IT4aREC
Principal Investigator: Niccolò Pretto
Funding: 60.000€
Call: B Senior Initiative, Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova
Abstract
This research project aims to develop new technologies in the field of digital humanities, in particular for the preservation and the access of musical heritage, an important area of application of the roadmap of Sound and Music Computing network.
The project concerns analogue audio recordings: from the first decades of Nineteenth Century, they stored unmediated documentation about cultural identity, social and artistic activities and soundscapes ecology, produced by oral historians, anthropologists, linguists, ethnomusicologists, journalists, performers, etc. Main threats for this important part of the cultural heritage are technology obsolescence, lack of competences, degradation of the carriers and high cost for their preservation. The only way for safeguarding such precious contents is the digitisation. Recently, several projects took care about digitisation, accessing and valorisation of audio recordings, but the digitisation and the analysis of the contents still require numerous manual operations that require most of the resources and are prone to proliferation of errors could lead to fabrication of history. IT4AREC aims to design innovative algorithms and to develop new software tools for (a) validating digital preservation copies, (b) restoring and analysing preservation copies and (c) supporting the creation of archival units available to researchers and/or common audience. These tools will reduce digitisation errors and optimise resources necessary for digitising and archiving audio recordings, increasing the possibilities of valorisation and exploitation of this important part of the cultural heritage. This work involves most of the preservation process from the digitisation of a document to its archiving. For this reason, the project plans a preliminary study concerning the long-term preservation of the document transmission history (all the operations involving the audio documents) and the relation with the original analogue document, through the use of blockchain technology. This project will rely on the competences of the Centro di Sonologia Computazionale (DEI), one of the most recognised lab in Europe in the field of audio documents preservation and restoration, and its peculiar archive, particularly suitable as case study, as well as several national and international partners are working in related fields.
Publications
Journals
[J1] N. Pretto, N. Dalla Pozza, A. Padoan, A. Chmiel, K. J. Werner, A. Micalizzi, E. Schubert, A. Roda, S. Milani, and S. Canazza. “A Workflow and Digital Filters for Correcting Speed and Equalization Errors on Digitized Audio Open-Reel Magnetic Tapes”. Journal of the Audio Engineering Society 70(6), 495-509, 2022. URL: http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=21798.
[J2] A. Basso, P. Ribeca, M. Bosi, N. Pretto, G. Chollet, M. Guarise, M. Choi, L. Chiariglione, R. Iacoviello, F. Banterle, A. Artusi, F. Gissi, A. Fiandrotti, G. Ballocca, M. Mazzaglia, and S. Moskowitz. “AI-Based Media Coding Standards”. SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal, 131 (4), 10-20, 2022, doi: 10.5594/JMI.2022.3160793.
[J3] S. Canazza, E. Schubert, A. Chmiel, N. Pretto, and A. Rodà. “The magnetic urtext: Restoration as music interpretation”. Frontiers in Psychology 13:844009, 2022. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.844009.
[J4] N. Pretto, E. Micheloni, A. Chmiel, N. Dalla Pozza, D. Marinello, E. Schubert, and S. Canazza. “Multimedia Archives: New Digital Filters to Correct Equalization Errors on Digitized Audio Tapes”. Advances in Multimedia, Hindawi, 2021. doi: 10.1155/2021/5410218.
