AI and Society Series: 'Digital Archives: Space, Time and Memory' Online Seminar
AI and Society Series: Space, Time and Memory (Online seminar) in association with ICCE, Goldsmiths, University of London
Our second seminar focuses on digital archives, we will explore the impact of artificial intelligence on practices of meaning-making and memory formation.
Held: Wednesday October 20, 2021
The seminar aims to explore the impact of digital archives on our notion of archives. Whereas traditional archives can be understood as spaces of permanent ordering objects and of preservation for remembrance, digital archives disrupt institutionalized archival systems and provide a speedy and wider information network which allows users greater ease to share, reuse, remix and even modify the content. In this sense, unlike traditional ’art of memory’ whose mnemotechnical storage had always linked memory to space, digital archives destabilize the fixed link between memory and space. If coupling place and memory can be seen as a means to order the interpretation of things, then we need to consider different practices of meaning-making and the formation processes of memory. The seminar, therefore, focuses on the relationship between space, time and memory. We consider how digital spaces change forms of storage and timescale, and impact on the organization and interpretation of memories and narratives.
Speakers
WHERE ARCHIVAL "MEMORY" TAKES PLACE. The Media-Epistemic Challenges of Technical Storage, and their (Non-)Entanglement with Human Remembrance
Abstract: To formulate it provocatively from the media-archaeological beginning: Truly "digital archives" are neither about phenomenal "space", nor "time", and cultural "memory", but rather about techno-mathematical topologies, differential operations of delayed transfer, and material, or energetic, storage. This invites for an adoption, and "archivological" redefinition, of Bakhtin's concept of the "chronotope", to technical storage - a temporal geometry which leaves behind the traditional "art of memory" rhetoric. Against the anthropocentric focus by media phenomenology, and the rather discursive Humanities' perspective, "radical" media-archaeological analysis focuses on machine "storage", and its concrete techno-logical embeddings, rather than on humanly embodied remembrance. Far from technological determinism, though, this approach therefore argues for discovering storage mechanisms as a processual epistemic of its own internal knowledge (technológos), and still worth to be known from the human, cultural outside. In a final outlook, and with an eye on the impact of current artificial intelligence practices of memory formation, this paper discusses to what extent the apparent incompatibility, in the "memorization" processes, between human brain and electronic and computational technologies, is inevitable.
Bio: Wolfgang Ernst is Full Professor for Media Theories at the Institute for Musicology and Media Science at Humboldt University in Berlin. His current research covers "radical" media archaeology as method, the theory of technical storage, the technologies of cultural transmission, micro-temporal media aesthetics and their chronopoetic potentials, and sound analytics ("sonicity") from a media-epistemological point of view. Most recent book in English: Technológos in Being. Radical Media Archaeology, & the Computational Machine (2021).
Hidenori Watanave + Anju Niwata
“Rebooting Memories” : Prewar & War Through Colorized Photographs in Collaboration with AI and Human
Abstract: Photographs from the prewar era to an era in the immediate aftermath of the war are all monochrome. Since we are used to color photographs, the black and white photographs may appear lifeless, static, and frozen to us. In addition, 76 years have passed since the World War Ⅱ ended and the war survivors are aging year by year. For most of the young people who have never experienced war, however, the war is just a past event and tends to be grasped as something not related to ourselves. For these reasons, we often feel far-removed from the war and fail to view it just as part of our own history. Efforts to colorize these photographs began in order to address this problem. We are working on a project to “reboot” the memories of the war and to foster dialog by colorizing the photographs through a collaboration between artificial intelligence (AI) and humans. “Rebooting Memories” is an attempt to cultivate conversation through colorized photographs. Photographs that have been frozen in time are defrosted using the latest technology, which turns them into a “flow,” rather than a “stock,” triggering communication to carry our past memories into the future. In the project, monochrome photographs are automatically colorized and manually edited based on war survivor’s resurrected “colors” of memories, comments posted on social-networking platforms, and various documents from that era. During the process, past events come alive in people’s minds and enable dialog. The activity, initiated by Niwata in the former Nakajima district (now Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park), has been greatly expanded since she met a war survivor who once lived in the district. The colorized photographs represent the rich “Color of Memory” that has been resurrected through conversations with former residents. In addition, the colorized photographs, posted on a social-networking site by Watanave, are widely viewed, and many users including the movie director join conversations regarding events related to the war. As such participants provided various pieces of information, more facts came to light. The project aims to encourage people who have hitherto been uninterested in war and peace to imagine these issues as something belonging to one’s present-day life and to spark conversation on their thoughts and feelings to others. Those who have overcome their feelings of hatred and sadness after experiencing the war, have a noble desire to ensure that henceforth, nobody will ever endure such an experience. It is hoped that their thoughts, along with the empathy of the public, will permeate society through “rebooting” memories and be passed down to future generations.
