Using AI in documentation: working with ChatGPT-3.5 on the Lynn Hershman Leeson archive

Abstract

Documentation is a debated historical and cultural field of inquiry in performance and new media studies, information science, museum conservation, and, more recently, computer science. These disciplines have approached documentation with different agendas but also through different methods. In this article we focus specifically on conservation and explore what AI, and more specifically ChatGPT-3.5, can bring to the field of documentation and archiving in this context. We begin with a brief introduction to the field of documentation and its relevance for archiving, and then explore the use of ChatGPT-3.5 in the documentation of a set of pioneering artworks by the Bay Area artist Lynn Hershman Leeson, who throughout her long and productive career has worked as a performer, photographer, interactive art maker, film and documentary maker, net and digital media artist, and an ‘archivist’ both of her own artwork and of feminist art practices more broadly.