Nearby: Banksy pictures | FOAF | codepiction demo | codepiction paths | codepiction writeup | foafcorp | memepool | Banksy | Java code for RDF quering
Banksy is a graffiti artist based in Bristol. Memepool had a bunch of links to webpages about him, so I figured I'd do something I've been meaning to do for ages and collect together all the photos I've taken of his pictures over several years of living in Bristol. Here they are.
If you've got Banksy pictures you could create a file (here's some examples), put it on the web somewhere, and add the files to the database.
If you want to know why I didn't just put them in an html page, read on...
FOAF is 'friend of a friend' - a project I've been working on with some ... er ... friends. Basically it's a vocabulary for describing people, their relationships and the things they create. You can create lots of little pieces of information about, say, a person called Dan Brickley and then combine them to get a composite view. So one person might say that Dan has a friend called Damian. Another might say that Dan works for W3C, or has written a paper with Libby Miller. Here's some more foaf information.
You can create browsers, which let you explore the mesh of relationships and factoids in this aggregate source of information. I started to do one of these. There are many more. Then Dan Brickley the originator of FOAF had the idea that you could create links between people by finding photos in which more than one person appears. For example in this photo Sean Palmer is 'codepicted' with William Loughborough. I created a little database of these sorts of images. Damian Steer implemented an algorithm which found the shortest paths between any two people in the database, and we created a demo. He and Dan also implemented a version using data about companies connected by their board members 'foafcorp'.
Because I've been working with RDF, FOAF and codepiction, for the Banksy pictures I used a model similar to that used in the codepiction database to make a searchable database of creations created by people with homepages. So the difference is that instead of looking for images which depict two or more people identified by their email addresses, you look for images depicting creations by a person identifed by their homepage (or email address).
For those who care, here's an example of the sort of file I wrote for a
Banksy picture
:
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<rdf:RDF
xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/" >
<rdf:Description
rdf:about="http://swordfish.rdfweb.org/photos/2000/00/Image022B33.jpg">
<foaf:thumbnail
rdf:resource="http://swordfish.rdfweb.org/photos/2000/00/thumb-Image022B33.jpg"/>
<dc:description>
An early Banksy - on a garage in Redland, Bristol.
</dc:description>
<dc:date>2000-01</dc:date>
<dc:coverage>Bristol, UK</dc:coverage>
<foaf:location>
<foaf:Geo rdf:value="Bristol, UK" />
</foaf:location>
</rdf:Description>
<foaf:Creation>
<dc:creator>
<foaf:Person>
<foaf:homepage rdf:resource="http://www.banksy.co.uk/"/>
</foaf:Person>
</dc:creator>
<foaf:depiction rdf:resource="http://swordfish.rdfweb.org/photos/2000/00/Image022B33.jpg"/>
</foaf:Creation>
</rdf:RDF>
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All this does is give you descriptive data about an image, and then a description of what the image is about, in this case a creation with a creator who is a person with a homepage, which is used to identify that person. At the moment all the pictures in the database are by Banksy, who has a homepage http://www.banksy.co.uk/.
Compare the RDF with that for a 'codepiction' - a photo with
more than one Person or thing in it. In the example below the
description of the picture is very similar, but the description of
what the picture depicts talks about people with names and email
addresses rather than creations created by people who have email
addresses or homepages.
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<rdf:RDF
xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/" >
<rdf:Description rdf:about="http://swordfish.rdfweb.org/photos/2001/04/23/000068.JPG">
<foaf:thumbnail rdf:resource="http://swordfish.rdfweb.org/photos/2001/04/23/thumb-000068.JPG" />
<dc:description>Sean and William in the George in Portslade
</dc:description>
<dc:description>taken by libby
</dc:description>
<dc:date>2001-04-23</dc:date>
<dc:coverage>Portslade, UK</dc:coverage>
<foaf:location>
<foaf:Geo rdf:value="Portslade, UK" />
</foaf:location>
</rdf:Description>
<foaf:Person>
<foaf:name>Sean Palmer</foaf:name>
<foaf:mbox rdf:resource="mailto:sean@mysterylights.com" />
<foaf:depiction rdf:resource="http://swordfish.rdfweb.org/photos/2001/04/23/000068.JPG" />
</foaf:Person>
<foaf:Person>
<foaf:name>William Loughborough</foaf:name>
<foaf:mbox rdf:resource="mailto:love26@gorge.net" />
<foaf:depiction rdf:resource="http://swordfish.rdfweb.org/photos/2001/04/23/000068.JPG" />
</foaf:Person>
</rdf:RDF>
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