Yael Eylat Van-Essen PhD – Curator / Researcher

Creating Future Memories with AI

New Technologies have changed the ways in which memories are being generated in museums. The intensive digitation processes and the development of new documentation and archiving methodologies have a significant impact on how the past is explored, experienced and communicated to museum visitors. These changes are part of a more profound transformation in the perception of the museum institution in recent decades: a transition from the perception of the museum as an institution aimed at representing and preserving the values of the past towards a contemporary institution responsible for conveying the challenges of the future. This new approach towards the past, and therefore to shared and collective memories, reflects the current reality in which immediacy and real-time are being prioritized over long-term processes, and a digital ecosystem of dynamic networks and collaborative platforms substitutes autonomous and more stable perception of the museum.

The latest phase in the museum’s digital evolution is the inclusion of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Although these technologies are currently at their preliminary stages of integration in museums, new AI-based practices are already being applied for archiving and knowledge organization and present new possibilities for creating future memories, changing basic museum concepts and affecting the museum’s overall approach to heritage. It will present the great potential for using AI for research, interpretation and curatorial processes in the museum. Yet, it will also refer to the biases AI systems create and how they encounter the concept of originality through their ability to generate synthetic objects. The paper will explore how these new practices, based on feedback systems and statistical calculations, are reframing and reconceptualizing temporal values in museums.

Furthermore, to understand the profound potential impact of AI technologies on museums concerning the concept of memory, this paper will not only examine the different ways in which AI applications are being implemented in museums and the consequences derived from the way they operate. It will also refer to the infrastructures and mechanisms which allow their operation. Therefore, it will explore the different agents and stakeholders (revealed and concealed) involved in these processes and the power structures that they form. By examining case studies from different museums and research projects, this paper will refer to the manners in which the distinct ecosystem generated by AI industries, governmental and academic funding for developments and innovations in the fields of AI and cultural heritage, influence the ways in which past, present and future are being shaped in museums.