Arnaldo Pomodoro Archive: digitising to preserve and enhance

Contact sheet of the photo shoot of the Rotanti sculptures located on the banks of the Ticino River. Photographs by Ugo Mulas © Eredi Ugo Mulas
Arnaldo Pomodoro's desk in the studio on Via Vigevano, Milan © Andrea Cerabolini
Arnaldo Pomodoro and Ettore Sottsass at the house on Via della Commenda, Milan. Photographs by Ugo Mulas © Eredi Ugo Mulas
The consultation room of the Arnaldo Pomodoro Archive in Vicolo Lavandai, Milan © Andrea Cerabolini
Raw file generated during the digitisation process, before post-production
Digitisation of archival materials at the Digital Centre of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini © Joan Porcel
Digitisation of archival materials at the Digital Centre of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini © Joan Porcel

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3 December 2024
Online on Zoom
3pm — 5pm (CET)

about

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 Digital 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.

The lesson will be held in Italian.

Lecturers

Ilaria Sgaravatto

Archivist at the Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation. She graduated in History and Criticism of Art from the University of Milan and completed a postgraduate specialisation course at the Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna, focusing on the History of Photography. Her thesis on Antonia Mulas was followed by further research and publications in the field.

Dario Peluso

Software developer specialised in computer vision, he currently leads software development at the Digital Centre of Fondazione Giorgio Cini. Coming from a decade-long professional activity in the field of music print (having worked for major music publishers such as Ricordi, Breitkopf & Härtel, Bärenreiter, Schott) he is today focused on the field of digital humanities and technologies at the service of cultural heritage.

Collective Artificial Intelligence: Large Language Models and Human Sciences

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19 November 2024
Online on Zoom
3pm — 5pm (CET)

about

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.

The lesson will be held in Italian.

Lecturer

Cristiano De Nobili

Theoretical Physicist, PhD from SISSA in Trieste. Ten years of experience in Scientific Computing and AI, mainly working on environmental challenges. Lecturer at the Master in High-performance Computing (ICTP/SISSA) and Emerging Tech Advisor for startups and VC fund. His collaborations range from ESA to the SIOS Remote Sensing Centre in the Svalbard Islands. He runs a newsletter: Beyond Entropy.

 

Portrait of Cristiano De Nobili

MEET and Digital Experience: Revitalising an Archive

Renaissance Dreams, Refik Anadol_ph Elena Galimberti

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18 November 2024
Online on Zoom
3pm — 5pm (CET)

about

MEET is the first International Centre for Digital Art and Culture, established in Milan in February 2018.
Maria Grazia Mattei is its founder and director and has been leading the Meet the Media Guru platform for 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 this lecture, 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.

The lesson will be held in Italian.

Lecturer

Maria Grazia Mattei

Humanist and art critic, she has been exploring digital territories for over thirty years. She has been investigating its frontiers and potential since the 1980s. In 2005 she founded Meet the Media Guru, a platform for discussion and public debate on innovation issues. With the support of Fondazione Cariplo in 2018 Mattei created MEET Digital Culture Center, the first International Centre for Digital Art and Culture based in Milan. She is now Founder and President of MEET Digital Culture Centre.

Artificial Aesthetics

Chinese landscape paintings produced using Generative Adversarial Networks (from: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.05552)
Images in Impressionist style generated by Generative Adversarial Networks in 2021
Arca Musarithmica, Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680)

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22 October 2024
Online on Zoom
3pm — 5pm (CET)

about

Curated by Professor Emanuele Arielli, this lesson will discuss 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.

The lesson will be held in Italian.

Lecturers

Emanuele Arielli

He is Associate Professor of Aesthetics at IUAV University in Venice. He has extensive teaching experience at several universities, including IULM University (Milan), G. D’Annunzio University (Pescara), Ca’ Foscari University (Venice), and the Technical University of Berlin. He has authored multiple books and academic papers, and collaborates internationally on research exploring the intersection between aesthetics, media and technology.

