How can we unlock "dark" digital archives closed to the public? What is the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in making digitised and born-digital cultural records more accessible to users, on both sides of the Atlantic? AEOLIAN (Artificial intelligence for cultural organisations) focuses on born-digital and digitised collections that are currently closed to researchers and other users due to privacy concerns, copyright and other issues. Archives are meant to be used, not locked away. In order to unlock cultural assets, we need to work across disciplines and harness the latest technology. AEOLIAN brings together Digital Humanists, Computer Scientists, archivists and other stakeholders to transform the access and use of born-digital and digitised collections which are currently hidden away. Analysing vast amounts of data cannot be done manually: automation is no longer a choice, it is a necessity. Artificial Intelligence can be used to improve access to non-confidential materials through sensitivity review, for example by distinguishing between personal and business emails. AEOLIAN aims to unlock born-digital and digitised collections and open them up to a large number of users. Access to digital archives is essential, but we also need to anticipate the moment when born-digital records will be more accessible. To make sense of this mass of data, new methodologies are urgently needed, combining traditional methods in the humanities with data-rich approaches. Collaborations between humanities scholars, computer scientists, archivists and other stakeholders are therefore essential to make archives more accessible, but also to design new methodologies to analyse huge amounts of data. AI and machine learning create opportunities, but also challenges, for libraries, archives and museums. The project will address larger questions in the humanities - including ethical and social considerations at the centre of current debates on AI and digital technologies. The AEOLIAN project will lead to the following research outputs: _6 online workshops , which will result in the creation of an international network of theorists and practitioners working with born-digital and digitised archives. _5 case studies of US and UK cultural organisations . These case studies will feed into an open-access 100-page report for an interdisciplinary audience outlining avenues for future research. _2 collections of essays published as special issue of journal or edited collection. The final report will offer a roadmap on born-digital and digitised cultural assets, based on 5 case studies of specific collections in the UK and US and detailed interviews. Crucially, it will also develop specific ideas for interdisciplinary research areas to solve the issue of access to digital cultural assets, which could form the basis of future research initiatives. Archives are of course not reserved to academic researchers. The online workshops and the website will foster public engagement on the topic of the changing nature of archival collections (from print to digital) in the twenty-first century. The website will keep track of all the project activities in the form of presentation materials from all workshop participants, video recordings of workshop presentations, and case studies that will then feed into the final report. Associated social media will help us connect with interested parties - in academia, archival institutions and beyond.

The proposed research network will act as a forum for the discussion of non-sighted modes of beholding art, within the context of situated forms of contemporary art practice. It will question how a shift in the aesthetic engagement afforded by hybrid (intermedia) forms of contemporary art opens up new engagements for the partially sighted and blind community. Sound, smell and touch, for instance, have become an important factor in some installation art, while the discipline of sound art has expanded the spatial reception of the auditory. The network aims to develop a deeper understanding of the spatial and curatorial possibilities of such forms of engagement, and their potential application beyond the world of contemporary art. The proposal is set against a background where the engagement of 'visual' art by blind and partially sighted beholders has primarily been addressed through questions of improving access to medium-specific forms of art, such as through audio descriptions and touch tours, or (more problematically) mediated forms such as 'tactile' paintings and 3D facsimiles. While in a post-pandemic situation access is an ongoing concern, a narrow focus on 'traditional' art does not register how intermedial/installation art has (i) fundamentally challenged ontologies of art, (ii) deliberately sets out to dehabitualise the beholder position, and (iii) challenges the notion of 'context independent' art. Addressing where the criticality lies in non-sighted modes of engagement, the proposition is that the engagement afforded a blind or visually impaired audience should be every bit as complex as that of sighted beholders. This issue is pressing given the prevalence of the default white cube gallery situation and entrenched conventions of 'viewing' art. A deeper understanding of non-visual ontologies of art will not only widen participation to new audiences, but enhance the experience of non-sighted and sighted beholders. This will impact upon the design of galleries and museums - the types of spaces made available, such as their acoustic properties and embedded tactile cues - and attitudes to curating (where partially and non-sighted beholders are rarely treated as part of the core audience, despite the RNIB estimating that over two million people in the UK have visual impairment). This means challenging museum conventions of engagement which prioritise sighted audiences (such as the ubiquitous 'please do not touch'). This research network will facilitate an exchange of ideas that engages interdisciplinary thinking on the phenomenology of the non- or partially-sighted engagement of art. Crucially, it will engage the blind and partially sighted community and organisations that promote cultural opportunities for this audience, and those within institutions enacting policy around inclusion and access to (and the design of) museum/gallery environments. But it will also draw upon disciplinary insights from: cognitive science and psychology (i.e. non-sighted spatial orientation, and the interdependence of perceptual systems); the philosophy of art (the ontology of art and the aesthetics of reception); art and design practice (sighted and non-sighted artists making work where the engagement extends beyond the visual); theoreticians engaging critical disability studies. The workshops and symposium will be organised around three key themes: (i) non-visual perception and orientation (such as sound/haptic localisation); (ii) architectural and spatial situations/contexts (rethinking the gallery situation); (iii) expanding art and curatorial practices (theorising new types of encountering art). The discussions will be transcribed and made available through the network's research website, and live-streaming will facilitate virtual participation. An edited book, organised around themes emerging from the network discussions, will be published at a later date, and made available as an audiobook and large format print edition.

