Show HN: Want to collaborate on a semantic-web site on all art and history?

2 points

11 years ago

For the past four months I've been working full time (as in quit my job) to build the kind of semantic-web database on art & history that I've always wanted to see. It's built on Neo4j's graph database engine, with .NET MVC, KnockoutJS, Backbone, etc. I've built the administrative back-end & a front end where people can browse art, artists, collections, & timelines. At this point I have to go back to full-time work as I know nothing about fund raising but want to continue developing the site as a resource. As far as I know there's nothing like it for art & history out there.

It can:

[1] Visualise where specific works of art (and all works by an artist or style) are on a map

[2] Capture relationships between artists & people

[3] Break a person's life down into events & plot them in time & space. E.g., you can see a slideshow of Da Vinci's life, where he lived & what he did.

[4] Suggest similar artworks based on rich attributes

I've built a prototype & hosted it on Amazon. It's more like a detailed sketch than a painting & I see the next steps as being [1] refining the product design [2] producing a slick UI/UX to realise the product design [3] cleaning up the code-base (e.g., proper error handling, smarter caching, etc) & [4] adding a lot more data into the system!

I call it 'Codex' (named after da Vinci's notebooks) but am open to less nerdy names. :-)

If anyone's interesting in collaborating (particularly with the product design & graphic design) I would love to hear from you. I should point out that I've been unemployed the last four months so I have no money. I'm just doing it out of love for art & art history.

You could also use it for music, literature, & regular history. No reason why not!