Creative User Empowerment

The Creative User Empowerment project works on the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) for museums.

The Creative User Empowerment (CUE) project is a partnership between the Baden State Museum and the Allard Pierson. CUE aims to use artificial intelligence (AI) to unlock museum heritage collections via an Open Source tool called xCurator.

xCurator – The Digital Museum of the Future

With the development of the open-source tool xCurator, AI technologies will not only be able to automatically provide new and personalised access to the museum’s content but also link it to deep external levels of information.

The research and development of xCurator aims to:
– Make use of current technological possibilities;
– Guide digital transformation processes of cultural institutions;
– Stimulate the social discussion and applicability of the phenomenon of AI for heritage.

Using image recognition processes and AI-assisted text production, the museum’s extensive digital collections are made accessible and expanded. A storytelling approach allows users to create their own AI-assisted productions. In this way, an instrument is developed with and for users, with which not only the development and deepening of the context of the museum content, but above all the variety of perspectives and the relevance of one’s own history is developed. In co-creative development environments such as brainstorming sessions, workshops, and hackathons, users and developers together will create the digital museum of the future.

Calls for Participation in the Project

If you would like to contribute to this project based on your expertise, we would like to hear from you. We are looking for expertise in the fields of machine learning, search engines, recommendation systems, responsible use of AI, big data, data analysis, text mining, ethics, etc. You can participate in the form of thinking along, giving solicited and unsolicited advice, participating in workshops and hackathons, deploying students, testing the application, etc.

Do you have questions, ideas, or tips for our project? Then do not hesitate to get in touch!

Special Thanks
The project will be funded from 2021-2023 by the German Federal Government Commissioner for
Culture and the Media (BKM).

Call for tender xCurator

The Allard Pierson and the Badisches Landesmuseum are looking for experienced and enthusiastic software developers who will develop a Proof of Concept for an AI-based application for collection access, called “xCurator”, within the Creative User Empowerment project.