Our contribution “WOR(L)D EMBEDDING – Curating/Computing/Displaying Semantic Pathways through Belvedere’s Online Collection” to the online conference The Art Museum in the Digital Age of the Belvedere Research Center is now available as a video.
Our initial intention was to review and audit the current development of all our approaches after 18 months of the project‘s time span in a (semi-public) symposium-esque format. Due to COVID-19 this CONCLUSIVE SPACE was a somewhat smaller affair in the form of a one day workshop (29.1.2021) including the whole DAD team with all COVID precautions taken.
We planned the remaining half year of the project which will be used for a final documentation of the assembled approaches, of the models, code and curatorial developments. This CONSTRUCTIVE SPACE will also finalize hands-on displays and physical proof of concepts for use in the final PRESENTATION SPACE.
This PRESENTATION SPACE will be a comprehensive exhibition documenting and presenting all achievements and works-in-progress at the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art. Please watch this space for a making-of and behind-the-scenes documentation of this process, as well as announcement of the exhibition which will open beginning of summer.
The Technical Museum Vienna (TMW) has just opened their new exhibition on “Artificial Intelligence?”, where a robot invites you to come on a journey through the history of AI.
This includes a model of a weaving loom programmable by punch cards or a transparent model of the human brain.
There are also interactive stations e.g. trying to guess your emotional status via camera, which is appearantly not easy with visitors wearing masks due to COVID-19. You can also try to teach a dog/cat classifier by showing it respective pictures.
The top floor is dedicated to the intersection of AI and the Arts, concentrating on music, literature and visual arts.
This is also where our robot “curator” Dusty as well as our exploration of automatic colorization of classic statues is being featured.
On 12.11.2020 DAD’s Niko Wahl presented our intermediate results on the third research day of the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Due to COVID-19, this event was an online ZOOM meeting. The goal of the ]a[ research days is to give an overview of all ongoing research projects at the academy including discussions with all participating colleagues.
Niko Wahl gave a short introduction of our project and an overview of DAD’ s collaborations with three different museums, where we work with an archive of an ethnological journal, a fine arts gallery and the statues in the Academy’s Glyptothek.
Since our work with the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art and with the Belvedere, Vienna, has already been documented in previous blogposts [1][2], lets turn to the presentation of plaster casts at the Academy‘s Glyptothek, which we explored with Dusty, an off-the-shelf household robot.
Many people associate Artificial Intelligence (AI) with the development of ever more powerful and dextrous robots, along with horror scenarios of these machines taking over the planet. In reality robots are a small part of AI which is rather dominated by machine learning software solutions powering your Internet search engine, the natural language interface to your mobile phone, online music, movie and product recommendations and many other everyday technologies.
On the other hand, many people already own robots with limited forms of AI, for instance vacuum cleaning robots. What if we confront such a household robot with a – supposedly obsolete – museum collection of historic plaster copies of famous statues, whose very physis seems to be made of dust.
The robot takes its own route through the museum space. Following its built-in algorithms it perpetually finds new ways through the collection. It seemingly decides for itself in what order to visit the museum objects, all the time metaphorically internalizing the objects of art while inhaling their dust.
Other visitors are free to follow the robot on its path through the museum space engaging with its exhibition narrative. They might benefit form surprising relationships between objects of art established by the often creative course of the robot. Smart last generation vacuum cleaning robots are able to share their sensory experiences with others of their kind. These shared experiences usually are measurements of objects and how to avoid them when traversing a room. But what if this cloud communication, usually not accessible to us, deals with objects of art instead of everyday items? Will meeting David or the Pieta change the robots’ discourse? What if the robot meets a portrait of itself?
The DUST AND DATA team evaluated their progress and current status in a one week workshop at Drosendorf (Lower Austria). We also planned the second year of the project including concrete next steps for our three Case Studies: the Glyptothek of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, the Volkskundemuseum Wien and the Belvedere.