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- AboutWhy ‘count’ art? Because all cultures, from the most ancient all the way to your own community, utilize symbols and repetitive elements in art. By tracking the use and context of these symbols and elements, we gain insight into the meanings behind them. This is particularly important when we study ancient cultures or those that are considered ‘lost’, but even well known artists often had their own hidden agendas. Michelangelo, for instance, hid precise anatomical drawings in his Sistine Chapel, but these were only recently recognized. How much more is hidden in plain sight? Any image of any kind in any media from any period can be counted. This is true whether it is a relief image on an ancient Egyptian temple wall, a Rembrandt painting, an Etruscan sculpture, or a modern mixed media work. Below is a concise introduction to the Art of Counting, followed by a complete transcript. Transcript: Why ‘count’ art? Because all cultures, from the most ancient all the way to your own community, utilize symbols and repetitive elements in art. By tracking the use and context of these symbols and elements, we gain insight into the meanings behind them. This is particularly important when we…
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- Tacky TouristsThis is the gallery for our ongoing series of tourists wearing or doing, shall we say…interesting things. Tourists seem to have an amazingly oblivious quality about them, regardless of the attraction they are visiting. In my early 20′s, I worked at Walt Disney World in Orlando for several years and saw some intensely bizarre behavior from our guests. These people were from all countries and walks of life; it didn’t really seem to matter–tackiness comes in many, many flavors. We’d joke that there was a cast member (aka employee) and storage unit at every entrance to the property, greeting each guest with a chipper “Welcome to Walt Disney World! Please leave your brain in the locker and gather it upon exit–you won’t need it here!” Getting punched in the face by a 65 year-old woman, angry that her wailing granddaughter had been unable to gather signatures from all four of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles due to the crowd at their popular ‘Meet and Greet’ appearance, was one of my more surreal experiences to date. In traveling to historic landmarks in Europe, I was often disturbed by the utter lack of knowledge of some visitors. One woman I encountered in…
- SupportCollaborate with the Art of Counting Team: If you are a subject matter expert in any area of art history (a graduate degree or higher is preferred, but not always a requirement), you can help Art of Counting by adding the images from your area of expertise into the database. This includes the creation of variable lists and data entry. I am currently working on a few non-Egyptian variable lists, including a list designed to record information about Etruscan art, one for Ancient Near Eastern material, a list for Rembrandt portraiture, and another to record Salvador Dali’s paintings. Leave a comment below if you are interested in collaboration. Help Fund the Art of Counting: Let’s face it, there are costs to this kind of endeavor. Just maintaining the website costs $15 per month, we need to purchase new software to build the next iteration of the database, and all of it requires a lot of time. Any support you feel like giving would be sincerely appreciated and put to extremely good use in this pursuit! Thank you for your interest in this project.
- ProductsCan’t get enough of ancient Egypt? Need some unique gifts? Want to support ground-breaking research? Get it all by visiting the new Art of Counting store! A wide selection of calenders, note cards, coffee mugs, water bottles, and more, all embellished with unique images recorded during my research seasons in Egypt. Something in this growing collection of products is sure to please even the most discerning Egyptophiles! Professional Egyptologists, infamous for filling their offices with Egyptian imagery, will delight in the Seth mouse pad, feluca clock, and excellent views from the Qurn in our ‘Hiking the Theban Hills’ calender. And you will love knowing that a portion of the proceeds go directly to funding the Art of Counting project, a collaborative effort dedicated to bringing quantifiable statistical analyses to the investigation of our visual record. Happy shopping!
The Egyptian protests, the future of Egyptology, and a call to action
0The current protests in Egypt show us exactly how fragile the illusion of stability can be in the face of reality. It truly is astonishing that these ancient objects and sites have survived at all, across these thousands of years. It is breathtaking and utterly …
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Art of Counting founder Amy Calvert to receive PhD in Egyptology
It is my great pleasure to announce the successful defense of my Ph.D. dissertation, on which the Art of Counting project is based. On Friday, January 21, I met my advisor, David O’Connor, my readers, Ogden Goelet and Diana Craig Patch (Associate Curator, Department of …
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Tacky Tourists: Stupidity in sundresses with our first Paris Hilton Award candidates of the year!
Our ongoing series of tourists doing or wearing, shall we say…interesting things. Some will make you snicker at the silliness, some will make you wail at the selfishness, and others will make you wish you had control over who was issued a passport. These two …
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Classical literature references recognized in Mona Lisa
Yet another example of the incredible insights into visual material that can come from specialists in other fields. In this case a Queens University Classics professor emeritus, Dr. Ross Kilpatrick, has suggested that the enigmatic barren background of the iconic da Vinci painting is actually …
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2010 Tacky Tourist Awards announced!
This project is dedicated to performing serious research, using the combination of statistics and Egyptological knowledge to uncover previously unrecognized patterns in ancient images. However, all work and no play… Since our June 2010 launch, the Art of Counting has shared many photos of tourists …
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Happy New Year from Ancient Egypt
Enjoy this collection of ancient Egyptian images of rebirth, renewal, and regeneration! All details are original photos from the tomb of Ramses VI (KV 9).
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