Artographer: a Curatorial Interface for Art Space Exploration

TL;DR

Artographer is an interactive, zoomable map of 16,000 artworks based on embeddings, designed to enhance spatial exploration and understanding of art relationships, challenging traditional recommendation paradigms.

Contribution

This paper introduces Artographer, a novel curatorial interface that uses embedding-based maps to support art exploration and reimagines media distribution.

Findings

Participants used the map for goal-driven and free exploration.

Identified values include Visibility, Agency, Serendipity, Friction.

Challenged conventional recommendation system paradigms.

Abstract

Relating a piece to previously established works is crucial in creating and engaging with art, but AI interfaces tend to obscure such relationships, rather than helping users explore them. Embedding models present new opportunities to support spatially exploring and relating artwork. We built Artographer, an art-exploration system featuring a zoomable 2-D map, constructed from similarity-clustered embeddings of ~16,000 historical artworks. We used Artographer as a design probe to explore how alternative artwork distribution interface design can shape media engagement: we invited 20 participants, including 9 art history scholars, to traverse the map, collecting artworks for a goal-driven task and while freely exploring. We identify values enacted in spatial art discovery (Visibility, Agency, Serendipity, Friction) and consider how these values challenge dominant design paradigms -- in particular, the recommendation systems governing contemporary media distribution platforms. We reimagine a curatorial approach to media distribution, within digital ecosystems where history and culture can thrive.