Studio oio and Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Foun­ded by Simone Rebaudengo (left) and Matteo Loglio (right), the studio seeks to trans­form emer­ging tech­no­lo­gies into an access­ible, every­day, and sustain­able real­ity for human­ity and beyond. Through the use of machines, oio is commit­ted to redu­cing the ecolo­gical foot­print by design­ing stor­ies and products that imagine our future. Rebaudengo and Loglio aim to make a global impact by help­ing large compan­ies, start-ups, and cultural insti­tu­tions to shape products and tools for a more inter­est­ing future.

Devel­op­ments in design, produc­tion and commu­nic­a­tion tools are now forcing museum insti­tu­tions to re-exam­ine their archiv­ing proto­cols.

Can we imagine new meth­od­o­lo­gies and new ways of facil­it­at­ing the imple­ment­a­tion of design research projects? Can new tools help museum insti­tu­tions to manage their herit­age? Can arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, in partic­u­lar, with its accel­er­ated data manage­ment process and its abil­ity to gener­ate images and texts, now be seen as an ally in the work of museums and research­ers?

Studio oio was invited by mudac to produce a proto­type to address these issues – a concep­tual object that would give us a better grasp of the issues involved.

Under the direc­tion of Scott Long­fel­low, the artists of studio oio immersed them­selves in the work­ings and vision of mudac and the wider land­scape of French-speak­ing Switzer­land by inter­view­ing over 20 local design­ers, arch­iv­ists, and tech­no­logy experts. This year-long resid­ency gave rise to the Archivives project, designed as an archiv­ing system that collects docu­ments and inter­views to explore, using arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, the unpre­ced­en­ted possib­il­it­ies of what archiv­ing in the future could look like. New tools for enrich­ing and diver­si­fy­ing archived data have been developed to take account of the context in which design projects are developed and how they are perceived, partic­u­larly by differ­ent audi­ences.

The project first takes the form of inter­act­ive inter­views with design­ers in the exhib­i­tion hall, conduc­ted by both a member of the museum’s curat­orial team and AI. This process explores how the digital archives selec­ted and trans­mit­ted by the design­ers can be enriched through inter­ac­tion with AI.
At the same time, studio oio spec­u­lates on the possib­il­it­ies offered by AI and, at the end of the inter­views, offers a digital poster for a mono­graphic exhib­i­tion that imagines what an exhib­i­tion on design might look like in 10 to 15 years’ time.

The Archivives project is made up of two tools: Le Curieux and Le Rêveur, the fruit of oio’s resid­ency at mudac and developed as part of the Archives du Design Roman exhib­i­tion.

In collab­or­a­tion with mudac during Milan Design Week 2023, studio oio presen­ted The Last Pencil in Drop­city’s Tunnel 46, located in the former ware­houses of Milan’s cent­ral station and trans­formed into exhib­i­tion areas. The project explores the evol­u­tion of draw­ing tools in an age of enhanced intel­li­gence, far beyond the human mind. While pencils have been a funda­mental tool of human creativ­ity through­out history, The Last Pencil provoc­at­ively envis­ages radical changes in our design prac­tices in the not-too-distant future.