-----Original Message-----
From: Crm-sig [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of martin
Sent: Sunday, February 21, 2016 7:23 PM
To: Franco Niccolucci
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Crm-sig] Recording Intangible Cultural Heritage
Dear Franco,
Thank you for the great examples! I think we could elaborate further on that
to illustrate the principles of the CRM. A good and comprehensive answer
requires a more extensive text we could work on together. This is at the
heart of the philosophical-epistemological questions we have to formulate
out and publish in order the CRM to have a future beyond the current form.
I completely agree with what you describe, and that this in in the scope of
the CRM. I have the impression, that I see the role of the CRM a bit
differently, and basically less ambitious. Important aspects to clarify are the
role of a knowledge base, the ontology, the reality, the sense of truth in the
knowledge base, and which part of cultural-historical documentation should
at all be covered by formal ontologies, and which could at all be covered, and
how that part relates to other forms of documentation.
Let me try some preliminary remarks, more will better be discussed in the
meeting, and hopefully end in a more comprehensive report.
On 21/2/2016 5:49 πμ, Franco Niccolucci wrote:
Dear Martin & Christian-Emile
Il giorno 20 feb 2016, alle ore 18:49, martin
<[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected]> ha scritto:
Dear Franco,
This rises two important methodological questions (also
supporting Christian-Emils response) :
On 19/2/2016 3:50 μμ, Franco Niccolucci wrote:
The correct definition mentioned by Christian-Emile
refers to what I would call “stand-alone” intangible heritage.
But, there is always an intangible component in
tangible heritage, for example what turns a stone into heritage.
In the CRM, as a principle, we reject this inversion of agency
or causality, which is common in the scholarly discourse: The stone does
nothing, it does not change. Therefore it cannot turn into heritage.
I never said that. I said (it is written above): “what turns a stone
into
heritage”. The stone is the grammatical object, i.e. the entity that is acted
upon by the subject (here “what”). If you prefer, the same sentence may be
stated: “a stone is turned into heritage by its intangible heritage component”.
Analyzing this use of "heritage", we should answer the questions: what is its
substance, identity condition, how does it come into being, end to be, and
what is its parts. The existence conditions tell me, that a community initiates
it, and ends it. The stone is not affected, so it is a state of a relationship
between the community and the stone, maintained by the community. In
your examples below, you give evidence that begin and end of this state is
marked by causal events of human activity. Would you agree on that?
I had objections against the verb "turned", sorry for misunderstanding the
agency! "Turning" something I'd understand anyway as a change of the thing
turned, but we agree that this is not the case. Modelling this state as a
"component" of the stone, which has no influence on this state, is against
knowledge representation principles. It is in much better right a component
of the community, because the community is causal to it, but the RDF/OWL
formalism does not have components at all, only relationships, which
relieves us from the context-dependent decision where to attach the thing
to. It's between the stone and the community, but not the stone's. That was
my argument. I do not describe a different world than you do, I just formalize
it differently, always based on the same principles. There should not be
anything arbitrary or subjective in the process, once we accept the principles.
This gives the CRM its power. Now, if applying these principles you or
anybody else comes to a different result, we discuss until we either agree
which is the right application of the principles, or detect more than one
concept. Then we model both concepts, if both are regarded relevant for the
function of the CRM (information integration).
Another question is, do I miss something doing this analysis? Do I result in a
loss of meaning versus the scholarly statement? Most probably. But could I
do better so that a machine will be able to process these data?
Therefore in the CRM introduction:
"More specifically, it defines and is restricted to the underlying semantics of
database schemata and document structures used in cultural heritage and
museum documentation in terms of a formal ontology. It does not define any
of the terminology appearing typically as data in the respective data
structures; however it foresees the characteristic relationships for its use. It
does not aim at proposing what cultural institutions should document.
Rather it explains the logic of what they actually currently document, and
thereby enables semantic interoperability...
... The CRM is however not thought to be a means to replace scholarly text,
rich in meaning, by logical forms, but only a means to identify related data. "
This self-restriction is currently an admission to the shortcomings of
machines and formal logic for handling human knowledge, be it scientific or
scholarly.
Only people can start regarding it as heritage. People
regarding it as heritage will be supported by evidence about how people
treat the stone or refer to the stone. When the stone becomes (passively)
heritage, there must be human activities which are the cause, including
human products such as texts, paintings etc.
