TYPE OF PROPOSAL: Paper TITLE: Mimetic Metadata: Linguistic Representations of Visual Objects in Image-Based Electronic Projects KEYWORDS: image description; metadata; mimesis AUTHOR: Kari Kraus AFFILIATION: Doctoral Candidate, University of Rochester EMAIL: kkru@mail.rochester.edu CONTACT ADDRESS: Department of English, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627-0451 USA FAX NUMBER: 716-442-5769 PHONE NUMBER: 716-256-3206 Mimetic Metadata: Linguistic Representations of Visual Objects in Image-Based Electronic Projects Following a largely formalistic presentation on image description at ACH-ALLC 2000, the author of that paper was pressed during the Q&A session to talk at more length about the exact function of the descriptions at the William Blake Archive. Though clearly operating within the same semantic field as the Archive's indexing terms, the descriptions are, nonetheless, distinct from them and, moreover, beg the question of why we need their second-order mimesis at all given the availability of the digital images, expertly edited by Joseph Viscomi. Theoretically at least the search vocabulary could function perfectly well without them, and certainly the pride of place high-quality digital facsimiles have in the WBA makes obsolete the need for a prose description that functions as a surrogate for an absent image, in much the way that descriptive catalogue raisonne entries did prior to widespread photomechanical reproduction. Divested of any immediately obvious praxis, then, the descriptions might understandably be construed as an expendable stratum within the Archive's editorial matrix. Although contestable in a variety of ways (see, for example, last year's ACH-ALLC abstract for "Image Description at the William Blake Archive"), the perception of redundancy and lingering doubts about the usefulness of image description deserve further consideration, all the more so given the increasing visibility of descriptive metadata in a growing number of electronic visual resource collections. Taking the question of function to heart, I propose this year to open a window onto the more expansive vista of what I'll call _mimetic metadata_ as it is practiced across multiple image-based electronic projects. Surveying the metadata scene, one is struck by the relative lack of trenchant theoretical scholarship addressing this category of image information. Among other things it quickly becomes clear that the problem of defining the relationship between descriptive and more strictly classificatory categories of information is endemic to the rapidly expanding field of computerized image indexing. In its recently published guidelines on the topic, for example, the Digital Imaging Group (comprised of representatives from Kodak, Canon, Hewlett-Packard, and Fuji, among a host of others) had this to say: "once an image is retrieved, some data that describes the image but is not useful when searching may be included. For example--'Craig is the guy asleep on the lounge' is not all that useful when searching, but is useful when describing the content." Now it is not my intention to impugn the recommendations set forth in this ambitious document (a milestone achievement that attempts to establish much-needed jurisdiction over the largely makeshift world of metadata production; its discussion on image capture metadata, for example, is admirably comprehensive and authoritative), but the tautology underlying this quotation (keywords in first sentence: "describes . . . useful . . . searching"; keywords in second sentence: "useful . . . searching . . . describing") does little to help clarify the nature of the interface between these respective data fields. Consider another example furnished by the Visual Resource Association's recently published inventory of subject classification systems for image collections: its author, Colum Hourihane, profiles controlled vocabularies in considerable detail (e.g., primary, secondary, and tertiary indexing levels; thesaurus formats; cross-referencing capabilities, etc.), but generally appends little more than a brief mention of whether or not free-text constitutes part of the individual systems under consideration. Consequently he glosses over the crucial question of how the prose descriptions work in conjunction with the classificatory vocabulary, taking recourse in the ambiguous terms "supports" and "accompanies" to suggest how the one data type relates to the other. Largely through perfunctory treatment, then, both the VRA inventory and the Digital Imaging Group's guidelines tend to relegate description to an ill-defined secondary status (and this despite its strong showing in the systems under review), with controlled vocabulary more clearly identified as the metadata workhorse. The foregoing examples suggest that while controlled vocabularies are a favorite talking point among information managers, the free-text descriptions that often accompany visual objects in a database haven't always benefited from the same level or caliber of discussion. The burden is on us to more ably address these issues in the interest of advancing the art and science of metadata. What do humanists want to do with mimetic metadata? What do information managers want to do with it? What do we want the computer to do with it? In a presentation of this length, where it is necessary to forego comprehensiveness in favor of suggestiveness, my objective is to lay the groundwork for a lengthier study in four main areas: 1. Definition: I'll provide an extended statement about what mimetic metadata is and isn't, briefly describe how it fits into the superordinate class of metadata known as free-text, and illustrate the definition with examples. I propose the term "mimetic metadata" to designate a particular class of so-called "added-value" information frequently attached to images in digitized collections. Specifically, mimetic metadata refers to finely grained free-text representations of visual objects--what I have elsewhere more generically labeled "image description." The coinage consequently excludes what W. J. T. Mitchell would call metapictures, i.e., pictures about pictures (for example, image representations that occupy a curious middle ground between mimetic and non-mimetic, such as Blobworld's representations, developed within the framework of content-based search and retrieval technology) in the interest of a narrower definition that establishes an intermodal relationship between the primary and secondary objects, between the visual data and its verbal metadata. Mimetic metadata is a linguistic imitation of a pictorial work. As such, it participates in the long tradition of ekphrasis--a poetic description of a work of art--and indeed it is one objective of this paper (see below) to historicize the practice of mimetic metadata, which has fared more or less indifferently in the library science and art historical literature to date despite its growing visibility in digital resource collections, including the William Blake Archive, the Perseus Project, and various image databases being developed under the tutelage of ICONCLASS evangelist Hans Brandhorst. 2. Function: I'll suggest how mimetic metadata might be deployed in the research of two scholarly prototypes: the iconographer and the textual critic. 3. History: I'll point to the catalogue raisonne as a venerable art historical genre whose traditions of image description merit our sustained attention, instruct us about past uses and future possibilities of mimetic metadata, and lend continuity and historical weight to present efforts. 4. Futurity: I'll outline (necessarily cursorily) a speculative interdisciplinary program that brings iconicity of syntax and the mapping of visual performance to bear on the way we currently create and think about mimetic metadata. Though it has become de rigueur for a scholar working in image/word studies to invoke the ineluctable gap between the sister arts (Magritte's famous _ceci n'est pas une pipe_ often serves as a favorite rallying point), new media, technologies, and disciplinary emphases are challenging this pervasive assumption in ways that are relevant to the future of mimetic metadata. The new SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) image format, for example, illustrates that images can be generated precisely and accurately from linguistic code. Taking as my presupposition, then, a greater degree of congruity between image and word than is perhaps customarily assumed, I will conclude by looking at the possibilities of maximizing the iconic (or non-arbitrary) relations that obtain between referent and code-- or in this case between visual object and its linguistic representation. References Crane, Gregory, ed. The Perseus Digital Library. <http://perseus.tufts.edu>. The Digital Imaging Group. DIG35 Specification: Metadata for Digital Images. Version 1.0. August 2000. <http://members.digitalimaging.org/dls/dig35v1.0-Sept00.pdf>. Eaves, Morris, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, eds. The William Blake Archive. <http://www.blakearchive.org>. Hourihane, Colum. Subject Classification for Visual Collections: An Inventory of Some of the Principal Systems Applied to Content Description in Images. Columbus: Visual Resources Association, 1999. Kraus, Kari. "Image Description at the William Blake Archive" ACH-ALLC 2000. University of Glasgow, Scotland. 22 July 2000. <http://www.nyu.edu/its/humanities/ach_allc2001/>.