plate undergoes "transformations" and implies the creation of an information object being present on the plate(s) and the prints, or, in more creative techniques, the information content of the plate is "incorporated" in the prints.

The print plate is "used specific object" in the printing process, but a specialization of E12 may be adequate to fix the
specific kind of use and its consequences of information transfer to the copies.

We are also discussing a generalization of
F32 Carrier Production Event

Subclass of:        E12 Production

Scope note:         This class comprises activities that result in instances of F54 Utilized Information Carrier coming into existence. Both the production of a series of physical objects (printed books, scores, CDs, DVDs, CD-ROMS, etc.) and the creation of a new copy of a file on an electronic carrier are regarded as instances of F32 Carrier Production Event.

Typically, the production of copies of a publication (no matter whether it is a book, a sound recording, a DVD, a cartographic resource, etc.) strives to produce items all as similar as possible to a prototype that displays all the features that all the copies of the publication should also display, which is reflected in property R27 used as source material F24 Publication Expression.

into industrial production, of cars, tools, coins and whatever.

Artistic prints with limited copies etc may not be regarded as producing "things of type XXX".

A CRM extension into the world of artitstic printing may be interesting.

If its only about using AAT vocabulary, Christian-Emil's remark's should be sufficient.

I do not know if the AAT differentiates the plate as museum object from the copy.
 

Posted by Regine Stein on 31/7/2015

Dear Christian-Emil, dear Martin,

Many thanks for your responses!

Our interest is indeed to understand the whole process of artistic printing (firstly in early modern Europe), how the idea of a visual work evolved in the process, what are the relationships between the various (conceptual and physical) objects involved in the process.

Making a printing plate always starts with a drawing which may either be a copy of an existing visual work, a painting, or may be intentionally designed for a print, either by the printmaker or by another artist. In German language we typically use in documentation the roles "Inventor" and "Stecher", according to the Latin "INVENIT" and "FECIT" which one can often find in inscriptions (see e.g. engravings by Marcantonio Raimondi with inscription "RAPHA URBI INVEN / MAF" - Raphael invented it / Marcantonio fecit = Marcantonio made it). Then, the same visual idea may be realized in several printing plates. Then, we have prints from different states of this same printing plate, and they are sometimes considered as a new visual work, sometimes just as modification. In order to limit the number of copies a printing plate may be scratched.  If we are lucky the printing plate still exists somewhere but obviously in its last state, and earlier states are only known through the prints. Then prints may be compiled into series and so on.

As we are dealing with multiples we wonder if FRBRoo is appropriate to approach this, our questions include:
- Should we consider multiple realizations of the same drawing in various printing plates as multiple F2 Expression (F24 Publication Expression) of the same F1 Work (F14 Individual Work)? Or are they all different works?
- Should we consider different states of one printing plate as F3 Manifestation Product Type?
- How to reflect the different states of the printing plate as "used specific object" in E12 Production?
- Analysis of what is typically recorded in the documentation in a museum holding one (or multiple) print(s): which information pertains to the Work / Expression (e.g. the subject /  P62 depicts), which to the printing plate / F3 Manifestation Product Type (e.g. the state), which to the actual museum object / F4 Item?

We are grateful for further comments on this, and will certainly be back to the group as we move on.

Btw, the AAT of course differentiates
"prints (visual works)" -> http://vocab.getty.edu/aat/300041273
- or more specifically "engravings (prints)" -> http://vocab.getty.edu/aat/300041340
"printing plates" -> http://vocab.getty.edu/aat/300022755
as well as the process of "engraving (printing process)" -> http://vocab.getty.edu/aat/300053225

Posted by Martin on 3/8/2015

Dear Regine,

I think this is a nice application of FRBRoo to a more museum-like context. The Work discussion is an old one. Both positions are justified. Therefore FRBRoo defines an "Individual Work" in contrast to a "Complex Work". In practice, i'd suggest instantiating the "Individual Work" can be ommitted, once it can be inferred, as we had proposed to Europeana.

I'd argue, the distinction "they are sometimes considered as a new visual work, sometimes just as modification" is pointless, because there is a new artistic contribution. The expression is new. The Work gets another realization. The plate is
physically modified. The feature on it, the scratches, are new. An Expression cannot be modified.

The "invenit" can be associated with the work conception, but is an expression in its own right. The "FECIT" has its own artistic contribution, I'd argue it is a derivative.

But there are better FRBR experts on this list!

I think it will be good to create a guideline for this case. I believe it should be discussed together with the bronze casting
work.
 

Posted by Jim Salmons on 7/8/2015

Regine, C.E.S., and Martin,

In the context of FRBRoo as a DSL/extension of #cidocCRM with particular reference to the “serialization” character of print production, it may be useful to consider the ISSN.org’s contribution of PRESSoo, an extension/harmonization that brings serialization and continuation semantics to FRBRoo.

