Dear all, At the recent Linked.art event, the Linked.art group was attempting to model information related to auctions. It happens that during auctions, lots (collections or sets of things) are created with the intention that things will be sold together. Ie they are aggregates. In facing the question of modelling this, we seem to have some options.
1) E78 Curated Holding... it's a stretch, but there was a 'plan' to hold these things together for a day or so and to sell them together 2) E19 Physical Thing... CRM SIG has in the past recommended modelling aggregates of things as being an E19 with parts. The above solutions are somewhat unsatisfactory since 1 goes against the intended usage of E78, one imagines, and 2 requires one instantiating a physical thing (well this holds mutatis mutandi for E78) for an aggregate that will possibly only ever be together once. In fact, since the objects are only put together in the lot for the intention of sale, they may not have had to have been physically brought together as a physical item ever. In this sense modelling them with either E78 or E19 seems to break ontological commitment (ie we do not think that these things were ever brought together or treated physically as one). Because Linked.art also has members in the group who represent modern art museums, the discussion also comes upon the possibility that included in the lot of things sold may be some sort of intellectual thing, no physical object at all. Obviously because of its nature, we could not bundle a conceptual object with a physical object using physical mereology relations. So... modelling difficulty ahoy! Could we take up this discussion during SIG (or if there is already a satisfactory solution overlooked can it be referred to)? To me it seems to raise the question of the possibility of defining a conceptual object class for 'set', although I am sure this will open up a large discussion! Look forward to see you all soon! Best, George ref: https://github.com/linked-art/linked.art/issues/281
