ICONOGRAPHICS: Computational Understanding of Iconography and Narration in Visual Cultural Heritage

The interdisciplinary research project Iconographics is dedicated to innovative possibilities of digital image recognition for the arts and humanities. While computer vision is already often able to identify individual objects or specific artistic styles in images, the project is confronted with the open problem of also opening up the more complex image structures and contexts digitally. On the basis of a close interdisciplinary collaboration between Classical Archaeology, Christian Archaeology, Art History and the Computer Sciences, as well as joint theoretical and methodological reflection, a large number of multi-layered visual works will be analyzed, compared and contextualized. The aim is to make the complex compositional, narrative and semantic structures of these images tangible for computer vision. Iconography and Narratology are identified as a challenging research questions for all subjects of the project. The iconography will be interpreted in its plot, temporality, and narrative logic. Due to its complex cultural structure; we selected four important scenes:

1. The Annunciation of the Lord
2. The Adoration of the Magi
3. The Baptism of Christ
4. Noli me tangere (Do not touch me)

Projektleiter/in:

• Prof. Dr. Peter Bell
• Prof. Dr.-Ing. Andreas Maier
• Prof. Dr. Corinna Reinhardt
• Prof. Dr. Ute Verstegen

Projektbeteiligte:

• Ronak Vijaypal Kosti
• Prathmesh Madhu
• Dr. Torsten Bendschus
• Lara Mührenberg