AOA | ARCHiVe Online Academy
2024 — 2025 Programme

Access to image-based resources in the context of the IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework)

Online Course (2 lectures / 4 hours, ENG)
curated by Fondazione Giorgio Cini and Factum Foundation

Access to high-resolution image-based resources is fundamental for research, scholarship, and the transmission of cultural knowledge and creativity. IIIF supports the uniform presentation of images of cultural heritage items, allowing for display, manipulation, measurement, and annotation by scholars and students worldwide. Although initially conceived in libraries and primarily used by academics, IIIF also benefits a wider public.
During this course, the work in progress of the new Digital Library of Fondazione Giorgio Cini will be presented: it is IIIF compliant and based on contentDM, a software to store and display digital collections conceived by OCLC.

2nd Workshop Analysis and Recording of Cultural Heritage in Venice

Onsite (3 days / 19 hours, ITA e ENG)
curated by Fondazione Giorgio Cini

The workshop is focused on the application of contactless and high-resolution digital technologies for the documentation of archival and library assets. Lasting 19 hours, the workshop will introduce participants to specific digitisation and post-production techniques and methods that the ARCHiVe Digital Centre has experimented with in recent years in the context of projects developed both in Venice and abroad. The workshop will be held in person and will be based on a learning-by-doing approach, alternating theoretical and practical training. It is open to a selected group of participants (students and professionals with diverse backgrounds). A certificate of participation will be provided to the participants. Included in the participation fee will be the accommodation at the Vittore Branca Center residence on San Giorgio Maggiore Island as well as an ACTV pass for the entire stay.

Maps are too exciting!

Onsite and Online Symposium (8 hours, ENG)
curated by Factum Foundation and ARCHiOx

Technologies, both recent and historic, have continuously evolved, transforming the representation of space and geography, and shaping new forms of consciousness and knowledge. Concurrently, digital technologies are revolutionising access to and research of cartographic materials, whether analogue or digital. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) integrate previously unrelated information and, when combined with artificial intelligence and deep learning, facilitate the analysis and presentation of vast amounts of data that were previously impossible to process. Simultaneously, also 2D and 3D digital recording technologies and GIS are employed together to document rare maps, globes, and other cartographic materials, enhancing research and playing a crucial role in the decision-making processes of restoration and enhancement projects. 

Artificial Aesthetics

Online Class (2 hours, ITA)
curated by Emanuele Arielli

The use of artificial intelligence (AI)-based systems in the creation and interpretation of artworks raises questions concerning authorship, originality, and aesthetic perception. While machine learning algorithms can generate visual, musical, and literary works that emulate traditional styles, there is the dilemma of whether such creations can be considered genuinely artistic or merely technical reproductions. This topic also explores how technology can extend or limit human understanding of beauty, proposing a critical reflection on how AI-generated art challenges established aesthetic categories. Artificial aesthetics, therefore, invites reconsideration of the definitions of art and creator in the digital age, offering new perspectives on the evolution of art and its cultural and social impact. Additionally, the ethical implications of these developments will be considered.

MEET and Digital Experience: Revitalising an Archive

Online Course (2 lectures / 4 hours, ITA)
curated by Maria Grazia Mattei

MEET is the first International Centre for Digital Art and Culture, established in Milan in February 2018. Maria Grazia Mattei is its director and has been leading the Meet the Media Guru platform of meetings and knowledge since 2005. Her aim is to support the development of a new awareness regarding technology as a resource for people’s creativity and the well-being of society as a whole. During these two meetings, the curator will discuss the theme of immersiveness as a new form of entertainment, communication, and knowledge enjoyment, involving some of the most significant figures and phenomena in the sector.

Collective Artificial Intelligence: Large Language Models and Human Sciences

Online Class (2 hours, ITA)
curated by Cristiano De Nobili

This lecture provides an overview of recent advances in LLMs emergent abilities focusing in particular on multi-agents collective behaviour. This refers to the collective (artificial) intelligence that emerges from the cooperation and interaction of several different agents. Multi-agent architectures show promising results for tasks where several ideas/feedback are needed or when the complexity of the problem requires collective intelligence. This is an exciting field where Physics, Computer Science and Sociology intertwine. Countless are the applications in Human Sciences and Human-machine interaction.

Arnaldo Pomodoro Archive: digitising to preserve and enhance

Online Class (2 hours, ITA)
curated by Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro

The Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, established at the artist’s behest in 1995, has the primary task of conserving and disseminating his work. The Archive, managed by the Foundation itself, houses a wide variety of materials documenting the sculptor’s artistic production and professional relationships: photographs, exhibition catalogues, correspondence, models, and other working materials. To provide broader public access to this heritage, the Catalogue Raisonné and the Online Archive projects were initiated, including a collaboration with the ARCHiVe Centre of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini for the acquisition of fragile and complex materials, such as thirteen scrapbooks (1954-1984) and the substantial Ugo Mulas collection (1960-1970). The lecture presents the Archive through its history, materials, and the management dynamics that the Foundation implements for its enhancement; it will also illustrate the ongoing digitisation process and the technologies used for rendering the digital files.