Through a series of three workshops, the Silences of Science network will examine different aspects of the paradox that science depends both on prolixity and on reticence. It will seek to interrogate the assumption that open and efficient channels of communication are always of greatest benefit to science and to society. It aims to draw the attention of the research community to the creative importance of silence, of interruptions in communication, of isolation and of 'stuckness'. Discussion of the theory and practice of science communication typically emphasises the removal of barriers (for example, between scientist and citizen) and the reduction of distortion (scientific inaccuracy and misrepresentation in the media). Restricted access to scientific knowledge becomes the object of moral censure, whilst maximised communication is frequently taken as an unquestioned social good. However, science - and its communication - depends as much on discontinuities, on barriers and lacunae, as it does on the free flow of information. Contrary to the ideal of science as an open enterprise, scientific innovation and scientific commerce rely on the constant use of moral, legal and technical devices that restrict, rather than encourage, the sharing of ideas. For instance, Information Property Rights procedures close off the flow of information to the scientific community, even as they enable the subsequent commercial development of an idea. Likewise, fear of plagiarism can radically restrict scientists' willingness to discuss their work openly. Humanities scholars from a range of disciplines have drawn attention to the constructive role of silence - from the meaningfulness of pauses and omissions in literature, to the role of solitude and quietude in the history of religion, or the uses of silence within the legal system. However, to date such interests have been sporadic and largely directed towards disciplinary interests. In particular, there has been no attempt to draw on this work to inform the study of the practice and communication of science. The Silences of Science research network will bring together a range of scholars - for instance, from literary studies, media studies, legal studies, religious studies, as well as from the history and philosophy of science, policy studies and science communication studies - who are able to draw on insights from their disciplines in order to develop a conceptual framework with which to examine the role of silence within the sciences. The workshop format facilitates interdisciplinary collaboration and is intended to stimulate novel research among the academic participants. The network will also include practising scientists and those working in science policy, with the aim of informing research communication practice and policy.

The UK heritage sector wants to offer all visitors memorable, inclusive, engaging and enjoyable experiences. Museums increasingly provide access to their exhibitions, narratives and artefacts for everyone, with their evolving practice including accessible offers (such as audio description and BSL, audio-guides, interactive content and a wide range of community and educational programming) for people who cannot experience the museum in traditional ways. Yet, this reliance on 'access' provision to support non-traditional visitors perpetuates a dichotomy between 'abled' and 'disabled' people that marginalises non-normative ways of experiencing the museum. When museums provide alternative ways of accessing content for specific audiences, they unwittingly exclude from mainstream provision those people who want or need to access museums through senses other than sight. Consequently, even as museums aim to create welcoming experiences for all visitors, their assumption that sight is a necessary part of the optimal museum experience, risks alienating people who prefer to access and process information in ways that are not only - or not entirely - visual. A challenge remains: how can museums create inclusive interventions (interventions accessible to everyone) without having to spend time and money on also creating 'accessible' programming for minority audiences. The Sensational Museum aims to address this systemic issue by rethinking the role and place of the senses in the museum. It declines the orthodox classical assumptions of the fixed array of 5 bodily senses (that have privileged sight, and reductively contained our other senses) in favour of a new sensory logic. It leverages the liberating notion of 'Sensory Gain' and the idea that everyone can benefit from the 'access' traditionally offered only to disabled visitors. Consequently, the research aims (ambitiously and audaciously) not only to articulate what such 'trans-sensory' thinking and practices might be, but to demonstrate and test this approach within the context of real-world museum collection and communication - evidencing its value for practitioners, policymakers and standards agencies. It leverages inter-disciplinary research by bringing together insights and methods from museum studies, critical disability studies, psychology and design and embraces a co-creation, inclusive methodology where