Bringing cultural archives to life
Whether it's jazz recordings, concert footage, photographs or interviews, researchers are applying machine learning and digital museology techniques to archives of cultural data to achieve new artistic and creative experiences. Though the word 'archive' often connotes endless shelves of undisturbed books or film canisters, modern digitization techniques have made cultural archives more accessible as data sources driving research and education. But members of the Living Archive Research Group , which includes EPFL's Cultural Heritage and Innovation Center , see even greater potential in cultural archives: they want to harness the power of these data in the name of creativity. "The Living Archive Research Group is interested in using archives to create new performances and artistic compositions, and to study the impact of such creations on the public," explains CHC Operational Director Alain Dufaux. "The CHC's role is to provide archives to valorize them, not only through technology or the social and human sciences, but through artistic creation itself." Together with colleagues Christophe Fellay of the Valais School of Art (EDHEA); Didier Grandjean and Carole Varone of the University of Geneva's Swiss Center for Affective Sciences (CISA); and Irene Hediger from Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdk); Dufaux is working to develop novel creative and artistic experiences driven by the priceless data contained in cultural archives - from recordings of decades of performances at the Montreux Jazz and Verbier Festivals, to the personal audiovisual collections of Swiss astronaut Claude Nicollier.
