In October 2018, Factum Foundation, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, and the Digital Humanities Laboratory of Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (DHLAB-EPFL) launched ARCHiVe - Analysis and Recording of Cultural Heritage in Venice, a new initiative dedicated to the use, study and transmission of cultural heritage through digital technologies.

The 1000 square metre headquarters, located on the Venetian island of San Giorgio Maggiore, include a workshop and educational space dedicated to research for technology in the digital preservation of cultural heritage and archives. ARCHiVe is primarily funded and supported by The Helen Hamlyn Trust.

Each of the institutions fuelling this initiative brings a unique skill set to the recording and analysing of cultural heritage. The Fondazione Cini is a leading centre of academic research complete with extraordinary archives and collections, providing an incredible infrastructure for ARCHiVe. Factum Foundation's digital technologies' specialists bring experience, creativity and innovation in the training and transfer of technologies as well as in the development of data capturing systems. Whereas, EPFL's Digital Humanities Lab is perfectly equipped to analyse and extract meaning from the data collected thanks to the intelligent computer vision software it developed in the previous years.

The three partners share the belief that digital conservation is leading to a deeper understanding of works of art and cultural heritage. Hence, it is an epoch-shaping opportunity bound to have a big impact on both research and education. Within this vision, research independence is a key value for guaranteeing the unconditioned progress of science and scholarship and the availability of the results of free and unrestricted research for the benefit of society.

Some of the ongoing and upcoming activities ran by ARCHiVe include:

• Photo archive recording at the Fondazione Cini: Digitisation of the rich documentary heritage of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini and paintings of the Veneto in collaboration with its institutes of history, literature, music, stage design and other arts as well as similar archives. The Replica project, coordinated by Isabella di Lenardo and Frederic Kaplan, actually began before the launch of ARCHiVe, as a preamble to the initiative.
• Developing new recording technologies: Replica 360 Recto/Verso Recording System, Lucida 3D Scanner, Photographic Manuscript Scanner, Portable Book Scanner, RTI computational photographic method, Small Object Scanner
• Workshops with various universities, including Columbia University's GSAPP, ISIA Urbino, Università IUAV di Venezia

Reports

• ARCHiVe Report (May 2021 - May 2022)
• ARCHiVe Report (May 2020 - May 2021)
• ARCHiVe Report (May 2019 - May 2020)

AOA | ARCHiVe Online Academy

Research and training are two core values of ARCHiVe: the courses and workshops organised as part of AOA | ARCHiVe Online Academy (more info here) are aimed at professionals, students and collaborators, and are offered in Italian and English. All classes are later available for free on YouTube.

Click here to watch all AOA | ARCHiVe Online Academy classes