Abstract:
This paper presents ArtVision, a Semantic Web application that integrates computer vision APIs with the ResearchSpace platform, allowing for the matching of similar artworks and photographs across cultural heritage image collections. The field of Digital Art History stands to benefit a great deal from computer vision, as numerous projects have already made good progress in tackling issues of visual similarity, artwork classification, style detection, gesture analysis, among others. Pharos, the International Consortium of Photo Archives, is building its platform using the ResearchSpace knowledge system, an open-source semantic web platform that allows heritage institutions to publish and enrich collections as Linked Open Data through the CIDOC-CRM, and other ontologies. Using the images and artwork data of Pharos collections, this paper outlines the methodologies used to integrate visual similarity data from a number of computer vision APIs, allowing users to discover similar artworks and generate canonical URIs for each artwork.