The project is concerned with the use of advanced imaging ICT (information and communication technologies) within visual arts research. The project will:

• conduct a focused survey of relevant scientific research into such technologies
• elicit a number of clearly-defined visual arts needs
• produce mappings between the two

The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as one of the ICT Strategy Projects of the Council’s ICT in Arts and Humanities Research Programme.

You can make your views known by going to http://www.vads.ahds.ac.uk/submarines.html and telling us what you think. If you are a practising artist, we would like to hear from you, whether or not you use imaging ICT in your research and/or practice, and whether or not you think it might help you in your research and/or practice in the future. It will be just as important for us to know that there are no visual arts needs as it will be to know that there are many.

All the data we receive will be anonymous, unless you decide to tell us your name and e-mail address so that we can send you news of the project’s findings, or let you know if we come across any technologies which we think might help you. We will not use the addresses we gather for any other purpose, although we may use comments submitted in our report and other material, where they will remain anonymous.

You can also download and print a copy of the questionnaire for practice-led researchers in PDF format and return it to Rupert Shepherd at the address below.

(and other historical disciplines focussing on the visual arts): you can make your views known by going to http://www.vads.ahds.ac.uk/submarines-ah.html and telling us what you think. We would like to hear from you, whether or not you use imaging ICT in your research, and whether or not you think it might help your research in the future — it will be just as important for us to know that there are no visual arts needs as it will be to know that there are many.

All the data we receive will be anonymous, unless you decide to tell us your name and e-mail address so that we can send you news of the project’s findings, or let you know if we come across any technologies which we think might help you. We will not use the addresses we gather for any other purpose, although we may use comments submitted in our report and other material, where they will remain anonymous. We may also share anonymous comments with the Methods Network, who are working on similar issues.

You can also download and print a copy of the questionnaire for art and design historians in PDF format and return it to Rupert Shepherd at the address below.

For more information about the project as a whole, read on.

It is well documented that the arts and humanities benefit from scientific advances in ICT imaging technologies. For example, in Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) the arts exploit medical research where technology for retrieving tumour shapes in mammary x-rays also has the potential for finding graphical motifs within digitized paintings. Art historians have used technologies such as high-resolution imaging and digital infra-red photography in the examination of paintings for some time, revealing previously-hidden aspects of artworks. It is also true that the sciences benefit from research in the arts and humanities: the early adoption and subsequent advancement of Virtual Reality technologies, to visualize arts and humanities subjects such as reconstructed archaeological scenes, is one such case.

However, much of the crossover between science and art occurs by fortune rather than design, particularly in the arena of novel ICT-based technologies. This project takes a view that the visual arts could benefit from a more structured and reusable approach to exploring and recording links between focused areas of each sector. Such an approach could extend visual arts research through the discovery of ICT technologies that have not yet been exploited within the arts, particularly for areas of practice-led research, and by building on current research in new ways.

The project will identify several clear visual arts ICT needs through integration with the University College for the Creative Arts’s strong research agenda. This will be combined with a focused survey of potentially fruitful areas of scientific research.

The project’s primary aim is to establish tangible mappings between the needs and/or desires of researchers in the visual arts and the opportunities afforded by technological advances in scientific areas. A secondary aim, which should be achieved by completion of the first, is to demonstrate the feasibility of a structured approach to establishing such mappings.

The project’s main outputs will be:

1. a publication covering:
   1. the project’s methods
   2. an analysis of visual arts needs
   3. a focused survey of scientific ICT-based technologies
2. a database for holding, preserving, searching and studying the findings of the analysis and survey
3. a publication of an exemplary case study based on mappings between the analysis and the survey

We presented a summary of progress so far, and some of our initial findings, at the Digital Resources for the Humanities and Arts (DRHA) 2006 conference held at Dartington Hall. Our abstract is available online, and you can also download a copy of the presentation's slides in PDF format [627 kB].

The project's title comes from a hypothetical mapping between imaging ICT and the uses of digital images within the visual arts: someone wishing to explore a collection of classical art may benefit from new CBIR techniques developed in military research for the identification of submarine shapes within complex sonar images.

Rupert Shepherd
Researcher
AHDS Visual Arts
University College for the Creative Arts at Farnham
Falkner Road
Farnham
Surrey GU9 7DS

Tel: 01252 892721
Fax: 01252 892725
Email: rupert@vads.ahds.ac.uk

The Hunt for Submarines in Classical Art is funded by 

AHDS Visual Arts is part of the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS). Copyright 2003.