Yael Eylat Van-Essen PhD – Curator / Researcher

Digital Archives and the Museum in the Age of Artificial Intelligence and Post-Representation

Analogue archives and collections management practices used by museums in their traditional forms are currently being replaced by digital technologies. These technologies redefine the relationship between the collection and the archive as well as the ways in which concepts such as representation, interpretation, truth and objectivity are perceived within the museum context. As a result, the museum archive is being considered not only as a storage space but as a knowledge generator and as an arena of cultural discourse and interpretive space to the content it preserves. Based on contemporary archival theories, his paper will argue that the changes in archival practices presented by digital platforms impact curatorial conceptions in museums as the museum archive becomes a potential space for curatorial practices. It will further claim that the new archival practices have the potential not only to change the ways in which knowledge is represented, stored and retrieved but also to generate a self-reflexive examination of how meanings are being created in the museum

Special attention will be given to exploring how AI (artificial intelligence) applications influence how knowledge is documented and organized in the museum’s archives: It will address how AI applications take place in the digitation processes of museum collections, imposing “machine intelligence” on cultural analyze. In addition, it will refer to the potential future implications of AI on curatorial practices and on the visitor’s experience and refer to the societal and political consequences of the use of AI-driven self-customization practices.