Exeter University, LI-MA

The humanities have long recognised the importance of documenting art, whether to bring a work into a collection or to generate a legacy and ensure a future activation. Documentation is especially challenging when it involves ephemeral art forms, such as performances and/or hybrid new media works that include code, data, and interaction. AI research recognises the fundamental importance of the preservation, open publication and reuse of datasets through online services. Our Somabotics work theme Performance Documentation Meets AI Datasets, developed in collaboration with Professor Giannachi at the University of Exeter, will explore new creative relationships between documentation and datasets. The theme will investigate how we can document artworks that employ AI, how AI could be used creatively to reactivate them, and how the resulting documentation could help artists creatively and AI researchers to (re)use datasets in more nuanced and creative ways.

Outputs and Highlights

Gabriella Giannachi. Documenting Intangible Cultural Heritage Through AI, UNESCO commissioned and broadcast webinar, 21 February 2025 published in Nuria Sanz (ed.) Artificial Intelligence and Culture, UNESCO Regional Office for Egypt and Sudan, 2025, 36-43.

Gabriella Giannachi. Art, AI and Robotics: Documentation Challenges and Possibilities of AI for Media Art and Performance, 22nd March 2025, LI-MA Amsterdam.