A painting (for example representing rites performed on that stone)
cannot do anything, it is a painting. Instead, it is somebody’s interpretation
of the painting and identification of the two stones, the material one and the
depicted one (sort of mental de-referencing), that identifies, or perhaps
defines, the intangible component of the material stone. Even a quotation in
an ancient text “Franco’s stone was sacred to the religion of the Francos”
does not suffice, as again you must identify the two stones, the one quoted
and the one you have in your hand.
Sure, obviously. I'd however acknowledge the different substance: The stone
in my hand is material, the one in my head a mental image.
As a mental image, it is a conceptual object, a stone-image, not a stone. The
quotation is a propositional object with material evidence - the carrier on
which I find it. Question: When I model the claim" "An Actor XXX wrote
around XXX BC ("ancient text") : “Franco’s stone was sacred to the religion of
the Francos”, do I need to represent for purpose of information integration
the mental image of "Franco's stone", or is it sufficient from the modelled
fact that someone wrote this text and the quotation that we know and can
rely on that necessarily the writer had this mental image? This depends on
the intend use and queries of the model. For the CRM, we always ask for a
use case in which the modelled entity would serve a query and information
integration. Otherwise, such concepts can stay in our implicit understanding,
or in a much better scholarly text. Would you agree on that?
All this can be quite well documented in the CRM. If the stone
were the cause, different cultures couldn't have different perceptions about
the stone. So, I am not sure what else we would like to put into a formal
ontology? If we have evidence that the stone itself changes, we will model it.
I never said the contrary. But I am not sure (probably my ignorance)
that all the passages are correctly documented:
I see not gap in the CRM so far!
1. There is a stone (call it A) in the real world (probably an E18
Physical Thing)
2. There is a stone (call it B) mentioned in a source (a text, a
painting).
This is not a material stone, it is a conceptual one,
Yes
3. The two stones are "the same”, or, better, the conceptual stone B
in the source may be associated to (identified with?) the physical one, A.
This isomorphism of mental and physical world does not hold to my
understanding. This is, I believe, fundamental to understanding scientific
knowledge. This is on the agenda in the meeting this week. I'd say the real
stone has virtually unlimited properties, the image only a few. The real stone
justifies its images, which can be many, but they are never the same.
Different images may be compatible with the same stone. If we model them
as the same, we end up in logical inconsistencies, if we model them as a
relation of reference, we can reason about the relationship. In case we have
only the quotation, we may have different candidate real stones.
Normally, we can assume the writer had one in mind, but in a poetic text, he
may play with polysemy. Would that make sense?
4. Somebody has made the above association.
5. This makes stone A an “interesting” thing.
In the communities minds and documents. In oder to argue historically, we
need an oral witness we document or a document, isn't it?
Both are material carriers in the end, isn't it?
If any of the above passages is removed (because it is wrong, it is a
fake, whatever) Stone A loses much if its interest.
For a particular community...
Below two serious and a hilarious examples.
First example (real, courtesy Achille Felicetti). "It comes and goes"
In the 1970s’ a famous linguistic professor, Lejeune, had an Hungarian
student, Harmatta, also to become a famous scholar in linguistics, who told
him about the discovery in a part of ancient Pannonia (now Hungary) of some
Venetic inscriptions on a stone [our stone A], found in an excavation by
Elisabeth Jerem, a well-reputed archaeologist whom most of you will know
and who did not report about the “inscriptions". That language until then was
believed to be spoken only in Veneto by the Veneti. Based on images of the
inscriptions that the student brought to France, Harmatta graduated and
published academic studies. Lejeune also published further work endorsing
his student's paper, and a whole corpus was built about the Veneti of
Pannonia. [My comment: this turned the “engraved” stone into heritage, and
the stone entered the Pecs museum holdings]
In the early 1990's two Italian professors, Prosdocimi and Marinetti,
went to Hungary to see first hand the artifacts. Once at the museum of Pecs,
they looked at all the material cited in Harmatta's paper, and there were no
inscriptions!
What had believed to be an inscription were simply natural scratches
on the stone!! It then resulted that Lejeune had never seen the stone, only
poor images of it.
