Ingrained Structure

I’m a sucker for structure, and for finding hidden, implicit structure in heaps of (seemingly) unstructured content. Via Matthew Lincoln, I stumbled across John Resig’s awesome Ukiyo-e Search project:

Ukiyo-e Search provides […t]he ability to both search for Japanese woodblock prints by simply taking a picture of an existing print AND the ability to see similar prints across multiple collections of prints.

In doing so, argues Matthew, one could escape the shortcomings of traditional cataloguing methods “relying on a mediating textual layer.” Once adopted, this would be a welcome relief for scholars and curators around the world.