This paper examines the Archivio Storico Ricordi as a case study in the epistemological transformation of historical archives within digital humanities. Drawing on media archaeology (Ernst 2012) and critical museology (Sternfeld 2011), it adopts a practice-based methodology, analysing three institutional initiatives as interconnected experiments in what we term active memory: an operational reconfiguration of the archive as a site of mediation, computation, and creative reuse. The first initiative, Puccini Online, is a public history project expanding access to operatic heritage through digital storytelling and participatory audience engagement. The second, ArchiBot, is an experimental LLM-based tool that navigates archival datasets across documents, images, and metadata, raising questions about how generative AI mediates historical knowledge. The third, The Music Folder, is a podcast series of artistic conversations that activates archival materials through dialogue with contemporary art, repositioning historical sources as substrates for critical reinterpretation. Read together, these projects reveal three distinct yet convergent vectors — public, computational, and artistic — through which a historical archive negotiates its contemporary epistemic function. The paper's central argument is that the digital archive is not merely a remediated repository but a generative infrastructure: one that produces new relationships between heritage, audiences, and knowledge. The Ricordi case thus contributes to current debates on digital archives by proposing a model in which institutional, technological, and artistic agencies operate as co-constitutive forces in the cultural mediation of memory.

Authors:
Pierluigi Ledda, Archivio Storico Ricordi, Italy

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Pierluigi Ledda is Managing Director of Archivio Storico Ricordi. His interests include digital humanities and cultural industries. He oversees the archive’s digital restitution and curates the podcast series The Music Folder.

Connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pierluigi-ledda-58087119/

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