Metadata Fast and Slow: Archives as places of knowledge between index cards and AI

If metadata are understood as objects, just like their processes, their infrastructures and their consequences, then techniques for their virtual indexing can be learnt from the human-made information from collected objects. Not only which parameters have to be entered into which databases and how, but above all which metadata promotes and prevents which research focuses; which technique of knowledge transfer into catalogues and knowledge systems creates blind spots or leads to erosion and omissions. This is because metadata is still the interface of the archive, what is visible to users (and what is visible at all). Every bias, every value formation that is already established in the systems of the archives will necessarily not only be mapped in data-generating AI solutions (whether for digitisation or indexing), but also overlaid with their existing bias (from data pools and programming). Only if material techniques and the specific archival-valuing biography of the archive are critically scrutinised can blind spots become visible - and be approached differently when transposed into AI recordings. With the estates of regional architects of international importance, the saai can become a material, toolkit and field of experimentation with radiant power in the genesis of knowledge in architecture and engineering technology.

The project is based on two pillars: one archival-material and one medial-institutional. The former, as a ‘close-up’, examines selected archival materials in the saai archive with regard to their materiality and their role in metadata production in the archive, for example annotations, index cards or sorting logics in folders and binders.  These case studies will lay the foundations for a material understanding of metadata as a material-media practice and demonstrate the relevance of the processes of archiving for the objects and their reception. The second, as a ‘wide-angle’ perspective, will examine the processes of institutionalisation of archival materials and their medial impact from the archive into society. This will highlight archival practices and policies in architectural collections at German-speaking technical universities such as the saai over longer periods of time and inter-institutionally.

Both pillars in turn form a unit with the newly established data technology project of the KIT President's Strategy Fund, which, with a background in computer sciences and digital humanities, examines the question of metadata genesis and digitally born archives as a praxeological question and develops and tests alternative instruments and tools.