The Digital Ark

04/14/2025

Prompted Peculiar, the first-ever generative AI-only exhibition within a photography festival

At the 2023 Ballarat International Foto Biennale, Prompted Peculiar made history as the first-ever generative AI-only exhibition within a major photography festival. This groundbreaking initiative explored how artificial intelligence can redefine visual storytelling—while navigating the complex intersections of creativity, ethics, and law.

Prompted Peculiar sparked critical conversations on the future of art and technology including legal insights on IP, authorship & consent, public debates on AI’s place in photography, and ethical discussions on AI-generated content.

This case study is a must-read for creatives, curators, and technologists shaping the future of cultural institutions.

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https://ballaratfoto.org/online-exhibition/prompted-peculiar-prize-2023-online-exhibition/

https://www.museumnext.com/article/what-is-promptography-and-should-museums-exhibit-it/

BIFB Inc. acknowledges that we are meeting, creating and working on the traditional land of the Wadawurrung and and Dja Dja Wurrung People. We recognise and respect their cultural heritage beliefs and relationship with the land. We pay our respects to the Elders past, present and future.

04/09/2025

Vision AI in Museum Exhibits through Interactivity, Augmented and Virtual Reality

Now that phones are embraced at Museums as a tool for deeper exploration, American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) is emphasizing vision AI, which combines artificial intelligence with computer vision to interpret visual information.

AMNH is taking advantage of Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) Technology as a method for quickly creating high-quality 3D models of large specimens—thereby more efficiently designing immersive experiences without extensive processing.

Augmented reality is enabling visitors to interact with specimens not only in the exhibit space, but also outside the museum. Virtual reality (VR) offers visitors a distraction-free environment and deeper exploration in a virtual space. VR can create engaging educational experiences through interactive storytelling.

Explore the Museum's exhibits virtually through Google Expeditions, bringing immersive educational experiences to students worldwide.

04/07/2025

Synthetic Memories initiative reconstructs personal memories using generative AI

https://www.syntheticmemories.net

By converting spoken and written descriptions into images using Generative AI, the Synthetic Memories initiative contributes to reminiscence therapy, mental health recovery, and the preservation of cultural heritage.

Memory reconstruction through AI involves a conversation between the interviewee, interviewer, and prompter which begins with oral descriptions which are then turned into visual prompts for generative AI. The prompter assesses and filters the AI-generated results through iterative feedback from the interviewee to influence AI outputs effectively.

The Synthetic Memories project aims to transform museums into public spaces for memory reconstruction by facilitating community storytelling, memory sharing and reconstruction. Useful applications include supporting people with dementia and their caregivers through reminiscence therapy, advocating for underrepresented communities through cultural mediation, and preserving cultural heritage by making tangible oral memories.

04/03/2025

The Rijksmuseum's AI Tool, Art Explorer

https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/art-explorer

At Museum Summit AI, we enjoyed seeing the Rijksmuseum's new AI tool, Art Explorer, which aims to enhance visitor engagement through personalized art discovery. By posing thought-provoking questions to the visitor, the Art Explorer displays up to 25 images from visual collections including paintings, illustrations and photographs—thereby connecting them to unexpected discoveries of art and history and allowing them to create their own art gallery. Art Explorer is designed to inspire through self-discovery, and aligns with the Rijksmuseum's focus on storytelling (rather than gimmicks or search engine results).

Behind the scenes, the artwork collection was fed into an open source AI multi-modal model which handles both text and visual information. This model translates visual elements of the artworks into embeddings—these are its way of rendering pictorial elements that you can then ask questions about. The Museum’s editors have access to the question & answer prompts which nudge the model to deliver relevant results and they can optimize these prompts however they see fit.

03/26/2025

Ed Coderre of The Digital Ark is attending the Museum Summit AI, where the latest innovations in AI and cultural heritage are taking center stage. Stay tuned as he shares some of his favorite projects from the event—showcasing how AI is shaping the future of museums!

02/07/2025

The Digital Ark (TDAC) partnered with Adam Matthew on The Olympic Movement project to digitize almost 40,000 pages from the collections at the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC). We setup a state-of-the-art photo digitization studio on-site at the USOPC Archives in Colorado Springs, CO comprising a team of 3 photographers and digital imaging technicians along with 3 copy stands in order to capture these essential collections. TDAC worked hand-in-hand with USOPC team members to complete this digitization project in 3 months. The USOPC’s historic and rare archival materials comprised loose and bound manuscripts, scrapbooks, oversized items, correspondence, newspapers, official reports, periodicals, pamphlets, and printed books dating from 1896-1996. These high-resolution archival digital images were provided to USOPC as digital preservation master file, and low-resolution derivative images were provided to AM for online publishing. The images from this digitization project are available online in The Olympic Movement:

https://www.theolympicmovement.amdigital.co.uk

https://www.amdigital.co.uk/collection/the-olympic-movement

11/22/2024

We are proud to partner with the The Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper to digitize a very fragile 100th edition newspaper for their 175th Anniversary later this year. The Santa Fe New Mexican is the oldest newspaper in New Mexico and in the West! We were excited to help them celebrate their 175th by digitally preserving this historic 100th edition newspaper and share it with their readers through a digital online exhibit.

https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/why-a-picture-is-worth-175-years/article_04f020ce-a373-11ef-9e7d-a7c7f4a27d9b.html

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/175

07/10/2024

Digital archiving saves Aruba's history for future generations thanks to the Internet Archives Aruba Collection!

By becoming the official custodian of an entire nation’s history for the first time, the Internet Archive is expanding its already outsize role in preserving the digital world for posterity.

02/13/2024

We’re looking forward to supporting our Director of Operations, Mike Boyle, who will be performing a set of music at the Museum of Science, Boston for their New England Synthesizer Festival on February 22. Moonbeam is a collaboration between Mike Boyle and Jake Feen, based in Connecticut. Wish we could be there in person to take in the tunes—hope you enjoy the Festival!

https://mos.org/explore/subspace/ne-synth-fest-winter-2024

05/02/2023

We’re very proud to introduce Paola Brito as part of our amazing team! She’s from Equador and recently moved to Rhode Island where she now lives with her family. She brings a wide array of experience including photography, video editing, online archives, and social media/websites. We’re excited to have her as one of our integral team members in our RI studio.