Get Artist Timeline Data

Retrieves comprehensive timeline data for an artist including membership dates, artwork creation history, collection launches, and productivity metrics. This function provides the temporal narrative foundation for storytelling components.

Migration-Ready: This function is designed to be moved to artutils in the future. It is a pure data function with no Shiny dependencies.

get_artist_timeline(artist_uuid, cn)

Arguments

artist_uuid

Character. Artist UUID (validated for proper format)

cn

Database connection object (from artcore::dbc())

Value

A named list with the following elements:

member_since

POSIXct. Date when artist joined the platform

years_active

Numeric. Number of years the artist has been active

first_artwork_date

POSIXct. Date of first artwork created (NULL if none)

latest_artwork_date

POSIXct. Date of most recent artwork (NULL if none)

total_artworks

Integer. Total number of artworks created

collections

Data frame with columns: collection_uuid, collection_name, created_utc, artwork_count

quarterly_productivity

Data frame with columns: year, quarter, artwork_count, period_label

peak_period

List with year, quarter, artwork_count for most productive quarter

milestones

Data frame with columns: date, type, description, significance

Details

The function aggregates temporal data from multiple tables:

• Artist membership from app.artist_index

• Artwork creation dates from app.artwork_index

• Collection launches from app.collection_index

• Productivity metrics calculated from artwork counts

Quarterly productivity is calculated by grouping artworks into quarters and identifying the peak period. Milestones include significant events like:

• Platform membership

• First artwork

• Collection launches

• Productivity peaks

Database Tables

• app.artist_index (created_utc)

• app.artwork_index (artist_uuid, created_utc, title)

• app.collection_index (artist_uuid, collection_uuid, collection_name, created_utc)

See also

get_artist_career_stats for career-wide statistics, get_artist_evolution for creative evolution analysis

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
cn <- artcore::dbc()
artist_uuid <- "123e4567-e89b-12d3-a456-426614174000"
timeline <- get_artist_timeline(artist_uuid, cn)

# Access timeline data
timeline$member_since # When they joined
timeline$years_active # How long they've been creating
timeline$quarterly_productivity # Productivity over time
timeline$peak_period # Most productive quarter
timeline$milestones # Key moments in their journey

artcore::dbd(cn)
} # }