Creative Process Representation Ontology (CPRo)
CPRo, the Creative Process Representation Ontology, builds from and extends the event-centric modelling of CIDOC CRM (International Council of Documentation Conceptual Reference Model) and the process modelling of LRMoo (Library Reference Model) in order to support a deeper representation of creation and creative works. The ontology elaborates a rich formal model for documenting the different potential stages and outputs of creative processes and how they interact with people, ideas and objects over time. The possibility of data-driven art historical research depends on the ability to draw from a rich set of informational assets: from the cataloged resources of museums, archives and libraries, to the objects and the contents thereof, including the objects produced in the creative process, such as works, designs and treatises. What is missing for effectively treating and understanding this data is a digital language with the expressive capacity to link it to the historical trajectory it reflects. A core concern of art historical research is to trace the evolution of creative works from idea, to design, to realization, as well as across iterations and variations - of course potentially with some, all or only one of the potential processes actuated or known about and occurring in whatever real historical order. While the modelling has been heavily influenced by input datasets of the modern Western historical period, efforts have been made to leave it open to a historically and culturally broader application. Certain traditions or historical periods may use some processes and not others. Scoped to encompass artistic and architectural creation, CPRo provides a digital framework for tracing the events, event parameters and the outputs of artistic processes from original conception through programming, designing and planning stages, all the way to the realization of works. While the original intended scope has been artworks and architecture, its actual application may range to any creative work in principle. It allows for the documentation of an artistic work in its various phases, as an idea, as an objective, as a design, plan and realized outcome. CPRo provides a rich model for documenting the actual historical flow of creative processes, whether they follow some or all steps, depending on historical or cultural bounds. . The objective of CPRo is to give researchers the means to go beyond object-centered information systems to recording the connecting events around these objects (material or immaterial) supporting the documentation, tracing and interrogation of the historical evolution of the artistic products as unique outputs of equally unique creative processes.
Consult the GitHub repository for stable versions and documentation
external page https://github.com/swiss-art-research-net/cpro
Consult the OntoMe site to follow the evolution of the standard
external page https://ontome.net/namespace/339
CPRo was developed by external page Takin.Solutions in collaboration with gta Digital/ETH Zürich and the external page Swiss Art Research Infrastructure (SARI) as part of a fellowship jointly funded by the external page Digital Society Initiative (DSI) and the external page Swiss Art Research Infrastructure (SARI) at UZH. Its formalisation and publication have been generously funded by external page swissuniversities and as part of the Open Research Data (ORD) programme (Project Open Research for the Arts, external page ORDEA).