The reference document is found here:

             http://www.issn.org/the-centre-and-the-network/our-partners-and-projects...

and Patrick Le Boeuf’s presentation on behalf of the ISSN working group which developed this valuable contribution is here:

             http://www.slideshare.net/patrickleboeuf/20130719-pres-soo

Posted by Martin on 9/8/2015

Hi Jim,

A serialization character of prints is not so obvious to me. The reworking of print plates appears to me to be a rather peculiar process of modification of a material object, not so much an editorial series. The actual printing process is either a mechanical one, or a combination of manual creative work and mechanical work, which I'd see more similar to book printing on one side, and mold-based techniques, such as in ceramics or bronze? 

Posted by Patrick  on 10/8/2015

Hi everyone,
I completely agree with Martin. There is no point in dealing with art prints as continuing resources. PRESSoo is inadequate in this context. I think there is enough stuff in a combination of FRBRoo and CIDOC CRM to cope with at least the main issues raised by art prints. Surely an extension of FRBRoo could bring more refinements in the treatment of such products, but FRBRoo has to remain a high-level conceptual model.

Posted by Simon Spero on 10/8/2015

To add a bit more confusion to the discussion,  one can consider Blake's hand printed books.
Every plate was coloured individually, and differently, and are some scholars consider each copy to be a distinct [thing more abstract than Manifestation].

There is some justification for this,  as there is distinct intellectual content (produced by the original author, even). This seems to fall into the awkward place in FRBR where expression and work overlap.

This happens a lot in different places in FRBR;  it's difficult to handle  without using a second order logic,  or at least a first order logic which allows for quantifying over known predicates. 

Posted by Jim Salmons on 10/8/2015

Regine, Martin, and Patrick,

I agree with Patrick and Martin that PRESSoo is not _directly_ applicable to the challenge of modeling prints. I can only speak here as a software designer/developer and NOT as a humanities specialist with knowledge of the subtleties of historic/artistic print production, etc.. But given my decades of advanced object-oriented software design experience, I strongly believe in studying closely-aligned domain models for inspiration and insight when facing your own new modeling challenge.

In this sense, the most valuable lesson that print-modeling folks might gather from the ISSN.org SIG members who developed PRESSoo is to look at the "deep dive" into a domain-specific language (DSL) extension of #cidocCRM's 'E29 Design or Procedure' (e.g. pages 17-22 being an interesting overview, http://goo.gl/tXUQcr).

In both the case of a serial publication and a complex print-production, the concept of some "process over time" is central with a notion of the creator's intentional plan to produce the work... the 'Z12 Issuing Rule' of PRESSoo, the idea of 'Z1 Serial Transformation' and with this the decomposition of procedure to make Properties explicit such as 'absorbed', 'enhanced', 'merged', 'separated', etc. Given a "blind concept-matching test," many of these model elements could be mistaken for their applicability to print production.

It is not that this _specific_ complete DSL (PRESSoo) is an "off the shelf" solution to modeling prints, but rather that the territory covered by the PRESSoo SIG in its ruminations to produce their domain-specific model have much to contribute as a 'modeling resource' for Regine's team to consider as they decide on their own requirements and #cidocCRM-compliant extension. The definition document is part definition and part ‘project post mortem’ of insights about their modeling decisions.

If nothing else, a good read of the PRESSoo definition document could help inform the modeling decisions to be made by Regine's team. I found the PRESSoo document full of helpful insightful discussion and rich with 'use case' diagrams that reflect the broad thinking of the PRESSoo SIG's work. I think it's a good example of #cidocCRM DSL extension documentation regardless of your domain of interest.

Pardon me if these comments are a re-hash of well-worn conversation over domain-specific issues resolved long ago. My intent in commenting has more to do with sharing insights about modeling best practice – “Borrow, don’t re-invent…” for example – rather than being specific to a particular model.

Posted by Martin on 12/8/2015

Dear Simon,

Interesting thought. I'd say however, I am not confused by this. In my opinion, the problem lays in the human mind, which tries to stretch abstractions over incompatible evidence.

From a CRM point of view, every copy of such a process is an individual physical object. Why should we call it a Manifestation, or even something more abstract, if it does not fit to the book market process this concept was designed for?

If there is an individual artistic contribution each time (as I mentioned in my last message), then we talk about new features on the plate each time, which correspond to a new symbolic content ("Expression"). There are two cases: Either it is an overall derivative, or there is an "incorporation" of content by virtue of the fixed features on the plate. So, I'd say the individually colored copy "incorporates" the plate optical content and adds a new creation process to it.

The question of second order logic arises when we want to talk about types of types of things which inherit fixed properties from their class, such as the number of pages of a book.
If regarding such copies is better modelled as instances of a type or not is for me the primary question, not the kind of logic to be used. The fixed features on the individually colored plate would hardly be expanded into discrete properties, besides itself being on the plate.

Also, to my understanding, the second order logic features needed to describe inheritance of properties from types of types or classes is completely decidable and no technical problem except for the current reluctance of IT to think in such terms .
Interesting are the requirements which kind of logic cultural-historical data need, rather than, which logic to avoid. From CRM-SIG point of view, we require since a long time more powerful forms of logic than standard DL.