Digital Centre – ARCHiVe
The Fondazione Giorgio Cini’s Digital Centre – ARCHiVe is dedicated to the development and application of new technologies for the digitisation and enhancement of the cultural heritage of the collections and archives preserved on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, belonging to the Foundation’s Institutes and Research Centres.
The Digital Centre focuses on technological research aimed at the conservation, enhancement, and dissemination of cultural heritage. It collaborates with a wide network of cultural and academic institutions globally on projects related to Digital Humanities and emerging technologies for the re-use of data in artistic, creative, and narrative contexts. Digital mediation and research on new technologies applicable in the humanities are tools that facilitate the achievement of significant objectives.
The Centre’s main activities encompass digitisation, educational projects, and digital creativity projects for cultural heritage.
Color slides of Memphis ceramics. © Fondazione Giorgio Cini
The Centre promotes the creation of a new form of interdisciplinary, open-access culture through the development and application of new technologies for digital production and preservation. Its aim is to transfer the skills acquired through collaborative projects, publications, online and in-person courses, as well as scholarships and internships.
In 2018, the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, the Factum Foundation, and the Digital Humanities Laboratory of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL-DHLAB) launched the ARCHiVe Project within the context of the Digital Centre of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini. The aim of the project is to contribute to technological research and to the development of hardware and software infrastructures for the use, study, and transmission of the heritage and archives preserved on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice and beyond.
The Helen Hamlyn Trust has been a key supporting funder of the project from the outset.
ACADEMY
Since 2020, the Digital Centre – ARCHiVe has been organising and promoting the ARCHiVe Online Academy (AOA), a free training programme dedicated to the digitisation of cultural heritage, archives, and Digital Humanities topics. Experts from institutional and professional backgrounds from around the world present thematic courses, workshops, lectures, and conferences, sharing their research and work experiences.
The lectures and courses, which are held both online and/or in person on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, are open to all and provide the opportunity for students from partner universities to earn training credits.
PROJECTS
Thanks to the professional technologies employed in the Digital Centre’s Laboratories, it is currently possible to digitise a wide range of materials, including archival documents, photographs, drawings, canvases and painted panels, sculptures, ancient books, audio materials, and more. All ongoing projects are based on the research and experimentation of new methodologies aimed at preserving, disseminating, and transmitting cultural heritage and its associated knowledge.
PUBLICATIONS
ARCHiPub. On Cultural and Digital Matters is an interdisciplinary series that compiles contemporary research and studies on issues and case studies related to the Digital Humanities, with a particular emphasis on archives, digitisation projects, and the conservation and enhancement of cultural heritage. Each volume addresses a specific research topic, explored by national and international authors from various academic disciplines.
DIGITAL CREATIVITY
Every two years, the Digital Centre realises site-specific and audio-visual projects with international artists, providing access to the files and data obtained from the digitisation of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini’s cultural heritage. These projects, which involve the creative reuse of digital data, include in-house experiments as well as calls for artistic residencies (such as the D.A.I.R. call). They represent an innovative approach to research and the application of digital archives, contributing to the enhancement of digital archives and Cultural Digital Heritage more broadly.