 

Recording the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore and its collections

Un ragazzo fotografa la facciata della chiesa di San Giorgio Maggiore.
Recording with photogrammetry the facade of San Giorgio Maggiore Church © Otto Lowe for Factum Foundation
3D model of San Giorgio Maggiore Church © Factum Foundation
3D render of the altar in the San Giorgio Maggiore Church © Factum Foundation
Using LiDAR to record the Longhena Staircase at Fondazione Cini © Otto Lowe for Factum Foundation
3D render of the cloisters © Factum Foundation

key details

27 September 2021
Onsite at ARCHiVe / Online on Zoom
4pm — 6pm (CET) 

about

Participating in the celebrations for the 70th birthday of Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Adam Lowe and Frédéric Kaplan, introduced by Renata Codello, Secretary General of the foundation, presented the methods and technologies in use for the monitoring and recording of the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore and the surrounding waters.
This presentation explains the 3D recording methods and the data processing actions to the audience at ARCHiVe, introducing the possibilities offered by these innovative techniques.

Adam Lowe explains the project of documenting the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, starting from the photogrammetry recording of the Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore by Andrea Palladio, then of Fondazione Giorgio Cini architectures and spaces. Concludes Frédéric Kaplan explaining the process of analysis of recorded data, introducing to the idea of a “mirror world”.

This talk introduces the topics later developed in the course Three-dimensional digitization curated by Factum Foundation in 2021.

Lecturers

Adam Lowe

He is the director of Factum Arte and founder of Factum Foundation for Digital Technology in Preservation. He was trained in Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Drawing in Oxford and the RCA London. In 2001, Lowe moved to Madrid and created Factum Arte, a multidisciplinary workshop dedicated to digital mediation for the production of works for contemporary artists. Lowe founded Factum Foundation in 2009 with the aim of using Factum Arte’s innovative processes and technologies for preservation, high-resolution recording, education, and the development of thought-provoking exhibitions.
He has been an adjunct professor at the MS Historic Preservation at Columbia University, New York since 2016. In 2019, Lowe became a British Designer Industry, awarded by the British Royal Society of Arts.

Frédéric Kaplan

He directs the College of Humanities at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). He also holds the chair of Digital Humanities and is president of the Time Machine Organization, a non-profit organization of over 600 institutions. He is the author of a dozen books, translated into several languages, and more than a hundred scientific publications. His work has also been exhibited in several major museums, including the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Grand Palais, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

On Digital Creativity. The Mask of Time

Video still from The Mask of Time
Performance at the Teatro Verde © Fondazione Giorgio Cini
The Teatro Verde © Fondazione Giorgio Cini
Video still from The Mask of Time
Video still from The Mask of Time

key details

29 September 2022
Onsite at Fondazione Giorgio Cini
4pm — 6pm (CET) 

Reference

about

“The Mask of Time” (La Maschera del Tempo) is the first digital artwork commissioned by Fondazione Giorgio Cini and elaborated from the data of the three-dimensional digitisations of the Teatro Verde (Island of San Giorgio Maggiore) and the documents of the Iconographic Archive made available by the Institute for Theatre and Melodrama. Experimental technologies were used to create this film, such as Midjourney, an image-to-text generator derived from Open AI’s DALL-E and Unreal Engine 5.

Maria Ida Biggi, Director of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini’s Institute for Theatre and Opera, gives us an overview of the history of the Teatro Verde and its artistic events over time.
Mattia Casalegno and Maurizio Martusciello also known as Martux_m, authors of The Mask of Time, dialogue with curator Ennio Bianco about the creative process of their digital artwork, following the preview screening.

Lecturer

Mattia Casalegno

He is an Italian multimedia artist, based in Naples and New York. Since 1999 he has exhibited his work in several solo and group shows and in galleries and festivals, such as MACRO, Netmage Festival, Sant’Arcangelo dei Teatri and the Romaeuropa Festival in Italy, the Mutek Festival in Canada, the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan, the International Symposium of Electronic Arts (ISEA) in Gwangju, the Chronus Art Center in Shanghai, the Cimatics Festival, Nuit Blanche and Update Biennial in Belgium, Le Cube Contemporary Art Museum in France, OFFF in Spain, ARTES in Portugal, and LACMA and Untitled Art Fair in the USA.

Martux_M

Maurizio Martusciello aka Martux_m is an Italian composer and producer of electronic music. He has performed and collaborated with many national and international musicians and groups. He has played at the Villette Numérique, Paris (2004) and the Venice Music Biennale and has participated in the MUTEK Festival, the Sonar Festival, the Romaeuropa Festival and the AltaRoma Festival. From 2003 to 2005, he was curator and artistic director of Sensoralia, an audiovisual electronic art exhibition staged at the Teatro Palladium, Rome, as part of the Romaeuropa Festival.

