Art Genomes?

Structuralist and post-deconstructionist and neo-post-pseudo-intellectualist-structuralites have been advancing the idea that we can classify and thus, to some extent, interpret or evaluate works of art by their semiotics. Briefly, this means we think of these art works as systems of signs that stand for things, and then consider the way the signs are configured within a work of art, and how that might reflect something about the things the signs stand for. Language is a semiotic system ... we use words to stand for things, and in writing, the combinations and sequences of words says something about the subject we're writing about. At least, we hope it does. Much of the 20th century philosophizing about this dealt with movies or, as it's more pompously known, the art of cinema.

That's all well and good, but now there's a very practical problem with is leading to a new way of thinking about this. Basically, the problem is that you've been listening to music through Pandora, or renting movies via Netflix, and you'd like to know what other music or movies would appeal to you.

These online content sources have tons of movies and music, but the problem is how to classify it so that you can identify which ones might appeal to audience members with certain tastes. Netflix, for example, asks you to rate each movie you rent, and over time, it builds up a database of what movies you've liked.

But there's still the similarity problem: If your favorite movies were Ishtar and Gigli, how to you decide which other movies are similar?

One promising answer is the movie genome. Basically, the idea is to identify a slew of properties that a movie can have, like plot, cast, awards, box office success, etc. Comparisons of movies on the basis of their genomes are likely to good matches and non-matches.

Now, you might think "Isn't this just a fancy way of comparing all these properties? Calling them a genome doesn't really change anything."

The answer is "Well, yes." It is just a fancy way of comparing these things. But treating all these properties as genes accomplishes two things:

1. It makes the classification of movies more systematic, and
2. It makes it possible to use some elaborate algorithms for doing the comparisons, finding near-matches, etc.

Obviously this genome idea could also be applied to books, plays, paintings, etc. It may lead to some new ideas about how to classify and interpret works in these art forms.

Or not.