Every year, the HackaLOD challenge brings together multidisciplinary teams at a beautiful spot somewhere in the Netherlands to dive into Dutch cultural heritage Linked Data. At this year’s edition, a team from Cultural AI lab joined the 24h event at the Domtoren in Utrecht on 4 and 5 November. The team, consisting of Sarah Shoilee, Savvina Daniil, Andrei Nesterov, Ryan Brate, Claudia Libbi and Bruno Sartini investigated how symbols depicted on artworks have different meanings in different cultures.

The team connected the HyperReal knowledge graph to Wikidata, to retrieve objects and related objects in the collection of the Dutch National Museum of World Cultures. The resulting knowledge graph provides rich cultural information to contextualize symbolic meanings.

A 3D interface was developed to let users explore these symbolic connections, allowing one to search abstract concepts in various cultural contexts (Islamic, Christian, Chinese,….)

The jury was so impressed by this application that they awarded the Cultural AI team the “Polyvocality Award”, (meerstemmigheidsprijs) worth 1500 Euros. Congratulations on this wonderful achievement!