Brosch AI - Distorted Dreams

Expanding and Animating an Archive With AI

Authors

  • Victoria Wolfersberger University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Austria
  • Celine Pham University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Austria
  • Jolanda Abasolo University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Austria
  • Juergen Hagler University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Austria

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54337/caga24-11172

Keywords:

AI, AI and Ethics, Animation, Media Archive

Abstract

Brosch AI - Distorted Dreams explores the intersection of artificial intelligence, art, archives, and animation. The project transforms
the archive of Upper Austrian artist Klemens Brosch (1894– 1926) into an AI-animated film. While AI image-generation tools typically
rely on online archives, museum collections often provide only lowquality digital reproductions. By utilizing high-resolution images
from Brosch’s archive, this project investigates the potential of AI-driven animation while addressing challenges related to stylistic
control, and creative authenticity. The findings demonstrate that while AI can produce high-quality outputs, extensive refinement
and iterative adjustments are necessary to preserve the essence of Brosch’s work. The project sparks critical discussions on authorship,
originality, and the evolving role of technology in artistic creation.

References

Chris Garcia. 2016. Harold Cohen and AARON—A 40-Year Collaboration. Computer History Museum 23 (2016).

Leon A Gatys, Alexander S Ecker, and Matthias Bethge. 2016. Image style transfer using convolutional neural networks. In Proceedings of the IEEE conference on computer vision and pattern recognition. 2414–2423.

Ian Goodfellow, Jean Pouget-Abadie, Mehdi Mirza, Bing Xu, David Warde-Farley, Sherjil Ozair, Aaron Courville, and Yoshua Bengio. 2014. Generative adversarial nets. Advances in neural information processing systems 27 (2014).

Otfried Kastner. 1963. Klemens Brosch. J. Wimmer, Linz, AT.

Sujin Kim. 2023. Reimagining Animation Making through Style Transfer. In SIGGRAPH Asia 2023 Art Papers. 1–6.

Vivian Liu and Lydia B Chilton. 2022. Design Guidelines for Prompt Engineering Text-to-Image Generative Models (CHI ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 384, 23 pages. doi:10.1145/3491102.3501825

Glenn Marshall. 2022. The Crow. Animation. Retrieved February 15, 2025 from https://archive.aec.at/prix/showmode/70040/ accessed January 12, 2024.

Elisabeth Nowak-Thaller. 2016. Klemens Brosch. Kunst und Sucht des Zeichengenies. Anton Pustet, Salzburg, AT.

Celine Pham. 2023. LUCID. https://vimeo.com/873477157?share=copy

Celine Pham, Jolanda Abasolo, Victoria Wolfersberger, and Juergen Hagler. 2025. Brosch AI - Distorted Dreams. Animation. Retrieved February 15, 2025 from https://www.animaplus.at/projekte/

Celine Pham, Jolanda Abasolo, Victoria Wolfersberger, Philipp Wintersberger, and Juergen Hagler. 2025. Animating an Archive: AI and the Limits of Cultural Heritage Interpretation. In Proceedings of the Conference on Animation and Interactive Art (Expanded ’25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 149–156. doi:10.1145/3749893.3749967

Celine Pham, Philipp Wintersberger, and Juergen Hagler. 2024. Animation in the Age of AI: Creative Dialog With Algorithms. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA). ISEA, 1–5. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381650797_Animation_in_the_Age_of_AI_Creative_Dialog_With_Algorithms

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Digital Arts Community ACM SIGGRAPH. 2025. Artistic Interpretation of Digital Cultural Heritage. Video. Retrieved July 15, 2025 from https://dac.siggraph.org/sparks/2025-04-digital-cultural-heritage/

Richard Wall. 2001. Klemens Brosch oder Eine Einübung ins Unmögliche. Ein Triptychon. Ritter, Klagenfurt, AT.

Front page of the conference proceedings CAGA24 – The Conference of AG Animation 2024. The background is black with stars and a large spherical network structure of interconnected points on the right. In the center of the page, the text reads: CAGA24 – The Conference of AG Animation 2024 – The (R)Evolution of Animation: Current Challenges and Future Directions – September 10–11, 2024. At the bottom, the logos of AG Animation, FH University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Aalborg University, The Animation Workshop VIA University College, and VAF – Viborg Animation Festival are displayed.

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Published

18-12-2025

How to Cite

Wolfersberger, V., Pham, C., Abasolo, J., & Hagler, J. (2025). Brosch AI - Distorted Dreams: Expanding and Animating an Archive With AI. Proceedings of CAGA24: The Conference of AG Animation 2024, (1). https://doi.org/10.54337/caga24-11172

Issue

Proceedings of CAGA 2024

Section

Section 3: Ethical AI within Animation

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Victoria Wolfersberger, Celine Pham, Jolanda Abasolo, Juergen Hagler

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.