This finding was then indipendently confirmed by Austrian scholars,
and is now universally accepted. (See: A.L. Prosdocimi, Sulle inesistenti
iscrizioni venetiche di Pannonia, in "Rivista di Epigrafia Italica", sezione di
"Studi Etruschi" 58, 1992, pp.315-316).
Thus stone A is “turned" by the first (Harmatta’s) “discovery” into
heritage, the witness of Venetic presence in modern Hungary, and
documented as such: E24 Physical Man-made Thing P128 carries E34
Inscription P2 has type E55 Type “Venetic”.
But in 1992 the stone A is “returned” by Prosdocimi to its pristine
state of irrelevant pebble: E19 Physical Thing P56 bears feature E26 Physical
Feature (scratches).
Note that in the meanwhile the stone that we call A is unaware of all
these intellectual twiddles and academic fights, and lies in the Pecs museum
in a happy ataraxia state, as it has done for millennia.
My point is that the first, pre-1992, statement is not factual, as
demonstrated by later research; interpretation should be acknowledged as
such. Christian-Emile’s ontologist should be aware of this, and avoid
endorsing dubious interpretations (actually, interpretations are always
dubious) by recording them as facts: “carries inscription”, are you sure? No,
you just trust Harmatta and Lejeune without saying it, so you should say
“carries inscription ACCORDING to Harmatta etc."
However, in most cases the interpretation is stable and pacific, so the
documenter may be content with a synthetic statement, i.e. without
mentioning the whys.
The issue is that the underlying ontology must allow for such
specification, when required, and this leads us in a risky route. Were
Harmatta and Lejeune talking of this stone, the one we call A? Or maybe
another one which was lost/discarded/...
Back to the Pecs stone, or stone A as I call it: it has oscillated
between
being tangible heritage, and being just rubbish, with two different
documentations, both correct at some time, but with no physical change.
Perfect knowledge revision use case.
This shows that the documentation may change with any change in
the documented object, contrarily to what Martin states above.
I didn't say anything that is contrary to that! The ontology itself does not
define the facts, only the language to describe facts.
By "fact", we do not mean something "true", I think here is a terminological
misunderstanding, but a particular, justifiable state of affairs.
It is the knowledge base which either implicitly claims truth with respect to
the beliefs of the maintainers of the knowledge base or refers (CRMInf) to
who claims that XXX. In the CRM view, documentation never changes, it is
extended. It is a question of maintaining knowledge bases, which previous
beliefs to discard, but we would not regard it as a good practice. We just
describe with CRMInf a new state of beliefs, brought about by new evidence.
This is not a problem of intangible cultural heritage, but common to all
scientific knowledge. A community as a whole revises its knowledge when
better evidence comes up, at least as long as it is committed to scienctific
epistemology.
With CRMInf we can trace the evolution of knowledge consistently.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Second example (real, courtesy of Sorin Hermon). “To be or not to be,
that is the question”
The Venus of Berekhat Ram is a pebble found on the Golan Heights,
which by its discoverer was claimed to be a female figurine, or as it is usually
called, a “Venus”. The artifact dates from Middle Palaeolithic (230.000 BC). It
is significant, because the oldest female figures known so far are dated
around 50.000 BC.
Other scholars dispute this claim, as it is unclear:
a) if the scratches on the surface were man-made, and (a’)
intentional, i.e. carvings
b) if such carvings were made with the intention of representing
something
c) if the representation concerns a female.
The full story with images is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Berekhat_Ram
So what is this? Heritage or not? Possible heritage? And how do we
document it?
a) E19 Physical Thing P56 bears feature E26 Physical Feature P2 has
type E55 Type “scratches"
a') E24 Physical Man-made Thing P56 bears feature E26 Physical
Feature P2 has type E55 Type “carvings”
b) E24 Physical Man-made Thing P65 shows visual item E38 Image
c) E24 Physical Man-made Thing P62 depicts (P62.1 mode of depiction
E55 Type “carvings”) E38 Image P2 has type E55 Type “Venus”
I am a bit confused. The CRM never has modelled an entity or relationship
"heritage". The ontology itself does not deal with states of belief and
confidence, but provides a language to do so. CRMInf would encapsulate
different states of knowledge in "named graphs".
