Close-Up Cloud: An Experimental Visualisation for Exploring Image Collections

The Close-Up Cloud allows you to visually explore a collection of historical glass negatives. The close-up overview invites you to familiarise yourself with the collection and explore its wealth of detail. The sizes of the images illustrate the quantitative distribution of iconographic details in the collection. The close-ups become visual navigation elements that can be used to explore the collection. The visualisation makes it possible to experience the glass negatives in a way that would not be possible with the physical objects. A light table can also be used to examine a wealth of details of individual glass negatives and their depth of field. The Close-Up Cloud expands access with an overview of all keywords that have been assigned in the collection and invites interactive exploration.
The collection consists of around 1700 glass negatives by the first photographer and previous draughtsman Wilhelm Weimar (1857 - 1917) at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MKG). He photographed decorative arts objects from the rapidly growing collection on negative plates measuring up to 18×24 cm over a period of 17 years. From massive chests and elegant porcelain to detailed embroidery samplers, the range of motifs in these reproduction photographs spans a wide spectrum. In addition, the negatives provide information on how the photographer staged objects according to size and material and which aids he used for this purpose. A selection of 144 negatives from the previously catalogued collection is accessible in the visualisation via keywords localised/located in the image.
Wilhelm Weimar's glass negatives are part of the Photography and New Media Collection at the MKG. They were catalogued as part of the interdisciplinary research programme PriMus - Promovieren im Museum (cooperation between Leuphana University Lüneburg and six museums in the Hamburg region) from 2017 to 2019 and are published online in the MKG Collection.

A student research project of the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam in cooperation with the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg funded by the Brandenburg Centre for Media Studies.
About the project "Close-Up Cloud: An experimental visualisation for the exploration of... https://uclab.fh-potsdam.de/closeupcloud/