This poster presents Ontologycore, an ontology and knowledge graph designed to capture the structure and creative processes underlying internet aesthetics; cultural, visual, and lifestyle styles such as "Y2K" or "Dark Academia" that emerge and evolve primarily through social media platforms. Applying Rhodes' 4P theory of creativity and the CREON ontology for modeling creativity theories, the project formalizes six prominent internet aesthetics with the aim of answering the following question: to what extent can a formal ontology describe the inherently fluid and multidimensional character of internet aesthetics and the creative processes behind them? The methodology follows a bottom-up approach based on eXtreme Design principles, utilizing Protégé software to develop the ontology. The ontology organizes knowledge around four top-level classes corresponding to the 4P theory: Person (creators, influencers, consumers), Process (Convergence, Divergence, and Metaconvergence), Product (aesthetic elements and creative outputs), and Press (media and platforms). The concept of meta-convergence, the phase in which divergent aesthetic experimentation solidifies into a culturally recognizable style, is central to modeling how aesthetics stabilize over time. Accuracy was evaluated through competency questions and SPARQL queries using an expanded dataset of 124 unique aesthetic element instances across 26 aesthetics. Results indicate that aesthetics share common creative procedures but are distinguishable by their unique element configurations. While the qualitative experience remains an anthropological phenomenon, ontologies can formalize an aesthetic's "creative signature."
Flinkert et al. (Mon,) studied this question.