Welcome
My name is Maximilian Schich. I am an art historian at the BarabásiLab in Boston. My current research focuses on complex networks in art history and archaeology, a project which is funded by German Research Foundation (DFG). The project extends from over a decade of professional consulting experience with proto-semantic-web network databases, and my Ph.D. dealing with two particular subnetworks in art history, reception and imlicit visual citation, i.e. the equivalent of analogy and homology in zoology. My project practically combines art historical expertise with the science of complex networks and will contribute to the emerging field of web science. The quantitative as well as qualitative challenge is to extract complex structure and dynamics emerging from local user activity and data model definition in large datasets. The investigation is based on a close collaboration with network scientists at the BarabásiLab, and uses data from a variety of partners, such as Bibliotheca Hertziana (Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte), the CENSUS and Projekt Dyabola. So far, I have presented results in a number of talks and posters, including in 2009 at SciFoo Camp 2009 at the Googleplex, and NetSci'09 in Venice. My latest publications include a book chapter in the forthcoming O'Reilly book on Beautiful Visualization (April 2010), and my Ph.D. which is available in German, both as a book and a free pdf. Currently I am looking forward to Arts | Humanities | Complex Networks – a Leonardo satellite symposium at NetSci2010, which I am organizing together with Roger Malina and Isabel Meirelles. Besides all that, I am an expert in roman topography and the history of representational media. I like to travel, usually shoot more pictures on a trip than the number of kilometers spanning the distance, go great lengths for a culinary experience and I love to ski. I am happy to present and to collaborate within my project. Please see the contact page for various ways to reach me.
Best wishes,