Impacts: The Singular Image

Special Presentation: Electronic Life and Living Archive

Background: Electronic Life and Living Archive

A special conversation between Premjish Achari, Sunil Manghani and Ed D’Souza, who co-lead the Electronic Life Research Studio at the University of Southampton, working in partnership with Tate Learning, The Alan Turing Institute, and other cultural institutions.  Their studio explores how AI and data-driven tools can be harnessed ethically to support creative practice, learning, and public engagement. Recent projects include In the Mix and Electronic Life for Tate Britain’s “Late at Tate” series (2023–2024), and Patterns of Power for Women in Revolt! at Tate. These initiatives engage audiences of 1,500–2,000 visitors per evening and allow participants—particularly young people—to experiment with AI tools and reflect on the role of data in cultural production.

Building on this work, they are now co-developing the Living Archive for the Kochi‑Muziris Biennale 2025, a dynamic AI-powered platform that will curate and connect the Biennale’s diverse materials, from exhibition catalogues and artist statements to oral histories. Rather than a static repository, the Living Archive uses machine learning to identify patterns and relationships between artists, themes, and events, enabling researchers, curators, and visitors to explore the Biennale’s legacy through natural language queries and interactive visualisations. This open‑architecture system looks to the future, for instance, to host student workshops during the Biennale’s Student Biennale strand, ensuring that local art students develop hands-on skills at the intersection of AI, curatorship, and public history

AI Listening Machine: Amplifying Peripheral Voices

Another strand of their research is the AI Listening Machine, a distributed acoustic monitoring kit designed to capture and analyse group discussions in workshops, studios, and hybrid meetings. Drawing on their work with Tate’s public programmes, the Listening Machine addresses the common problem of quieter voices being overlooked in collaborative settings. Wearable or portable microphones paired with geolocation tracking record who speaks, where they stand, and how conversation flows, AI-powered transcription and feedback tools then attribute ideas to specific participants, provide real-time prompts and visual cues to encourage balanced participation, and create comprehensive datasets for later reflection and evaluation. 

For curators and educators, this technology offers several benefits:

Inclusive Programming: The system ensures that workshop participants—including young people and community groups—are heard, making programmes more equitable and capturing a richer diversity of perspectives.

Actionable Insights: Spatial and temporal data reveal how visitors engage with exhibitions, enabling curators to refine interpretive materials and design more effective gallery talks or workshops.

Learning & Evaluation: High-quality recordings and transcripts support evaluation, curriculum development, and future exhibition planning