Vasulka Live Archive: Re/Sourcing Media Archive Using AI
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | The contribution will introduce the set of applied outputs of the unique interdisciplinary research project Media Art Live Archive: Intelligent Interface for Interactive Mediation of Cultural Heritage partially supported by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic (Project No. TL02000270, 2018-2022). The main output of the project is web Vasulka Live Archive (URL: https://vasulkalivearchive.net/). The website serves as an interactive epistemological tool for searching for recurring audio and visual motifs in the database of artistic videos by Steina and Woody Vaˇsulka, pioneers of video art. The design of the web-interface integrates two specially trained software, for contentoriented retrieval of visual and audio objects. The performance of the software is synchronized in the web interface, to serve as a multimedia tool of audio-visual artwork analysis of the artistic videos. VasulkaLiveArchive.net may (a) assist in the intertextual structural analysis of videos; (b) provide a quantification of the degree of ambiguity in these works; and (c) help determine the extent to which the video embodies a tendency toward abstraction and noise. All of these are properties corresponding to the character of the genre of structural video, of which the Vaˇsulkas are the main representatives. The project represents a unique contribution to the field of applied artificial intelligence (machine learning) in humanities and in media art history and curatorial practice in particular. It expands thefield of AI usage in art historiography, usually focused on older historical periods, towards experimental and conceptual art of the 20th and 21st centuries. In 2022, the project was presented in a format of an exhibition in the Brno House of Arts under a title Vasulka Live Archive / Interfaces. In the same year, it was also accepted into the program of Ars Electronica festival, where it was shown as an example of good practice in the field of eco- logically conscious approach towards preservation of cultural heritage. The project gained MUNI INOVATION AWARD (2023) too. The value of the project lays in its original contribution to the current boom of AI applications (machine learning and the artificial neural networks) and in a unique solution for re/sourcing of media art archives it provides. The web-epistemological tool Vasulka Live Archive con- tributes to the development of interdisciplinary research within the digital humanities with a focus on art sciences. |