Poster World × Bibliothèque de Genève
With the Poster World installation, the EPFL+ECAL Lab and the Bibliothèque de Genève unveil the large Swiss poster collection of the Cantonal Library of Geneva. For the opening of this exhibition, Nicolas Henchoz, director of the EPFL+ECAL Lab, and designer André Andrade will give a conference on September 12. In the framework of “Jeudi midi de l’affiche”, they will share insights on this design research in collaboration with the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich and on the role that artificial intelligence can play to enhance cultural heritage.
Ubiquitous in our daily lives, the poster is a fascinating graphic object because of its role in society and the complexity of its composition. It must capture the attention and deliver its message in a matter of seconds. To ensure an effective impact, it combines many visual components such as colours, main composition lines, objects, typography, text positions and contrasts. With the use of different algorithms, and in particular artificial intelligence, Poster World reveals these dimensions to the public, allowing visitors to understand the poster’s graphical richness.
The installation analyses the posters, extracts data and generates a new representation of the poster that visualises a particular feature. It then brings together three visually similar posters on the basis of a chosen criterion.
In Geneva, the interactive installation presents a carefully curated selection of 2,300 Swiss posters chosen among the large library’s collection, that offers an extensive view of local activities and topics as well as graphic trends from 1850 to the present day. With its ability to manage associations among several billion possibilities, Poster World does not replace the curation work, but amplifies and complements it, in order to enhance the collection of the Bibliothèque de Genève in an unprecedented way.