Ennio Bianco

He is an eclectic figure in the field of contemporary art. He has alternated his work as an entrepreneur in the ICT sector with his roles as an artist — he was part of Renato Barilli’s Generazione Elettronica as Bianco & Niero in the 1980s — and later as a curator. He has presented among others: an exhibition of the Korean video artist Nam June Paik (1993), the first internet and social media exhibition held in Italy “Atelier d’Artista n. 22” (1996) by Franco Vaccari, a series of conferences on digital art “Digital Dreamers” (2017) at the PUK Gallery in Castelfranco Veneto and “Intersezioni digitali” (2018) as part of the “Alta Percezione” event in San Martino di Lupari.

Maria Ida Biggi

Associate professor at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice and director of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini’s Institute for Theatre and Opera. She is curator of exhibitions and author of numerous books, essays and articles on the history of theatre and set design, theatre architecture, directing and the history of the actor. Her research deals with the history of stage design and theatre architecture and is an expert of prominent personalities such as Eleonora Duse and the theatre actresses of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Venice Long Data: A New Platform for the Consultation and Analysis of (Long) Historical Data

Dendrogram on the materials preserved by the State Archives of Venice
The diagram shows the place of emigration (left) and the sestiere of settlement within Venice (right)
Number of galleys sailing along the four main Venetian trade routes during the years covered by the first part of the research
Bubble chart representing all deliberations of the Serenissima Senate on "citizenship"

key details

28 June 2022
Online on Zoom
4pm — 6pm (CET) 

Reference

  • Ca' Foscari University of Venice
  • UDELAR Montevideo | Universidad de la Republica Uruguay
  • Università di Parma
  • Ateneo Veneto
  • EPFL | École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne

about

Guido Caldarelli and Alessandro Codello present Venice Long Data (VLD), an interdisciplinary research project that aims to address historical analysis from an integrated point of view, in the Venetian context, based on the historical database of the State Archives of Venice (ASVe) and the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, using techniques from Big Data analysis, Machine Learning, Complex Networks and generally related to quantitative modelling.
The approach aims to study history from a MACRO perspective, complementary to the MICRO perspective usually conducted, always starting from the original sources and using the most modern techniques available to deal with the transcription and analysis of historical sources.
The dual scope of the VLS project is to obtain a historical meta-database representing a fully searchable interconnected digital version of the ASVe and, above all, to create the basis for a quantitative study of the history of Venice, Europe and the Mediterranean.

Lecturer

Guido Caldarelli

Full Professor of Theoretical Physics at Ca’ Foscari University (Venice), and a LIMS Fellow. He graduated in Statistical Physics at Sapienza University (Rome) and holds a PhD from SISSA in Trieste. After Postdocs in Manchester and Cambridge, he became firstly “Research Assistant” at INFM and secondly “Primo Ricercatore” at ISC-CNR where he is still working. From 2012 to 2020 he has been Professor at IMT Lucca. In 2019 he was one of the founders of SIFS. Since 2018 he has been the President of the Complex Systems Society and since 2016 he has been on the board of the SNP Division of European Physical Society.

Alessandro Codello

He is Principal investigator of the Venice Long Data project & adjunct professor at UDELAR Montevideo (Uruguay). He is also visiting scholar at SUSTECH Shenzhen (China).
He holds a PhD from THEP Mainz (Germany). Before, his post-doctoral research activity was carried out mainly at CP3-Origins SDU Odense (Denmark) and at SISSA Trieste (Italy).

3D techniques for Cultural Heritage

The Vatican Chapels area recorded with aerial photogrammetry © Oscar Parasiego for Factum Foundation
The interior of Asplund Pavilion recorded with LiDAR © Oscar Parasiego for Factum Foundation
A pointcloud of the Chapel designed by Javier Corvalan © Factum Foundation
LiDAR recording session of Teatro Verde fitting rooms © Oscar Parasiego for Factum Foundation
Pointcloud of Teatro Verde © Factum Foundation
The Entry into Palestine of Vespasian’s Troops post-processing © Factum Foundation

key details

14 June 2022
Online on Zoom
4pm — 6pm (CET) 

about

The talk brings updates on the project of recording the entire Island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, headquarters of ARCHiVe, and the collections preserved at Fondazione Giorgio Cini.

Carlos Bayod Lucini, project director at Factum Foundation, explains in depth the 3D digitisation of the Teatro Verde and the Vatican Chapels recorded with LiDAR and Photogrammetry.

