The Indian Ocean Commission’s (IOC) Department of Cultural and Creative Industries (ICC) has teamed up with the AI4Good Mauritius Festival to bring its inventory of traditional architecture to life for young Mauritians. Join us on November 20 for a public restitution of these workshops at the Caudan Arts Centre, in the form of videos and presentations. Dominique Bellier
One of the first regional cultural projects set up by the IOC’s ICC department, the inventory of heritage and traditional architecture has documented 350 emblematic buildings in the Comoros, Madagascar, the Seychelles, Mozambique and Mauritius… 104 comprehensive fact sheets define the typologies of traditional Mauritian architecture, identify the construction skills required, the materials used, and the cultural and environmental contexts in which its various forms were born.
These reference documents contribute as much to the management and preservation of built heritage by ministries and heritage departments, as they do to innovation and research among professionals, architects and cultural institutions, to reinvent the buildings of tomorrow by including the achievements of the past, for example by revisiting the bioclimatic qualities of modern buildings, in the light of this traditional knowledge. This database is a tool for training and raising awareness among the general public and decision-makers.
But to make this knowledge accessible and inspiring to younger generations, the ICC department has teamed up with the AI4Good Festival, which is a great success with young people. Their teams have devised a program aimed at three types of audience aged 10 to 25, to show how our heritage resources can become tools for learning and creation, thanks to AI and immersive technologies.
For three days, the university workshop “AI and the reinvention of Mauritian heritage” will bring together students from the École nationale d’architecture (ENSA) de Nantes in Mauritius and experts in artificial intelligence, to explore the potential of this technology for enhancing heritage. In particular, they will be experimenting with digital analysis and documentation tools, and will be asked, for example, to create a model capable of generating visual representations faithful to the principles of Creole architecture, at a lower cost in terms of calculations and datastorage.
From the 1stst to November 18, the public workshop “Mini-bande annonce du patrimoine avec l’AI” invites young people aged 12 to 25 to discover Mauritian heritage records and transform them into short visual stories using generative AI. This participatory workshop puts AI’s information retrieval and image creation tools at the service of Mauritian heritage. Participants will create video sequences, adding narration and sound effects.
Finally, the “Regards d’enfants” workshop will encourage 10 and 11 year-olds from an elementary school to use their words and imagination to describe their vision of Mauritian heritage, based on two buildings and their inventory cards.