So a, a', b, c have different provenance and belief times. Then, it is a
technical question, how to present, archive, query etc. previous states in one
or more knowledge bases. The conflict only occurs, if you assume one correct
record per object. The CRM or any (good) ontology, however does not
describe data records, but an integrated knowledge base, which can be fed
from records of different provenance at different times. Therefore, there are
no descriptional components, only related items. But without the Named
Graph construct, a correct representation of a state of scientific knowledge is
impossible.
All you describe shows that the definition of what a knowledge base is in the
sense of the CRM is overdue, we are working feverishly on that :-) .
--------------------------------------------------
Third example (fictitious, and a bit joking to relieve you from the pain
of reading up to here; courtesy Lehar for names and plot).
In the National Archaeological Museum of Pontevedro, among the
exhibits there is a stone coming from the archaeological site excavated by
Count Danilo. The stone is of difficult interpretation, however it is
considered part of the Pontevedran heritage as it is kept and exhibited in the
national museum [heritage is what museums consider as such]. After many
discussions and coups de theatre, the museum director, Count Zeta, decides
to ask Danilo why they brought that stone to the museum. It comes up that
the archaeological team used that stone just to keep a door open and avoid
that the wind slams it; it was packed with other similar stones, these being
“real" heritage assets, by the movers when the excavation was closed, and
when it arrived at the museum it was part of the “heritage” package, so it
went on display. In the meanwhile, Danilo has fallen in love with Hanna, a
rich museum sponsor, and they marry, what secures funding to archaeology
forever - but that’s ano!
ther sto
ry...
This example shows that being heritage or not may depend on
randomness. It is fictitious, but an example of the opposite case i.e. real
heritage misunderstood as rubbish is reported here:
http://nypost.com/2015/10/27/modern-art-exhibit-mistaken-for-trash-and-
thrown-away/.
---------------------------------------------
In conclusion, the moral is that Christian-Emile’s ontologist should
not embark in deciding whether the stone is true heritage or fake one.
That has never been done and never been intended! The ontology cannot
decide the belief in a property encoded with its terms. It is up to the
maintainers of the knowledge base to associate their trust in its propositions
(CRMInf foresees an open vocabulary of trust values). Or, in other words,
there are no knowledge bases. Only information bases. Knowledge is in the
people. Therefore, a "knowledge base" without a known Actor believing it is
just "poetry". Knowledge changes continuously. It will never be fixed. But if
we are good scientists, knowledge becomes better with the time.
But the underlying ontology should provide tools to convey the
expert’s opinion about it and the documentation activity should also bear in
mind - often taking the liberty of disregarding it for practical reasons - that
the nature of things is not built-in, stamped in the things themselves, as
sometimes we are prone to believe.
Sure, this is exactly why I argued against a stone "turning into"...and what
you describe works with CRMInf, implementation being another concern ;-)
Although men are not (yet) telepathic, Martin, there are methods
(e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_method) supporting scientific
communication to increase our knowledge and enable reasoning.
Oops, how do I deserve that ;-) ? That's exactly what I argue for! My point is
just to develop a clear understanding about the substance and way of
verification for each different kind of evidence. That needs analysis. That is
not "intangible" ;-) .
If incapable to deal with them, an ontology is just a sophisticated way
of setting up an (uninteresting) inventory of stuff.
As above, ontology is not equal knowledge base. I think we completely
agree :-) ?
The respective documents are overdue for the CRM.
Best,
Martin
Best
Franco
(We could discuss Buddha's footprints next week?).
This is hard to document together with the artifacts.
One may have the (perhaps wrong) impression that the CRM focuses on the
tangible details rather than on the equally important intangible ones.
The CRM focusses on what we find in documentation
structures. Surprisingly, museum databases do not much analyze in formal
fields such "intangibles". I rember a workshop on history of art in Rome.
Asking about their concept of "work", participants clearly stated to me that
they do not want to discuss such a concept. In the end, librarians did, and
then we modelled it. There has never been any other judgement of focus in
the CRM than data structures maintained by relevant communities, and the
ability to assign an intersubjective identity to the entities we model,
because otherwise they would not integrate with other data.
