The network analysis project that I decided to look at was called Inventing Abstractionsim. It contains a visual depiction to help trace the development of abstractionism as it moved through a network of modern artists. This visual aid uses the artists who practice abstractionism as the nodes. The edges represent the connections through which abstractionism spread. An interesting aspect of this web is that by clicking on a person, a new page opens about the person clicked on. This page shows personal details including where the person lived, what years they were alive, what they were interested in, and what works of art they created.
The relationships are organized by creating sub-webs once an artist is clicked on. This smaller web shows only that persons connections and the connections of the people connected to them to one another. This feature allows the viewer to see the individual effects made by each person on the web as well as the amount of people influenced. I think that a useful feature to add to this project would be one stating the years in which each artist was active or adding an arrow to show in which direction abstractionism was spread. This would allow for more of a timeline to be constructed, allowing for people to see how it was spread rather than just who within the community were linked to one another.
This project allows for the interaction between the different artists. I think that a practical use of this project could be to see how the artists work resembled one another by time period and see how abstractionism was modified as other people starting contributing their own work. Something else that I think would be interesting to study would be analyzing how abstractionism varied by country. It could be there were some countries that seemed to influence one another while another country developed their own form of abstractionism which vaguely resembles the others.
Great post! When looking at the project that I chose, I also realized that network analysis is a useful tool to see the connections but lacks information on how things are connected. Adding in more information about how each artist influenced each other or the community might make this a more informative tool!