Meshup #16 – Eivind Røssaak
This week, Eivind Røssaak will talk about When the Memory of a Nation Goes Mineral: AI, Nanofabrication, and the Material Footprint of Cultural Heritage Research.
Abstract
Recent breakthroughs in AI—foundation models, ChatGPT, large language models, and vision and audio systems—are often framed as software revolutions. Yet they depend fundamentally on advances in nanofabrication: the extreme miniaturization of logic and memory enabled by EUV lithography and foundries such as TSMC. Large language models are economically and technically viable only because computation, memory, and energy efficiency have been radically reconfigured at the level of silicon. This lecture reframes recent advances in AI as an intensification of mineral memory within the archive. The demand for comprehensive, real‑time, AI‑mediated access to cultural heritage across all media and art forms increasingly binds the archive to mineral and infrastructural regimes of computation. It expands the archive’s material footprint—chips, energy, water, and carbon—posing new ethical, operational, and sustainability challenges for cultural institutions, researchers, and artists. New cross‑disciplinary research alliances—linking archival and humanities research with semiconductor engineering and life‑cycle sustainability modeling—are needed to understand the metallurgical and ecological consequences of contemporary memory systems.
Bio
Eivind Røssaak is a Research Professor at the Department of Research, National Library of Norway, and a member of the research group, AI Ecologies. He conceptualized “the archive in motion” in 2010, and is currently exploring the mineral logic of memory after digitization and AI. Recent publications include: The Cory Arcangel Hack (MIT Press 2025), Motstandens former (co-ed. K. Stene-Johansen, Existenz 2026) and “Archive: Extraction and the Mineral Logic of Memory” in Media Thinking, ed. M. Muliaee, London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming, 2026.
Access
MishMash MeetUps are short, informal meetings in the consortium where both early career and established researchers present ongoing projects. The events are open for everyone, but, for security reasons, Zoom links are only provided to people that are affiliated with a MishMash Work Package. If not, please ask for access.