Designing vector-based ontologies: can technology empower open interpretation of culture heritage objects?

The goal of this essay is to present our investigation of how a vector-based ontology can account for the idiosyncrasy of interpreting multifaceted information, such as is typical to cultural heritage resources and traces of human activity in general. In this study we model individual classifications of cultural heritage material in terms of the metaphor of projection from a space of properties onto a classificatory layer. We assume each artifact to be defined by a large, virtually infinite number of descriptive features that can be depicted as vectors These vectors define the position of the artifact in the multidimensional space of properties. An individual understanding of the material is described as a nonlinear projection of positions in the space of properties onto a layer of classifications. Implications of this approach are anticipated in the light of applying it to an example of data, derived from a 16/sup th/ Century corpus of work.