Bio: Dr. Hidenori Watanave was Born in Oita, Japan in 1974.
He is a professor at the Graduate School of the University of Tokyo. He researches the ideal way of the inheritance of the memory by information design and digital archives. He has produced digital archives such as the “Hiroshima Archive”, the “Nagasaki Archive” and the “Last Movements of Tsunami Disaster Victims”. He began coloring black and white photographs by AI technologies in 2016 and has been working on the “Rebooting Memories” project in cooperation with Niwata since 2018. His works were selected in ARS Electronica, Japan Media Arts Festival, etc.
Anju Niwata was born in Hiroshima, Japan in 2001.
She is a secondary student of the University of Tokyo. She’s practiced and researched “The Space of Peace Education.” Since 2017; when she met a former resident of the Nakajima district (now called Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park), she’s advanced “Rebooting Memories” activity; like the exhibition, making short-film and AR application, publishing colorized-photo collection. She also works on a collaboration with music and colorized photos. [AWARDS] the Student Award at the UFPFF(2018), Foreign Minister’s Award at the speech contest by UN Association of Japan(2019), President’s Award for Students in the University of Tokyo(2020), Hiroshima Book Award(2021).
The Memory Palace in Virtual Reality:
Human cognitive ability and the computer interface (experiments in museums and libraries)
Abstract: The paper explores relationship between human cognitive ability and computer interface by introducing the two collaborative projects of Dai Nippon Printing Co. Ltd.(DNP): Louvre-DNP Museum Lab and BnF (The Bibliothèque nationale de France) -NDP Museum Lab. The purpose of the Louvre Museum project is enhancing art appreciation in museum experience. To achieve this, the project offers various ways of seeing, methods conveying information and a lasting tangible experience of the pleasure of viewing. This is because art appreciation is not simply a matter of looking at artworks, but a process of seeing, understanding, and experiencing, by using our imagination and sensibility to interpret meaning. The Richelieu Renaissance Project at the French National Library, developed a unique experience for appreciating objects in their virtual versions, observing a collection from any desired angle in order to encounter unexpected perspectives and knowledge, to generate surprise, emotion, empathy and to enhance understanding. By introducing these two projects, the paper considers the ways our experience of 'memories in virtual reality’ are constructed.
Bio: Ichiro Hisanaga is Head of Human Engineering Lab, Marketing Division, Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. 1991 Graduated from Kyushu Institute of Design, Department of Industrial Design. Since the mid-1990s, he has been involved in the special design of museums, art museums, corporate museums and libraries. He has also been involved in digitization of materials, especially the development of interactive systems for utilizing digital materials. He has expanded his interest of ergonomics to cognitive science and psychology and engaged in system design of the interactive spatial experience. Since 2010, he has been in charge of the digital archive project in the new marketing division of Dai Nippoin Printing Co, Ltd. He also a visiting professor at Ritsumeikan University, Faculty of Literature, Art Research Centre and a visiting researcher at The University of Tokyo Graduate School Information Science.
Discussant
Shunya Yoshimi is a professor at the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, the University of Tokyo. He is one of the most influential cultural sociologists in Japan and best known for helping introduce cultural studies to Japan. His research topics include cultural studies, media studies and urban sociology. Shunya Yoshimi has authored several books on subjects such as cultural theory, urban culture, international exposition, media culture, information technology, the emperor system, and the Americanization of modern Japan and East Asia. He is a member of the executive committee of Inter-Asia Cultural Studies (Routledge), editorial board of Cultural Studies (Routledge), associate editors of Theory, Culture & Society (Sage), and the editorial advisory board of Japanese Studies (Carfax Publishing).
Mike Featherstone is a Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is founding editor of the journal Theory, Culture & Society and the Theory, Culture & Society Book Series. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Body & Society. Author of Consumer Culture and Postmodernism (2nd edition 2007) and Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity (1995). He is editor of over a dozen books and author of numerous journal articles and book chapters on social and cultural theory, consumer culture, globalization, ageing and the body. His books and articles have been translated into sixteen languages.
Convenor & Chair: Dr Tomoko Tamari (Institute for Creative & Cultural Entrepreneurship, Goldsmiths, University of London)