Art and Innovation, a new idea of archives

Online Course (2 lectures / 4 hours, ITA and ENG)
curated by Valentino Catricalà

The course focuses on the relationship between art and innovation, on how artists, using media that are changing our societies, not only open up new reflections on media but also create new practices that impact the world of innovation. Therefore, the point of interest of the research is not only how the world of art can develop through technology but also how the world of innovation can benefit from the relationship with artists. These issues will be developed through case studies with a focus on artists who use databases and archives, to understand how archives reinterpreted by artists can be a source of technological innovation.

Access to Materials in Digital Archives, Copyright and Related Rights: the Archivio Progetti IUAV as a Case Study

Online Course (2 lectures / 4 hours, ITA)
curated by Barbara Pasa

The course will begin with a presentation of the Archivio Progetti IUAV, followed by a description of some of its collections of interest for industrial design. In relation to these, the legal issue of copyright and related rights (for example photography) will be addressed, particularly focusing on the use of digitised materials from the archive (such as photos, projects, etc.) with some examples of best practices adopted by the Archivio Progetti IUAV.

Contemporary Art Animation Studio 2025 By Federico Solmi

Online Course (2 lectures / 4 hours, ITA)
curated by Federico Solmi

The Contemporary Art Animation Studio is a hands-on class geared toward students who wish to learn how contemporary artists use animation techniques in the context of fine art. New York-based Artist Federico Solmi will demonstrate methods used in his studio, a process which integrates gaming, digital and VR technology with traditional painting and drawing techniques to create narrative moving image works. The class will analyse how contemporary artists and Solmi himself have taken long-standing animation techniques and placed them into the context of fine art. Topics such as storyboarding, 3D software, production planning, stop motion, rotoscoping, collage, motion capture, and more are all potential subjects. In this course, animation and art will be hybridised in a personal way to each student’s practice, with a focus on formulating an original relationship between process and concept. A section of the course will also be dedicated to exploring new digital marketplaces like NFT Platforms and the blockchain.

Parcels of Venice

Online Presentation (1 lecture / 2 hours, ENG)
curated by École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

This is a project founded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and led by the EPFL, designed to facilitate exploration of historical sources related to Venice. The platform’s search engine allows users to find names, places, urban functions, and other data drawn from various primary and secondary sources, including census data, historical cartography, and trade annuaries across a broad chronological span. Each information is verifiable and traceable within the extraction process. The published datasets are accessible to both the scholarly community and the public for reuse in specific studies. The platform is designed to be incremental, allowing for the addition of new datasets and citations. The course will cover the technical background, methodologies, and development choices, presenting datasets and analyses conducted by scholars on urban morphology and city functions.
A follow-up workshop aimed at young researchers will focus on data analysis and interpretation

AI and Heritage: Practical Skills for Extracting Information from Historical Documents

Online Course (3 lectures / 6 hours, ENG)
curated by Digital Humanities Laboratory of École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Generative AI for Fashion, Art and Design

Online class (2 hours, ITA)
curated by Marcella Cornia

The advent of Generative AI has revolutionised creative domains such as fashion, art, and design, offering innovative tools and unprecedented creative possibilities. This talk will delve into the capabilities of generative models, particularly focusing on the increasingly popular text-to-image architectures, and explore the transformative impact of these technologies on the fashion industry and creative processes.

Education, Engagement and Practice through immersive digital experiences

Online Course (4 lectures / 8 hours, ENG)
curated by Factum Foundation

Large amounts of data, information and complex outputs are often challenging to be presented or represented in class, on websites, public databases or exhibitions, and the search for appropriate ways to convey a message is a topic long debated throughout human history, especially in relation to new technologies. The course delves into the latest possibilities offered by digital technologies to experience education, information, and data (re)presentation through engaging immersive media. 

Scientific methodologies, technologies and international standards for the restoration, active preservation and digitisation of sound documents

Online Class (2 hours, ITA)
curated by Sergio Canazza and Alessandro Russo

The lesson focuses on the methodologies and technologies used by Audio Innova srl, developed at the Centre for Computational Sonology (CSC) of the Department of Information Engineering (DEI) at the University of Padua for the digitisation and restoration of sound documents. During the meeting, various case studies will be presented, illustrating the challenges and solutions adopted by Audio Innova and the CSC research group in this field, offering a detailed overview of the digitisation technologies used. Particular attention will be given to the international standard MPAI/IEEE-CAE ARP 3302-2022, which employs artificial intelligence for the automatic analysis of sound documents, improving the efficiency and accuracy of the digitisation processes.