Artistic Exchange

Kimberley Alvarado, Art History
Project Website: Artistic Exchange

Artistic Exchange: A Timeline of 16th Century Flanders, Spain, and Latin America (http://www.newmedialab.cuny.edu/artisticexchange) will be a dynamic timeline exploring 16th century art historical connections among Flanders, Spain, and Colonial Latin America. A chance encounter with Topher’s Breakfast Cereal Character Guide SIMILE Exhibit, led me to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) SIMILE project (http://simile.mit.edu), a provider of open source tools based on Semantic web technologies and provider of SIMILE Timeline. This project will utilize SIMILE Timeline (http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/), to provide a broad visual picture of the historical period. With its open development approach, SIMILE Timeline provides methods, such as Extensible Markup Language (XML), to populate the timeline with my own time-based events as well as documentation to facilitate manipulation of the Javascript code for future customization. Thus, it will be possible to construct an online timeline uniquely set to my own specifications. I hope to make the timeline accessible to others in the future whose research, or just simple curiosity, may benefit.