Chair: Simone Arcagni (IULM University)

Introduction: Vincenzo Vita (Presidente Archivio Audiovisivo del Movimento Operaio e Democratico)

Speakers:

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Alberto Ciprian (Rai Research Centre)

AI and Archives. New ways for content creation
Artificial Intelligence is revolutionising the broadcast sector, offering new possibilities for the creation and enrichment of audiovisual content. The paper explores a scenario that envisages the use of AI in television production by reusing archive images in an innovative way for the generation of photorealistic avatars of historical characters, enabling new forms of storytelling and historical re-enactment.

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Donatella Della Ratta (John Cabot University)

AI as archive
Artificial Intelligence is rarely associated with the archive, which evokes an idea of the past and preservation, in contrast to the imagery of the future, technological innovation and forward projection typically associated with AI. However, considering AI as an archive allows us to reflect on how the data underlying “training” in machine learning, often perceived as raw, neutral and timeless matter, is actually knowledge produced in the past, collected, selected and used to build and propose a vision of the future. Thinking of AI as an archive repositions it in a perspective of historical continuity, as a device for preserving and reproducing power structures rooted in the past and influencing tomorrow’s knowledge.

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Laurence McFalls (Université de Montréal)

The magic of home movies, the illusions of AI
Although the authenticity of home movies paradoxically lies in their banality, they still pose a challenge to AI-assisted archiving tools, as the latter, with its training biases, normalising methods and hallucinatory temptations, is unable to plumb the cultural and historical depths of this popular medium. Drawing on my experiences of collecting, archiving and valorising 415 hours of amateur footage from the defunct East Germany and developing AI tools for the analysis of such orphan film collections, my presentation will explore the possibilities and limitations of using AI for audiovisual archiving.

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Teresa Numerico (University of Roma Tre)

AI generativity and memory archiving
My talk will focus on the role of AI in the archive and in the generation of artificial content, how the archive becomes an even more important place than in the past in terms of its ability to build trust and select strategic content for collective memory. I will talk about memory and its selective role. About how one must also forget in order to preserve. An archive in which everything is preserved is useless for memory. But also about the centrality of the relational complexity between images, moving images and the phenomenal object of representation. The reference authors will be Derrida with archive fever, Stiegler with symbolic misery and Joan Fontcuberta with beyond the mirror. The sense I would like to give the talk is to illustrate the centrality of the archive in the mediation with reality and its production through the organisation of representation. I believe that the generativity of AI is an element that could increase the importance of archiving as a place of construction and definition of a memory to be projected into the future.

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follows:

Presentation of the constituting Association of Italian Archive Producers. Presented by Daniele Ongaro, Ilaria Sbarigia

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The Association of Italian Archive Producers was set up with the aim of enhancing a professional figure, which, although it has been asserting itself in the world of audiovisual and cinema in recent years, is still little known and recognised in Italy.
The association is committed to the proper recognition of the creative and productive contribution that this figure makes within the production process of works.
The association intends to represent archive producers at public and private institutions and to facilitate collaboration relations with other professional associations and with the archives themselves.
The association Archive Producer Italia also wants to contribute to the dissemination of good practices in the use of repertory material throughout the production chain, from research to delivery, by committing itself to promoting the ethical re-use of both images and new technologies.

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512×512
Arthur Chopin / France / 21’ / 2023

Call me when you get there ACT I
Donatella Della Ratta, Alessandra Turchioe / Italy / 7’ / 2024

Manifesto del post neorealismo
Ilaria Pezone (with frames from Fiore di carta by Marco Sisto; Meteorite by Rune Helgesen) / Italy / 7’ / 2025

The Eggregores’ Theory
Andrea Gatopoulos / Italy / 15’ / 2024

The rocks speaks
Amy Louise Wilson, Francois Knoetze / Congo, Suouth Africa / 7’ / 2024