Audio Innova, a startup spin-off company of the University of Padua, won the first prize in the "Creative AI" category at WAICF in Cannes, the world's largest event dedicated to Artificial Intelligence applications. Audio Innova, born from the Center for Computational Sonology of the Department of Engineering of the University of Padua, won with the project "Now and then (and tomorrow): preserving, re-activating and sharing interactive multimedia artistic installations," which uses AI and metaverse for "restoring" interactive artistic installations.

The Italian startup won the same prize in the 2023 edition of WAICF. The World AI Cannes Festival is a trade show organized by the EuropIA institute, the City of Cannes and The Palais des Festivals et des Congrès. The event brings together "those who are currently building the most game-changing AI strategies and use-cases on the planet, to an unparalleled experience in the vibrant future of AI", says WAICF.

"Interactive art installations - Sergio Canazza Targon, founder of Audio Innova, explained to ANSA news agency - make use of a lot of technology, such as sensors or computational tools. The vulnus of the usability of the work, is not in the immediate, but in time, once the technologies become obsolete: something that can be seen in an art festival today can no longer be so a few months later. How to preserve works of art over time ? Audio Innova's proposal is to 'reactivate' artworks in the metaverse."

Audio Innova works in many other fields, and not only in preserving interactive multimedia installations. The company explains that, leveraging the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Padua researchers’ know-how, "as well as from the skills of a team of young entrepreneurs", can provides innovative products and services in areas ranging from learning environments to restoration of audio documents, from cultural events to docufilms and docuwebs, from technical training to software development and IT management.

Its most interesting activities are related to the "digital humanities" projects. Just to make some examples, Audio Innova developed a software to reconstruct the sound of consumed or broken discs starting from their photograph, and created BoardOnAir, a glass transparent board which can include images, videos, and other multimedia contents, present and comment them while recording a video, without the need of any post-production.