When Culture Becomes Data for AITalk
NOTE: Please remember to allow time to reach the 10th floor and to store bags, umbrellas, and liquids in the lockable wardrobe in the lobby area. The event is free and the capacity is limited, so please arrive early to secure your spot.
The talk is a part of Oslo Innovation Week
Who gets to use cultural data for AI—and on what terms? Inside the exhibition Connect the Lines, MUNCH, Creative Commons and leading experts explore consent, rights, access and public value.
Museums hold vast amounts of images, texts, metadata and digitised collections. Increasingly, they also steward new forms of data created through audience participation. These resources can support artists, researchers, public institutions and technology communities – and provide valuable data for artificial intelligence.
But who should be able to use cultural data, on what terms and for which purposes? How can it be made available while protecting consent, copyright, cultural context and public trust? And who should benefit from the value it creates?
Four perspectives on a shared question
During the conversation, Birgitte Aga and Nikita Mathias will present the practical experiment Edvard Munch: Connect the Lines. Birgitte Vézina from Creative Commons will then explore how licences and other mechanisms can make cultural data accessible. Dr Oonagh Murphy will address the fundamental ethical questions surrounding museums’ use of data and AI, before Yngvil Beyer from the National Library of Norway concludes with insights into the development of open Norwegian language models as part of the country’s national digital infrastructure.
A live conversation inside the exhibition
The event takes place inside Edvard Munch: Connect the Lines. Visitors draw on digital tablets while AI analyses their drawings and suggests connections to works in MUNCH’s drawing archive.
During the event, you can draw and experience the technology. If you choose to share, your drawings and information about the drawing process become part of the audience-generated data under discussion. You are not merely observing the case; you are actively participating in it.
With consent, these contributions may become part of a new dataset alongside Munch’s drawings. MUNCH is exploring how the material could be made available for artistic experimentation, research and other non-commercial purposes.
This raises a wider question: when audiences are not only visitors but contributors of cultural data, what responsibilities do museums have for how that data is stored, governed, shared and used?
Speakers
- Dr Oonagh Murphy, leading expert on digital culture, data, ethics, AI, innovation and explainable AI
- Brigitte Vézina, Director of Policy and Open Culture, Creative Commons
- Yngvil Beyer, Head of the Language Bank and DH-Lab Section, National Library of Norway
- Birgitte Aga, Head of Innovation and Research, MUNCH
- Nikita Mathias, Curator of Learning and Public Engagement, MUNCH
