From Lima to Canton and Beyond: An AI-aided heritage materials research platform for studying globalisation through art

受启蒙运动的启发，从18世纪末开始，英国和西班牙等欧洲殖民列强及其殖民属地的地方官员从世界各地收集信息。地图和图表，以及动植物的科学图画，被委托，当地的艺术家经常被雇用来画和画这些。西班牙的几次科学考察，如何塞·塞莱斯蒂诺·穆蒂斯1783年至1816年领导的前往新格拉纳达总督的皇家植物考察队(今天的厄瓜多尔、哥伦比亚和委内瑞拉)，聘请了当地艺术家，如弗朗西斯科·哈维尔·科特·S提供插图。英国皇家园艺学会和伦敦皇家植物园也委托广州(广州，中国)的中国出口艺术家绘制遵循欧洲科学绘画惯例的植物画，并在伦敦寄来的惠特曼纸上绘制。同样，在此期间，东印度公司积极聘请中国和印度艺术家分别在东南亚和印度绘制动植物。这些文化接触往往导致了混合的艺术实践。到1818年左右，在秘鲁独立的背景下，秘鲁臣民的水彩画在利马被记录在案。最早的与科特·S有关，很快他的假定学生弗朗西斯科·“潘乔”·菲耶罗也会在19世纪20年代加入。到19世纪30年代，费耶罗、他的追随者和模仿者的水彩画变得普遍，并最终产生了数千幅水彩画，这种现象在1850-60年左右逐渐消失。在哥伦比亚和厄瓜多尔也发现了类似的人种图画。与此同时，从18世纪末到19世纪，描绘当地人日常生活的中国出口绘画贸易蓬勃发展。在专辑中也发现了秘鲁风格的古装画，其来源和艺术风格表明它们是在广州的工作室制作的。这些从1780年到1850年在南美洲西北部和广州生产的作品与社会、政治、艺术、地理、经济和技术现象的复杂网络有关，所有这些都影响到它们的创作动机、制作材料、传播和保存手段，以及制作、出售、购买和收藏它们的人的生活。该项目将重点放在拉丁美洲西北部和亚洲当地艺术家为出口到欧洲或北美而制作的一大批人种学作品和精选的科学水彩画(如地图和植物素描)。现在，在美国和英国广泛分布的公共收藏品中都可以找到这些藏品。该项目的目标之一是以这项研究为镜头，揭示美洲、亚洲和欧洲之间约1780-1850年间全球贸易和信息交换网络的细节。颜料、染料和纸张是历史上广泛交易的商品；它们的身份和使用方式往往可以追溯到它们的地理和文化起源。这一时期还出现了新颜料的合成，特别是在欧洲，这使得使用这些颜料来测定物体的年代变得更容易。遗产科学家和保护人员使用先进的成像和材料分析技术来检测、识别和了解艺术品/遗产项目的构成，创建需要专家处理和解释的大型数据集(因此，对非科学家的进入和使用造成了障碍)。该项目旨在简化数据收集和解释过程，并通过以下方式向人文学科的研究人员和受众开放结果：(1)提出一种人工智能辅助的数据分析方法；(2)为结果及其解释提供一个在线、链接的开放数据平台；以及(3)展示收集和解释的数据在这个由人文学科主导的大型项目中对人文研究的影响。

Inspired by the Enlightenment, from the late 18th century, the European colonial powers such as Britain and Spain, and local officials in their colonial dependencies, were collecting information from around the world. Maps and charts, as well as scientific drawings of flora and fauna, were commissioned, and local artists were often employed to draw and paint these. Several Spanish scientific expeditions, such as the Royal Botanical Expedition to the Viceroyalty of New Granada (Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela today), led by José Celestino Mutis from 1783 to 1816, among others, hired local artists, such as Francisco Javier Cortés to provide the illustrations.Botanical paintings following European conventions of scientific drawings were also commissioned from Chinese export artists in Canton (Guangzhou, China) by the Royal Horticultural Society and the Royal Botanical Gardens in London and painted on Whatman papers sent from London. Similarly, during this period, the East Indian Company was actively employing Chinese and Indian artists to paint flora and fauna in South East Asia and India respectively. These cultural encounters have often resulted in hybrid artistic practices. By about 1818, in the context of the coming of Peruvian independence, watercolours of Peruvian subjects are documented in Lima. The earliest are associated with Cortés, soon to be joined by his presumed pupil, Francisco "Pancho" Fierro in the 1820s. By the 1830s, watercolours by Fierro, his followers, and imitators became widespread, and were eventually produced in the thousands, with the phenomenon tapering off around 1850-60. Similar ethnographic drawings are found in Colombia and Ecuador. In the meantime, trade in Chinese export painting, depicting daily life of locals, from Canton flourished in the late 18th to the 19th century. Costume paintings of Peruvian types are also found in albums with provenances and artistic styles suggesting that they were made in studios in Canton. These works produced in north-western South America and in Canton from 1780 to 1850 are connected to a complex web of social, political, artistic, geographic, economic, and technological phenomena, all of which affected the motives for their creation, the materials from which they were made, the means of their dispersal and preservation, and the lives of the people who made, sold, bought, and collected them. This project will focus on a large group of ethnographic as well as selected scientific watercolours (e.g. maps and botanical drawings), made for export to Europe or North America by local artists in north-western Latin America and Asia. These are now found in widely dispersed public collections in the US and UK. One of the project goals is to use the study as a lens to reveal details of global trade and information exchange networks among the Americas, Asia and Europe ca. 1780-1850. Pigments, dyes and paper are commodities that were traded extensively throughout history; their identity and the way they are used are often traceable to their geographic and cultural origins. This period also saw the synthesis of new pigments, especially in Europe, making it easier to date an object using these pigments. Advanced imaging and material analysis techniques, used by heritage scientists and conservators to detect, identify and understand the composition of artworks/heritage items, create large data sets that require expert processing and interpretation (hence, creating a barrier to entry and use by non-scientists). This project aims to streamline the data collection and interpretation processes and open the results to researchers and audiences in the humanities by (1) advancing an AI-assisted method of data analysis, (2) providing an online, linked open data platform for the results and their interpretation, and (3) demonstrating the impact of the collected and interpreted data for humanities research in this large scale humanities-led project.