Centrica strengthens its long-standing commitment to the digitization and enhancement of cultural heritage through its collaboration with the Scientia Atque Usus Research Center – ETS (sAu) on the development of the Generative Documentation and Virtual Visit System, an innovative project funded under Invitalia’s PNRR call – Mission 1, Component 3, Investment 3.3 “Support for cultural and creative sectors for innovation and digital transition.”
The project stems from the need to preserve, make accessible, and reactivate the extensive tangible and intangible heritage collected by the sAu Research Center over more than thirty years of work in the fields of digital innovation, communication, and visual culture. The archive includes more than 4,500 items – bibliographic materials, periodicals, theses, and multimedia documents – tracing the evolution of digital languages in art, literature, music, and education.
Centrica was responsible for both the digitization of the archival materials and the development of the digital infrastructure underpinning the System, designed to integrate archiving, research, and visual access within a single environment. The goal is to create a tool that transforms the archive into a generative engine of knowledge and collaboration, enabling cultural institutions and organizations to share and enhance their heritage in a dynamic and project-oriented way.
The Generative Documentation and Virtual Visit System goes beyond the traditional concept of preservation: it promotes the reactivation and reinterpretation of memory through interactive and spatial models of access, connecting digital contents with their original contexts and places. This approach defines a new paradigm of the archive—one that treats technology as a cultural process and as a means of cooperation between people, institutions, and territories.
Through this project, Centrica reaffirms its mission to combine technological expertise with cultural sensitivity, developing digital tools that foster not only preservation but also the generation of new, shared knowledge.