Of course, if relevant communities do not communicate with
us , we miss relevant foci ;-)
best,
martin
Franco
Prof. Franco Niccolucci
Director, VAST-LAB
PIN - U. of Florence
Scientific Coordinator
ARIADNE - PARTHENOS
Piazza Ciardi 25
59100 Prato, Italy
Il giorno 19 feb 2016, alle ore 14:29,
Christian-
Emil Smith Ore <[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected]> ha
scritto:
Intangible cultural heritage has partly become
a buzz-word. However, the term is ok. Documentation of intangible cultural
heritage has indeed very long traditions. This is what scholars in field
linguistics, philology, onomasiology etnogragraphy/etnology, social
anthropologists etc etc have been doing for centuries. It is nothing new here.
On should remember that an ontology is used to describe the way we can
conceptualise our understanding of the "intangible" in order to document it.
The UNESCO declaration is also quite clear,
see below. In the CRM universe FRBRoo is the most suitable ontology.
Patrick Le Boeuf has given several presentations on this.
Chr-Emil
1. The “intangible cultural heritage” means the
practices, representations, expressions,
knowledge, skills – as well as the instruments,
objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated
therewith – that communities, groups and, in
some cases, individuals recognize as part of their
cultural heritage. This intangible cultural
heritage, transmitted from generation to generation,
is constantly recreated by communities and
groups in response to their environment, their
interaction with nature and their history, and
provides them with a sense of identity and
continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural
diversity and human creativity. For the
purposes of this Convention, consideration
will be given solely to such intangible cultural
heritage as is compatible with existing
international human rights instruments, as well as with
the requirements of mutual respect among
communities, groups and individuals, and of
sustainable development.
2. The “intangible cultural heritage”, as
defined in paragraph 1 above, is manifested inter
alia in the following domains:
(a) oral traditions and expressions, including
language as a vehicle of the intangible
cultural heritage;
(b) performing arts;
(c) social practices, rituals and festive
events;
(d) knowledge and practices concerning
nature and the universe;
(e) traditional craftsmanship.
-----Original Message-----
From: Crm-sig [mailto:crm-sig-
[email protected]] On Behalf Of martin
Sent: Friday, February 19, 2016 12:59
PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Crm-sig] Recording
Intangible Cultural Heritage
Dear Phil,
"Intangible heritage" is a bit a
buzzword. I suggest to identify different
senses:
A) A particular activity, in particular
performances. FRBRoo contains a model
for that, but that can be refined. My
colleague George Bruseker has worked
on ome issues, may be other crm-sig
members have.
B) A type of activity characteristic
for a
community, culture. Could be
technical know how, ceremonies etc.
This requires a pattern model as in
ecology, which "rises" CRM properties to
a "typically..." metalevel. We have
examples from biodiversity, may be other
crm-sig members have such models.
Each pattern is supported by evidence
by individual events.
C) An oral tradition. These are
Information Objects, the carriers being people.
A slight modification of FRBRoo could
cover the details.
Comments?
Best,
Martin
On 19/2/2016 12:43 μμ, Carlisle, Philip
wrote:
Hi all,
I’m resending this as it didn’t
appear to get through.
As you may know the Arches
Project has been using the CRM as the
backbone for a cultural heritage
inventory system. This is working well and is
being implemented by many projects.
One such project now wants to
use Arches to record intangible
heritage and so needs to create
resource graphs, based on an ontology, in
order to do this.
Can the CRM be used to
represent the intangible heritage? If not
does anyone know of an ontology that
can?
Phil
Phil Carlisle
Data Standards Supervisor
Data Standards Unit, Listing
Group
Historic England
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<http://www.heritagedata.org/blog/>
http://www.heritagedata.org/blog/
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Dr. Martin Doerr | Vox:+30(2810)391625 |
Research Director | Fax:+30(2810)391638 |
| Email: [email protected] |
|
Center for Cultural Informatics |
Information Systems Laboratory |
Institute of Computer Science |
Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH) |
|
N.Plastira 100, Vassilika Vouton, |
GR70013 Heraklion,Crete,Greece |
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Dr. Martin Doerr | Vox:+30(2810)391625 |
Research Director | Fax:+30(2810)391638 |
| Email: [email protected] |
|
Center for Cultural Informatics |
Information Systems Laboratory |
Institute of Computer Science |
Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH) |
|
N.Plastira 100, Vassilika Vouton, |
GR70013 Heraklion,Crete,Greece |
|
Web-site: http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl |
--------------------------------------------------------------
