The virtual conference will be held over Zoom, with a series of invited speaker talks and presentations and posters: the full Book of Abstracts can be downloaded here.

The programme can be downloaded here.

Two poster sessions are being held using Gather - instructions for the poster sessions are available here.

Keynote speakers:

• Jill Dunkerton, Senior Restorer at the National Gallery, London: Technical imaging and connoisseurship: investigating a collaboration between Botticelli and Filippino Lippi
• Haida Liang, Professor of Physics and Head of the Imaging & Sensing for Archaeology, Art History & Conservation (ISAAC) Research Centre, Nottingham Trent University: AI for DIGILAB: A Heritage Materials Research Infrastructure for Multimodal Spectral Imaging Data Processing
• Marc Walton, Head of Conservation and Research at the M+ Museum, Hong Kong and Adjunct Professor of Materials Science, Northwestern University: Creating Images Worth More Than A Thousand Words: Computational Imaging for Cultural Heritage

Panel discussion: The role of AI for art investigation

With the increasing use of a range of advanced technical imaging and spectroscopic imaging methods in the study and preservation of artworks and other cultural heritage artefacts and drives to digitise and share archives, collections and associated materials, there is growing interest in – and need for – computational approaches to exploit and explore this data. This conference includes many exciting uses of machine learning and AI approaches in the heritage/cultural sector and for art investigation for particular applications. However, the use of such approaches is not without problems and their critics. As we look to the future, is the heritage/cultural sector ready for AI / ML and are data scientists ready for the challenges in art investigation and art history? In this session we hope to explore and encourage an open discussion of some of the challenges and benefits of ML and AI for art investigation and how experts – from both the cultural and heritage sectors and data sciences – might interact with each other and with machines. The panel members and moderator are detailed below and the aim is also to open up to the (virtual) floor for further comment and discussion.

• Ingrid Daubechies, Duke University (moderator)
• Jill Dunkerton, Senior Restorer at the National Gallery, London
• Ahmed Elgammal, Rutgers University
• Robert G. Erdmann, Rijksmuseum/University of Amsterdam
• Haida Liang, Professor of Physics and Head of the Imaging & Sensing for Archaeology, Art History & Conservation (ISAAC) Research Centre, Nottingham Trent University
• Marc Walton, Head of Conservation and Research at the M+ Museum, Hong Kong and Adjunct Professor of Materials Science, Northwestern University