In the project “Swiss art stories on Twitter”, the Twitter bot “larthippie” has been created. The idea of the project is to automatically tweet information on Swiss art, artists and exhibitions.

Originally, different storylines for the tweets were discussed and programmed, such as:

- Tweeting information about upcoming exhibitions at Kunsthaus Zürich and reminders with approaching deadlines

- Tweets with specific information about artists, taken from the artists database SIK-ISEA

- Tweeting the exhibition history of Kunsthaus Zürich

- Comparing the images of artworks, created in the same year, held at the same location or showing the same subject

The prototype however has another focus now. It tweets the ownership history (provenance) of artworks. As the the information is scientifically researched, larthipppie provides tweets for art professionals. Therefore the twitter bot is more than a usual social media account, but might become a tool for provenance research. Interested audience has to follow larthippie in order to be updated on new provenance information. As an additional feature, the twitterbot larthippie likes and follows accounts that shares content from Swiss artists.

Followers can message the bot and ask for information about a painting on any artist. In the prototype, it is only possible to query the provenance of artworks by Ferdinand Hodler. In the future, the twitter bot might also tweet newly acquired works in art museums.

You can check the account by the following link: https://twitter.com/larthippie

• Swiss Institute for Art Research (SIK-ISEA)
• Kunsthaus Zürich
• Swiss National Museum

• Tugrulcan Elmas, tugrulcanelmas@gmail.com, @tugrulcanelmas