disabled and non-disabled stakeholders are involved in every phase of research design and delivery. It brings together the UK's leading professional bodies and standards agencies (Museums Association and Collections Trust) along with a national network of disability organisations (including the Disability Collaborative Network, the Accentuate Programme and VocalEyes) and a collective of 20 collaborating museums and galleries committed to creative and profound transformation of museum practice (led by Accentuate's 'Curating for Change' network, supported by the NLHF) as well as one of the world's leading cultural consultancies (Barker Langham). This multi-partner project is not just a project about making museums accessible to disabled people. It is a project that uses what we know about disability to change how museums work for everyone. This research will use a design logic to structure and drive its work. First, we will prepare a blueprint for a new sensory logic. We will then prototype an inclusive, co-creation toolkit and trans-sensory data model and interface, before piloting and evaluating these prototypes with museum professionals and visitors across the UK and finally refining and promoting the outputs in publications, conferences and at showcase events. By responding to this systemic sector issue, leveraging inter-disciplinary scholarship, activating this radical concept of the 'trans-sensory', and following a creative and practice-led line of enquiry TSM will produce a radically new way of thinking about museum experience for both practitioners and visitors.

ENHANCING CHOREOGRAPHIC OBJECTS (EChO). How can one capture the 'intelligences underpinning dance making' (Wayne McGregor) in order to communicate them to a wide public? To answer this question, many of the world's leading choreographers are turning to the possibilities of computer generated imagery and interactive digital technologies. The result is a new genre of digital adjuncts to dance making called 'Choreographic Objects' made to both enhance, and to illustrate, their creative process. Choreographic Objects are providing insights into the valuable knowledge that choreographers and dancers create when they investigate form and structure through movement in the context of making dances. The result is that 'choreographic thinking' is becoming available not only for the purpose of educating audiences, but also in ways that scientists and philosophers can study, architects and designers can utilize, and other artists can draw upon. 'Enhancing Choreographic Objects' (EChO) is an innovative project that uses the results of previous AHRC funded research in a practical manner. In the previous research, social scientists were able to show how the social relations involved in the production of Choreographic Objects were important in shaping them, highlighting both positive and negative potentials generated by the context and process of their construction. The social scientists were able to draw on theories of embodied, skilled and practiced-based knowing, and of its translation into representational media to illuminating effect. This (previous) project demonstrated that social science has a key role in enhancing the awareness of the makers of Choreographic Objects and thereby ensuring more effective outcomes from their endeavours. We will now transfer the results of that research to professional artists and programmers during the construction of a Choreographic Object called the Choreographic Language Agent (CLA) Public Installation. The CLA currently exists as software used by leading UK choreographer Wayne McGregor for generating and investigating choreographic ideas in the studio. McGregor and his dancers use the CLA as a sketchpad in which they can quickly assemble, animate and share complex three-dimensional drawings to take as inspiration for movement generation into the rehearsal studio. The main aim of EChO is to apply the framework developed in the previous research to evaluate how the CLA represents and transfers the creative strengths and skills of dance, and then collaboratively feed back this assessment to the design team building an enhanced CLA for public viewing. This CLA Public Installation will be displayed in a major London exhibition space to encourage wide engagement with the possibilities of choreographic thinking during the creation of a new work by Wayne McGregor | Random Dance (WM|RD) that is set to premiere in October 2013. In EChO, academics will collaborate with the company (WM|RD), digital artists, the exhibition space (Wellcome Collection) and the performance venue (Sadler's Wells) to produce an interactive experience that communicates the thinking and understanding generated in creating dance to a wide public. EChO will thereby utilise the outcomes of the previous AHRC funded research and apply them as academic knowledge transfer directly to institutions whose core aim is to increase public understanding of the value of dance, and of art and science's creative interface. The project will result in a new Choreographic Object tailored to the specific qualities of dance as knowledge creation, and to its public display.