Cyclops: An Interface to Produce and
Access Archives of Artistic Works
Nicolas Esposito, Bruno Bachimont & Erik Gebers
Within the scope of the EU project CASPAR1 (Cultural, Artistic and Scien-
tic knowledge for Preservation, Access and Retrieval, started in 2006) and the
OAIS standard (Open Archival Information System), our team2 (CNRS/Uni-
versite de Technologie de Compiegne) is focusing on the long-term preservation
of artistic resources. The aim was to propose a framework which preserves ac-
cess to these resources and maintains their intelligibility over the long term.
The more precise objectives were to aid both the study of artistic productions
and new performances of these works. Our contributions led us to design a tool
for producing and accessing archives: Cyclops.
Long-Term Preservation of Artistic Ressources
During the project, our team worked with a number of institutions involved in
artistic productions: INA (Institut National de l'Audiovisuel), IRCAM (Institut
de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), University of Leeds, and
CIANT (International Centre for Art and New Technologies). From the point
of view of preservation, their archives are complex objects. Indeed, works such
as electroacoustic music or multimedia installations are based on hardware and
software that can quickly become obsolete, and they involve non-digital compo-
nents which need to be described/digitized in order to preserve the intelligibility
of the whole. So, the question is: how to achieve long-term preservation with
the relevant designated community (ie the users of these archives, including
composers, musical assistants, archivists and musicologists)?
Approach
Since the specialty of our team is knowledge engineering, we started by mod-
elling activities. We proposed a way to structure the archives using the CIDOC
CRM ontology (International Committee for Documentation { Conceptual Ref-
erence Model, ISO 21127) in order to describe the life cycle of the works. It
allows users to account for each resource according to its relationship with all
the others. It makes the history of the works explicit by answering this question
at each step of the production
ow: who did what?
Esposito, N., Bachimont, B. & Gebers, E. (2010). Cyclops: An Interface for Producing
and Accessing Archives of Artistic Works. ERCIM News No. 80 (special issue on digital
preservation).
1http://www.casparpreserves.eu/
2http://www.utc.fr/caspar/ { Universite de Technologie de Compiegne, France
Tel: +33 344 23 44 23 { fnicolas.esposito, bruno.bachimontg@utc.fr
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We also provided a model for the acousmatic works from INA (electroacous-
tic music) and a methodology with which to archive artistic productions. We
validated the model and the methodology for several acousmatic works, with
other partners using a similar approach: eg the University of Leeds with inter-
active multimedia performances. However, since the members of the designated
communities are not knowledge engineers, we proposed an interface for the CAS-
PAR system that meant they need not handle the CIDOC CRM ontology. We
named this interface Cyclops.
Lifecycle Description
The Cyclops tool allows archive producers to describe the life cycle of an artistic
work. When Cyclops is installed in an institution, it is associated with a set
of concepts, relations and types that come from its domain. Users manipulate
these terms (which are common for them) within a graphical representation of
the life cycle (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Screenshot of Cyclops
Some members of these designated communities have successfully produced
archives using Cyclops. It was also used for the scenarios of the artistic testbed,
for instance when the implicit knowledge of the production team is changing.
The tool provided concrete elements related to some of the key concepts of
the OAIS standard, especially concerning representation information, context
and provenance. Moreover, demonstrations of interaction with other CASPAR
components were made, especially with the DRM component (Digital Rights
Management) and for the IRCAM scenarios (electroacoustic music).
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Preservation Through Access
Cyclops is also a tool for accessing the archives. A dedicated browsing mode al-
lows users to search and access the archives. Reading the life cycle of an artistic
work and referring to attached documents is helpful in understanding it, but is
not sucient for the long term. This is why we implemented features related
to preservation through access. Each element of a life cycle can be commented
on and thus documented, thanks to the contributions of the users. If the desig-
nated community accesses an archive actively, this archive is still alive.
Cyclops is a Web application and is open source. It uses the following tech-
nologies: XUL, JavaScript, SVG, HTML, CSS, XML, PHP, MySQL. While it is
planned that Cyclops will be used on top of a CASPAR system, it additionally
provides a stand-alone mode using its own Web server to store the les.
Future Uses
Now that the CASPAR project is completed, further uses will be found for
Cyclops. The tool will continue to be used by some partners on top of the CAS-
PAR system. Some artists who are interested in the approach will also use it
through its standalone mode. Furthermore, we can establish new collaborations
to adapt Cyclops to other institutions.
This work was partially supported by the EU project CASPAR (FP6-2005-
IST-033572). The partners were ACS, Asemantics, CIANT, CNR, CNRS/UTC,
Engineering, ESA, FORTH, IBM Haifa, INA, IRCAM, Metaware, STFC (project
coordinator: David Giaretta), UNESCO, University of Glasgow, University of
Leeds and University of Urbino.
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