Qurator, 2018-2022

The information management workload of curators and media managers is rising dramatically with an ever-increasing volume of media content, a proliferation of devices, and ever-shrinking timelines. Knowledge workers face a rapidly expanding magnitude of digitally available information and need to find new ways to structure it effectively for profitable use.

The Qurator research project is a collaboration between ART+COM Studios and nine other companies working together to create intelligent solutions that support knowledge workers.

For Qurator, ART+COM builds on the research results of its predecessor project, Digital Curation Technologies, to develop innovative technologies for exhibition curation based on Artificial Intelligence. An interdisciplinary and user-centred design approach puts the focus on the usability of the technologies.

Exploring and structuring a topic is a critical first in the curating process. So, our primary interest lies in the development of tools that facilitate research of not only text content, but other media formats including images, moving images, 3D models, and spoken language. The tools need to be able to incorporate knowledge from external sources to enable a semi-automated generation and classification of ontologies.

“Classical” media content was not the only object of investigation—immersive processes are also included in the Qurator project. The basic concepts of augmented and virtual reality have existed for decades, but the technology has only recently matured enough for use in practical applications. In a subsequent phase, ART+COM is developing the use of VR and AR to support manual curating functionalities, with the resulting methods to be integrated into a toolbox for interactive media content that supports all phases of the curating process.

We are applying the knowledge gained by developing “smart” AI-based exhibits that can personalise and contextualise multimedia content in museums, exhibitions, visitor centres, and showrooms.

The tools and processes developed during each phase are intended for commercial applications, as well as being used in the expansion of our expertise in conceiving and realising innovative, participative, and individualised communication in exhibitions.

Qurator is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).