Conference Proceedings
[C1] R. B. Luzietti, N. Pretto, F. Kaplan, A. Dufaux, and S. Canazza. “FONTI 4.0: evaluating speech-to-text automatic transcription of digitized historical oral sources”. Eighth Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics, Milan, 2021. URL: http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3033/paper45.pdf
[C2] L. Chiariglione, A. Basso, P. Ribeca, M. Bosi, N. Pretto, G. Chollet, M. Guarise, M. Choi, F. Yassa, R. Iacoviello, A. Artusi, F. Banterle, G. Saccardi, A. Fiandrotti, G. Ballocca, M. Mazzaglia, M. Rosano, and S. Moskowitz. “AI-based media coding and beyond”. In proceedings of IBC conference, virtual, 2021. URL: https://www.dei.unipd.it/~prettoni/paper/2021_ibc_mpai_published.pdf
[C3] N. Pretto, N. Dalla Pozza, A. Padoan, A. Chmiel, K. J. Werner, A. Micalizzi, E. Schubert, A. Rodà, S. Milani, and S. Canazza. “A workflow and novel digital filters for compensating speed and equalization errors on digitized audio open-reel tapes”. In Proceedings of Audio Mostly - AM21, 2021. Trento, Italy. doi: https://doi.org/10.1145/3478384.3478409
[C4] M. Bosi, N. Pretto, M. Guarise, and S. Canazza. “Sound and music computing using AI: Designing a standard”. in Proceedings of the 18th Sound and Music Computing Conference - SMC21, Virtual Edition, 2021. doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5045003
[C5] S. Calamai, N. Pretto, M.F. Stamuli, D. Piccardi, G. Candeo, S. Bianchi, and M. Monachini. “Community-Based Survey and Oral Archive Infrastructure in the Archivio Vi.Vo. Project”. Selected Papers from the CLARIN Annual Conference 2020, 2021. URL: https://ecp.ep.liu.se/index.php/clarin/article/view/7/7
[C6] M. Monachini, M.F. Stamuli, S. Calamai, N. Pretto, and S. Bianchi. “The grey-side of audio archives”. Conference of 22nd International Conference on Grey Literature: Applications of Grey Literature for Science and Society – GL, 2020, Virtual Edition. URL: http://www.dei.unipd.it/~prettoni/paper/2020_GL2020_grey_published.pdf
Books
[B1] A. Artusi, A. Basso, M. Bosi, S. Canazza, L. Chiariglione, M. Choi, F. Columbano, M. Burkay Çöteli, N. Dalla Pozza, R. Dini, M. Guarise, H. Hacıhabiboğlu, R. Iacoviello, C. Jia, J. Kang, P. Kudumakis, V. Lazzaroli, M. Mazzaglia, G. Perboli, N. Pretto, P. Ribeca, M. Rosano, and M. Seligman. Verso un uso pervasivo ed affidabile dell'intelligenza artificiale. Come gli standard possono mettere una grande tecnologia al servizio dell'umanità. Amazon Publishing, 2022. ISBN-13: 979-8835395675. URL: https://hdl.handle.net/11577/3461343
[B2] A. Artusi, A. Basso, M. Bosi, S. Canazza, L. Chiariglione, M. Choi, F. Columbano, M. Burkay Çöteli, N. Dalla Pozza, R. Dini, M. Guarise, H. Hacıhabiboğlu, R. Iacoviello, C. Jia, J. Kang, P. Kudumakis, V. Lazzaroli, M. Mazzaglia, G. Perboli, N. Pretto, P. Ribeca, M. Rosano, and M. Seligman. Towards Pervasive and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence. How standards can put a great technology at the service of humankind. Amazon Publishing, December 2021. ISBN-13: 979-8786573368. URL: https://hdl.handle.net/11577/3418285
Book Chapters
[BC1] S. Calamai, D. Piccardi, N. Pretto, G. Candeo, M. F. Stamuli, and M. Monachini. “Not just paper: enhancement of archive cultural heritage”. In CLARIN book, edited by D. Fišer and A. Witt, DeGruyter, 2022. doi: 10.1515/9783110767377-025.
[BC2] V. Burini, S. Canazza, and N. Pretto. “Archivi di musica elettroacustica: dalla conservazione all’accesso”. In I documenti Sonori. Voce, suono, musica in archivi e raccolte, Archivi e biblioteche in Piemonte - Direzione Promozione della Cultura, Turismo e Sport della Regione Piemonte, Torino, 2021. URL: dei.unipd.it/~prettoni/paper/BuriniEtAl.Archivi.pdf
Other publications
[OR1] Y. A. Arab, M. Bosi, S. Canazza, M. Burkay Çöteli, N. Dalla Pozza, M. Guarise, H. Hacıhabiboğlu, N. Pretto, P. Ribeca, M. Seligman, and F. Yassa. Moving Picture, Audio and Data Coding by Artificial Intelligence (MPAI) Technical Specification Context-based Audio Enhancement (CAE). 2022. Accepted as IEEE 3302-2022 standard. URL: https://standards.ieee.org/ieee/3302/11006/
[OR2] S. Calamai, A. Casellato, M. F. Stamuli, P. Cavallari, G. Contini, L. D’Aleo, S. Filippin, A. Fischetti, S. Magrini, M. Monachini, A. Mulè, E. Musumeci, P. Orsini, D. Piccardi, G. Piperno, N. Pretto, M. Procaccia, D. Robotti, E. Salvalaggio, C. Scognamiglio, S. Zanisi. Vademecum per il trattamento delle fonti orali (Vademecum for managing oral sources). 2021 URL: www.aisv.it/vademecum_fonti_orali/Vademecum%2002.11.21.pdf
