More information
Description
The project is focused on innovative activities in the context of Slovak and Norwegian museums, it aims either on audience development or audience involvement and support intercultural dialogue. A digital content that is created responds to social challenges such as gender equality, minority cultures, or artistic freedom. The project directly involves and financially supports cultural players from the creative sector who notably face the negative impact of pandemic lockdowns. The Norwegian partner Sørlandets Kunstmuseum shares their interest for work with digitized collections using AI, connecting SNG with innovative AI research, and help SNG to apply it to their own online collections. Second Norwegian partner Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research contributes its expertise to the project, helping SKMU and SNG to explore the potential of the technology to the field of art. And the Slovak partner Digital arts at the Academy of Fine Arts as a newly established program is looking for collaborations with institutions that give the students the opportunity to work with professionals from the culture on real-life assignments.
Summary of project results
The way the gallery collections (also in Slovak National Gallery) are used in exhibitions, publications and research has been changing over recent years, as a result of new approaches in art history, ways of engaging with the public, and technologies (digitization, open content, online collections). To keep an active role in society, the institutions should reimagine how their collections can be used to communicate our history and cultural heritage in a language that speaks to different communities, different generations, using a variety of media and technologies The mainstream art-historical narratives from the 20th century are built around national/ethnic constructs, movements, and styles, which often fail at this mission. Making meaning of the gallery collections today means to allow for other perspectives: artists as actors (or dissidents) of different cultural and political systems, art as a vehicle of national identity, or the role of women in art history.
The way the gallery collections are used in the exhibitions, publications and research has been changing over recent years, as a result of new approaches in art history, ways of engaging with the public, and technologies (digitization, open content, online collections). To keep an active role in society, the institutions should reimagine how their collections can be used to communicate our history and cultural heritage in a language that speaks to different communities, different generations, using a variety of media and technologies The mainstream art-historical narratives from the 20th century are built around national/ethnic constructs, movements, and styles, which often fail at this mission.
Making meaning of the gallery collections today means to allow for other perspectives: artists as actors (or dissidents) of different cultural and political systems, art as a vehicle of national identity, or the role of women in art history.
Slovak National Gallery (SNG) as well as the donor project partner Sørlandets Kunstmuseum (SKMU) opened their new spaces in 2022/2023. For the exhibitions in the new spaces, both institutions were looking at the ways how digital can extend the on-site gallery experience. SKMU focused on temporary (in-house) exhibitions. The example was the exhibition “Modernismens Pionerer” exhibition, which presented female modernist artists from the Tangen collection and showed how they actively shaped modernism. Another example was the other exhibition "Home", which explored how artists have addressed the theme of migration, displacement across time. With this and other (international) exhibitions, the museum acted as a catalyst for Nordic Modernist art, a free space that embraces differences and is inclusive of opinions regardless of nationalities, gender, or social standing.
All project activities were innovative in the context of Slovak and Norwegian museums, they were aimed either on audience development or audience involvement and support intercultural dialogue. A digital content has been created and it responds to social challenges such as gender equality, minority cultures, or artistic freedom. The project directly involved and financially supported cultural players from the creative sector who notably face the negative impact of pandemic lockdowns.
Both SNG and SKMU shared a common approach by using and experimenting with digital technologies in order to make meaning of their collections. The project connected two approaches of the partner institutions - digital storytelling and cultural AI (artificial intelligence) - and use them n the new exhibition spaces and digital channels, driving the visitor engagement both on-site and off-site (before, during, and after the gallery visit), involving artists, creators, and cultural workers from different fields (design, animation, documentary). SNG created the episodes of the "Art Warm-up" video series, an gallery education format aimed at younger audiences, families, and teachers, focusing on topics such as Humanism, Peace and Conflict, Architecture in a city, or Religion and Art. SKMU worked with the concept of cultural AI - how artificial technology can be used to both expand the access to collections, but also highlight the preconceptions and biases embedded in art history and in AI.
The project helped the promoter a lot in the area of digital content and presentation of collections in exhibitions, because it allowed to consult the plans and procedures with top foreign experts. It allowed the promoter to hire external IT developers and to a large extent allowed to test the plans and subsequently the results in various surveys, which must be carried out by a specialized expert. Thanks to the project, the promoter was able to build and subsequently set up the skeleton of its main digital guide. It allowed the Slovak National Gallery load a testing phase, which was very important because it clearly pointed out the strengths and weaknesses of the digital application. Thanks to the financial resources from the project, promoter was able to move to the live phase and was also able to try out the interactive component of the visitor in the exhibition within the game.
In a museum environment, it is very important to try new trends and reach the widest possible audience, to whom you can also provide added digital value to the exhibition experience with information that cannot be presented otherwise. Moreover, the current visitor automatically expects a digital insert and this direction is developing very quickly. An experienced team of people is needed who can engage and expand the experience of visual art in an interesting way and also include an educational layer through digital tools. The implementation of the project had its ups and downs, but thanks to this, the result is beyond expectations. Slovak National Gallery visitors´feedback is very good.
Summary of bilateral results
The cooperation with the partner has been developed in an equally interesting way. In the first part of the project, the Slovak team visited the partner. Workshops and working meetings were held. The partner gradually clarified how to direct the work with digital content and how to incorporate the results into the new spaces that they reconstructed during the project. During the closing conference, it was amazing to see how the algorithms they created through AI can compare and match Slovak and Norwegian works. The project confirmed that artificial intelligence also has great potential in the field of cultural heritage and Sloval National Gallery plans to work with it, especially in the field of research.The visit of the partners to Slovakia at the end of the project had several layers. Ad 1 introduced the entry of AI into museology, Ad 2 deepened relations between colleagues on both sides, Ad 3 served to exchange experiences in other areas (collection care, digitization, visitor service, navigation system, etc.).