Florencia S. M. Brück and Calin Segal will develop their project ideas by working on the Foundation’s databases and in the labs of the Digital Center – ARCHiVe. Florencia S. M. Brück and Calin Segal are the two artists selected through the new international call for the Digital Artist in Residence (D.A.I.R.) programme, curated by the Digital Center – ARCHiVe of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini.
More than thirty artists, researchers and developers from twelve different nationalities applied before the deadline on 2 March. Both Florencia S. M. Brück and Calin Segal will work on the potential of artificial intelligence to create new narratives, using the Foundation’s digital archives to produce immersive videos or animated stories and figures from the past. They will have the chance to reside for one month on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore and collaborate with the Foundation’s team in the Digital Center labs.
The artists
Florencia S. M. Brück is an Italian-Argentine painter and programmer. Through generative art and artificial intelligence, she explores the tension between poetic expression and technological systems, connecting futuristic narratives with historical art. In her project presented to the Digital Center, she aims to explore the role of artificial intelligence in reinterpreting archival images, creating a bridge between past and future through AI-generated videos and LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation) learning models.
Calin Segal, Romanian, is a computational artist working with generative systems, immersive media and augmented perception. Trained as an architect in Paris, he uses generative design, procedural logics and machine learning to create immersive environments and installations. His project submitted to the Digital Center focuses on historical events, particularly small, everyday and unknown stories, through a combination of archival research and AI-driven storytelling. Calin Segal will develop virtual actors (personas generated by AI) embodying archetypal figures from various historical contexts.
The Digital Artist in Residence (D.A.I.R.) Call
The international Digital Artist in Residence (D.A.I.R.) call is aimed at artists, developers, creatives and experts in new technologies. This is the second edition following the 2024 pilot project, which featured Hiroaki Yamane, Mersid Ramičević and Matteo Rattini. The Fondazione Giorgio Cini has a long tradition of residential scholarships at the Vittore Branca Center, dedicated to scholars across all disciplines, which has now expanded to include a new residency programme aimed at digital creatives and experts. The D.A.I.R. (Digital Artist in Residence) project is curated by Chiara Casarin (head of the Digital Center – ARCHiVe) together with Ennio Bianco (curator and art historian, expert in digital arts).
The Digital Center – ARCHiVe
The Cini Digital Center – ARCHiVe represents the contemporary frontier of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini. • It digitises the Foundation’s documentary, photographic, artistic and archival heritage, as well as that of external institutions (Fondazione Pomodoro, Sottsass Archive etc.), designing new research pathways and utilising artificial intelligence and machine learning tools.
• It organises and promotes the ARCHiVe Online Academy (AOA): a free educational programme dedicated to digital humanities involving international experts from various disciplines and research fields. It has over 1,700 subscribers and has scheduled over 90 hours of training in 2025. Classes and courses are open to everyone, and offer academic credit recognition for students from partner universities.
• It creates and organises Digital Libraries to provide access to the Foundation’s book and publishing heritage.
• It hosts and closely collaborates on the Venice Long Data project, arising from a partnership between the Foundation and Ca’ Foscari University with European funding: a group of physicists working on the density of historical data, using artificial intelligence applications.
• Every two years, it commissions an artwork from international artists: in 2022, Mattia Casalegno and Martux_m created La Maschera del Tempo; in 2024, the Universal Everything collective produced Chameleon.
• In 2024, it launched D.A.I.R. Digital Artist in Residence.
The Digital Center – ARCHiVe was founded in 2018 by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in partnership with the Factum Foundation and the Digital Humanities Laboratory of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL-DHLAB). It is supported by the Helen Hamlyn Trust, committed to supporting innovative medium- and long-term projects in the cultural, art and non-profit sectors.
Info: Fondazione Giorgio Cini onlus Digital Centre – ARCHiVe archive@cini.it T. +39 041 2710451 www.archive-venice.org Press Office stampa@cini.it | T +39 041 2710280 www.cini.it/press