Sixth generation of my art catalogue classification (update)
I’ve been updating my catalogue to its sixth generation, funny how a small project intended to help me out has grown this complex. With this generation, I decided to simplify some features in order to set the stage for easy compatibility. I’m not really wanna be dependent on a high-level software, so I’m making it as simple as possible to deploy on pretty much anything. I think my requirements for the operating system is to be able to read and write files and directories to a disk in ext4 or brfts, and core software to look-up and modify filenames, creation date, modified and permissions. If the computer can do that, it certainly can run and manage this catalogue.
To begin, I’ve separated my production files into two categories: Source and Target. Source files are ones required to produce the resulting output in the desired format; project files. Target files are the output produced by the source files; exports, deliverables, final versions. It’s important to separate those because some target files had source files once and they are not available anymore, or vice-versa.
After this, the first thing I did that is to simplify the ID assignment convention to a predictable 7 characters in the format SYYDDDD, where S is the catalogue symbol, Y is the year of origin and D is the ID number the work is in S. Previously, the length of the code could vary and it had at least one space in it. I also simplified also the Status symbology, which previously used the whole alphabet to convey the availability of source and target of the work; now it uses just 7 letters and a number whose full status is able to fit into a single byte of information.
Examples of the new format: G260064 A240316 T240063 W190125 A281023 N230220
Secondly, also related to ID assignment, is the assigment convention for in-between works. Instead of using the whole alphabet to fit a work between two existing works chronologically, I use a decimal point instead. The precise number to use after the decimal point will be calculated as the its percentage between the dates of previous and next work that are both assigned using a integer. If an integer-assigned work was made October 10 and other of the same type was made in October 20; a work that was made in October 15 is considered a in-between, and its decimal point gonna be calculated to be .5, since the work was made exactly in the middle of two dates. Now, of course there’s some rules to the way numbers are selected here. For example, I’d rather not use .1 or .9 and instead always use half-of-halfs like .3 and .7, unless I’m really, really confident that there’s no other work made between .9 and the next integer (or .1 and the previous integer); it’s not so obvious when it is the case, though. By not doing this correctly, if excessive work is found between a decimal-assigned work and a integer-assigned work, the decimal might run out of space and end up with weirdly specific decimals like 5.97535 that can grow quickly; I call those “ID clumps” (goldklumpen) and they’re just doomed for reassignment, which happens in pools.
Thirdly, since all catalogue symbols needed to be a single character in order to fit into the length of 7 characters, symbols M3 and V3 were renamed to N and W, respectively. This defeats the point of simplicity since I’m adding those symbols but, I think it’s okay. As an extra, I also added two extra symbols G and T. Catalogues of symbol G (as in “gambits”) and T (as in “texts”) are intended for Interactive Art (such as software, digital mechanisms that requires one’s interaction, games, services, etc.) and Written Art (for texts, tables, essays, books, etc.), respectively.
I’m still figuring out how to deal with C symbol. It is the reason I’m holding back making a big list with all published work with their identifiers and all. The C catalogue is the one that ties cross-medium work together, but it’s being a pain to deal with different dates and overall just scattered source/target relations. This subcatalogue alone is the difference between minor and major work, but I’m not confident at its chronological representation since sometimes the compound’s cross-medium relations crosses a large range of time and the way that I normally date my work is not working on this catalogue. I’m still working on a solution.