FECIT– the dynamic relationship between making, preserving, and sharing
Photography evolved over a period of almost 200 years into something that people more or less understood. Since the arrival of digital imaging, its identity is far from clear. Mediation and transformation are the two keywords as ideas take diverse forms – both material and ephemeral. The ability to digitize objects and images in high-resolution using a diverse assortment of 3D and multispectral systems blur the line between the original and the authentic, the past and the present. Electricity is required for all stages of the input and output.
The talk will consider the relationship between image and surface with a focus on elevated printing systems. It will reflect on different display technologies and the way they are shaping what we see, how we experience and what we create. The emergence of archives as both repositories and creative resources places stress on the quality and quantity of the data and the role of Machine Learning to help navigate an increasingly confusing territory.
Professor Sarah Kenderdine researches at the forefront of interactive and immersive experiences for galleries, libraries, archives and museums. In 2017, Sarah was appointed Professor of Digital Museology at the EPFL, where she has built the Laboratory for Experimental Museology (eM+) exploring the convergence of aesthetic practice, visual analytics and cultural (big) data. She is also director and lead curator of the art/science initiative EPFL Pavilions, reaching beyond object-oriented curation, to blend experimental curatorship and contemporary aesthetics with open science, digital humanism and emerging technologies.
Phil Harvey is a big beardy AI geek who loves working with data and solving interesting problems. He is especially interested soft skills for technical people in data, empathy, ethics and in the impact of data on what people know and how they know it. Starting his career with a BA in AI, he has worked in a wide range of industries from surveying, to architecture, to advertising, to being the CTO and technical founder of a data start-up. Phil now works at Microsoft as an Autonomous Systems Architect in Microsoft Research.
Adam Lowe is the director of Factum Arte and founder of Factum Foundation for Digital Technology in Conservation. He was trained in Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Drawing in Oxford and the RCA London. In the mid 1990s Lowe established a print workshop in London dedicated to the production of pigment transfer prints that blurred the boundary between image and form. 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. His innovations in the field of preservation and technology include the facsimile of Veronese’s Wedding at Cana, the reconstruction of the vandalised sacred cave of Kamukuwaká (Brasil), and the creation of the 3D Scanning, Training and Archiving Centre in Egypt, to record the tombs in the Valley of the Kings and carry out training activities to local communities. He has completed recording and preservation projects in Egypt, Nigeria, Somaliland, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Brazil, Chad, Iraq, Italy, UK, USA, among other countries, and his work has been exhibited at institutions such as the National Gallery of Art, the Royal Academy, The Prado Museum, Waddesdon Manor and Fondazione Giorgio Cini. Lowe has written extensively on the subject of originality, authenticity and preservation.’