The Teatro Verde in the woods of Fondazione Giorgio Cini is an open-air theater designed by Luigi Vietti in the 50s and commissioned by Vittorio Cini . The site is currently under restoration and its 3D recording conducted by Factum in 2022 is part of the project to reopen the theatre to the public in collaboration with Cartier. The talk intends to explain how a detailed 3D documentation can also form part of an architectural site’s restoration and preservation project. 

On the same note, the talk introduces the colour and 3D recording of the surfaces (front and back) of one of the oldest tapestries in the collections of Fondazione Giorgio Cini: The Entry into Palestine of Vespasian’s Troops (1470-1480), in need of restoration.

Lecturer

Carlos Bayod Lucini

He is Project Director at the Factum Foundation. His work is dedicated to the development and application of digital technology to the conservation, study and dissemination of Cultural Heritage. Bayod has taught at the MS in Historic Preservation at Columbia University in New York among other institutions, and is a frequent speaker for centers such as Museo del Prado, Harvard Art Museums and Fondazione Giorgio Cini. 

Portrait of architect Carlos Bayod looking intensely at the camera.

Digital Training, Creativity and Museum Communication. The New Professions for Cultural Heritage

Example of digital exhibition layouts © Cristina Barbiani
Example of digital exhibition layouts © Cristina Barbiani

key details

23 June 2022
Online on Zoom
4pm — 6pm (CET)

about

Cristina Barbiani, scientific head of the Digital Exhibit Master’s course at the IUAV University of Venice, will introduce the new possibilities of digital technology for the creation of multimedia and interactive systems, combining knowledge and technologies related to ‘computer vision’ and aimed at the creation of museum displays, for design, architecture, multimedia and performing arts.

Lecturer

Cristina Barbiani

She is an architect with a PhD in History of Architecture and the City, Science of the Arts and Restoration at the School of Advanced Studies in Venice. She holds a degree in Design and Production of Visual Arts from the IUAV University of Venice. She is the scientific head of the Master Digital Exhibit at the IUAV University of Venice. She has a transversal education between architecture and multimedia and performing arts completed by study periods at New York University and MIT in Boston.

Art as a Method of Experimental Preservation

The Ethics of Dust: Doge’s Palace as exhibited in the Arsenale, 53rd Venice Art Biennale, Jorge Otero-Pailos, 2009
Dirt, Dust and Ruins, exhibition at Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney, Jorge Otero-Pailos, 2013
The Ethics of Dust, exhibition at the Museum of Yerba Buena, San Francisco, Jorge Otero-Pailos, 2016
Distributed Monuments, latex and dust, Jorge Otero-Pailos, 2022

key details

7 October 2022
Online on Zoom / Onsite at ARCHiVe
2pm — 4pm (CET)

about

This talk discusses Jorge Otero-Pailos’ approach to art as a method of experimental preservation and argues for its relevance in imagining a future for the existing built environment centred on mutual care. Jorge Otero-Pailos draws from a series of recent works in which he employs material residues of buildings and sites – including airborne atmospheric dust, waterways, traces of sweat, and body sounds – to render their invisible meanings visible. In particular, he focuses on his Ethics of Dust series, explaining how he uses art as a method for the experimental preservation of dust, the kind the atmosphere deposits on buildings. This important historical and environmental record usually goes unrecognized. The artworks in The Ethics of Dust series isolate dust and make it tangible by transferring it from the surface of buildings onto translucent casts. Jorge Otero-Pailos also presents a selection of dust casts taken from the Doge’s Palace, Westminster Hall, and other buildings around the world, and discusses the unexpected histories that each of them unveils. He connects the dots between these punctual histories to outline a larger concept they all contribute to, namely that of atmospheric heritage.
The talk is also a presentation of Jorge Otero-Pailos’ book Historic Preservation Theory: An Anthology, Readings from the 18th to the 21st Century.

Lecturer

Jorge Otero-Pailos

Director and Professor of Historic Preservation at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, he is an architect, artist, and theorist specializing in experimental forms of preservation. His work as an artist has been commissioned by and exhibited at major heritage sites, museums, foundations, and biennials, including Artangel’s public art commission at the UK Parliament, the Venice Art Biennial, Victoria and Albert Museum, Louis Vuitton Galerie Museum, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, SFMoMA, Hong Kong’s Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage and Arts, Frieze London, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts