The 8th Digital Art History Summer School (DAHSS 2024) occurred at the Polo de Contenidos Digitales of Fundación Telefónica. This year’s theme was “Sustainability and Politics of AI”, with sessions organized around four tracks, led by the four speakers of this edition:

• “Track A: Visual AI for Visual Culture. New tools/old critique”, by Leonardo Impett (University of Cambridge), focused on applications of AI and computer vision, looking at how we might use generative image systems like Midjourney and DALL·E for visual culture and art history studies;
• “Track B: Art on the Web: Creating Cultural Heritage Knowledge Networks”, by Edward Anderson (Rijksmuseum), focused on standardized models and vocabularies of the Semantic Web (e.g., OWL-Web Ontology Language; RDF-Resource Description Framework) for enhancing the accessibility and richness of cultural heritage data and fostering collaboration;
• “Track C: Cartographies of Humanities”, by Iacopo Neri (University of Zurich and Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia) focused on spatial analytics of geodata and cartography, working with open-source software and creative coding for mapping ecological and social dynamics at various scales;
• “Track D: The Archive Makes the Image”, by Eryk Salvaggio (independent researcher and artist, former fellow of the Flickr Foundation), focused on how to read images made by artificial intelligence systems and how AI training datasets and heritage archives and collections shape those generated images, based on a critique of the algorithmic curation and production of synthetic content.

The event was organized by Nuria Rodríguez-Ortega, Professor of the University of Málaga and founder of the iArtHIs_Lab research group, and Bárbara Romero Ferrón, a researcher at this lab and the CulturePlex Lab (Western University). DAHSS 2024 had 24 participants from several countries and institutions, consolidating a network of researchers to strengthen ongoing projects and foster upcoming ones.