The current status of this site is of course not very appealing. It contains no suited way to explore the works of Lombardi within a uniform way of interaction and visualization. Of couse, we have to have the building blocks first, but I could imagine that the zoom-approach as in “Visualizing Vertov” by Lev Manovich could be worth exploring. I was able to attend a presentation of him which was very compelling.

So what could be the levels of details when in an information system that explores Mark Lombardis works. I collect ideas here. I start to define an initial set of four levels of detail that each deal with a different “zoom”-level on the works and note some ideas for visualizations that could be applied at this level.

Level of detail 0 – the view from above: All works

Viewed from 10 miles, we see the complete set of Lombardis works.

• The items in the collection are the are works (perhaps grouped).
• The collection carries metadata like last changes
• The collection is identified by a URI (which would be http://lombardinetworks.net)
• Several options for visualization arise:
  • Utilize metadata, so sort on a timeline, order by size, order alphabetically by title, order by version etc.
  • Utilize content, visualize by clusters or by ties or similarities between the works
• The visual representation of a work will be difficult since we do not have images of all works and also have legal questions that arise when we would show them.

Level of detail 1: All versions of a work

If we group the different versions of a work an LOD 0, we could expand these groups in a second zoom step:

• Items seen are a series of works with the same topic marked as versions
• They carry metadata like previous and next version and timeperiod of creation
• Each set is identified by a URI
• Visualization could be as LOD 0. One could also highlight differences and similarities between succeeding versions.

Level of detail 2: A work

We now can zoom from the collection to the work

• The work composed of nodes and edges is seen
• The work carries metadata such as title, version, year of creation, timeperiod covered, size, media, exhibitions, collections, owners. Metadata scheme could be LIDO
• Each work is identified by a URI
• Visualization could be an image, an interactive image, a relayouted image etc. The more digitized a work is the more possibilities for interaction arise. There could even be some statistical visualisation eg. nodes ordered in a chart according to their degree.

Level of detail 3: A group of nodes and edges

Within the work we can examine part of the work with one node or edge as the minimum.

• A node is an atomic unit within works
• A node carries metadata such as its type and its content
• A node it the target or source of edges
• Each node is identified by a URI
• An edge is another atomic unit within the works
• A node connects two nodes (btw: there are some preparatory works in which two nodes are connected by multiple edges)
• An edge carries metadata such as its type or annotations (like the amount of money transferred for financial transactions)
• An edge is identified by a URI (for the case of multiple edges between two nodes, they can be distinguished by their URI
• Nodes can be visualized in several ways, with or without connected edges. They could be interactive leading to more information from other sources by tooltipping or by linking.
• Similar edges can be visualizes in different manners. As for LOD 2 it could be some image from the actual work, it might be a picture of the person involved etc. The minimum display at LOD 3 is a single node or a single edge.

This is a first collection of ideas, further might follow. I hope to get comments on this post.