Victor Camden & Artificial Intelligence: The Future Of History Has Arrived
By Graham Alexander
When we first formed The Victor Sound Foundation as the historic preservation and research arm of The Victor Talking Machine Co., our in-house researchers were met - consistently - with an inability to tell the full story of The Victor Company to the modern era in a manner that really MEANS something to those of us that learn more effectively from several forms of multimedia. Our stunted ability wasn’t because the history isn’t clear - and it’s not because there wasn’t enough *media* - certainly, Ken Burns has managed to tell award winning historic stories for decades now..and we have a whole facility dedicated to the company archives. More than anything, its about a lack of diversity of media formats due to the time period in which the brand rose from nothing - to something. In a media/learning-scape that requires a message be driven home in a multitude of ways/formats in order to ‘cut through’ an absolute onslaught of content across the media space...the Victor team has long sought ways to bring critical (but occasionally poorly documented) Victor music industry moments to life for future audiences in new an fresh ways.
As early as 2017, The Victor Company and Victor Sound Foundation began to experiment with animation in the form of excruciating forensic overviews in order to begin rebuilding media aspects of The Victor Company that may have either been lost, or under documented in the first place. Despite its invention in the late 1800s, moving video of Victor’s operations consist of very few reels of film for almost its entire original run in Camden, NJ. There is no known footage of founder Eldridge R. Johnson - there IS footage of Emile Berliner slightly before his death in 1929. There is almost no known recording studio footage and there is certainly no footage of the original Victor workshop - the small garage where the disk record and record player were first produced for the public - the meeting spot of the founders of the modern music industry; Eldridge R. Johnson & Emile Berliner.
So years ago we began a critical forensic study of the very first Victor Workshop - a small garage that was demolished in 2014. Known originally as the Eldridge R. Johnson Machine Shop - the little building was quite literally a slightly larger than normal garage. Like most great things in the music industry that came from a garage - the music industry itself was born in this little place and prior to it being demolished (to build a MASSIVE addition to the Victor Plant in 1914) The Victor Company took some final photos of the building which had long since been abandoned by the company as the Victor Camden plant grew up around the area.
Some of the world’s finest historians, forensic architecture specialists, and animators worked on our project to bring The Victor Workshop (The Eldridge R. Johnson Shop…and the birthplace of the modern music industry) back to life for the very first time - and ideally, for all time.
The blank ‘never before seen’ inside of the Victor/Johnson Workshop in a panoramic view.
The primary garage door of the Victor/Johnson workshop…with added details.
A first rough digital outline before about 300 more hours of work…the final rendering of the building itself hasn’t been released to the public as of this article….however the interior can be walked through at the Victorville Online platform.
But this isn’t really the primary point of the article; as of 2021, we are holding off on releasing the Johnson Workshop for exploration - until we find the correct format in which to release it…and are fully comfortable that the evidence we’ve got from which to build this reanimation….is truly the end of the line in terms of reference material. Thus far, about 7 photos of The Johnson/Victor Workshop exist in our archives - we hope more will be unearthed.
Which brings us to the focus of this article; which is to not to talk about the Johnson Workshop or our overviews of the Victor Plant….We’re here to talk about the role of evolving technology and multimedia in assisting the Victor legacy into the 21st Century. Our team has - for many years - been able to ascertain relatively little multimedia surrounding, in particular, the founders of the company. Ironic that the men whom would invent a large chunk of the modern media (and music) industry would be scarcely captured in audio or film - or even photo….but these were the famous inventors and CEOs of the early music industry…they weren’t terribly interested in public attention during that era.
Today, our friends at D-ID Technology Inc. have released a critical tool which will eventually serve to change the face of history and the way we learn about the past - forever. The technology is yet in its infancy, but its effect on the public’s interest in history and preservation will be greater than anyone can possibly imagine. Below you can see, for the very first time, Victor co-founders and inventors of the microphone, disk record, and record player (and modern music industry) - Emile Berliner Eldridge R. Johnson brought to ‘life’ - if just for a brief moment;
THESE ARE NOT VIDEOS
As subtle as it is (at the moment), the movements and mannerisms provide the viewer with a ‘living’ character from a still photograph - videos of which are generated by an algorithm and based on an infinitely complex AI study of the chosen face which precisely measures said face and applies a secondary algorithm to animate additional frames based on the single original analyzed frame - creating something of a short film of humanity long thought lost.
The possibilities of this technology for The Victor Sound Foundation and the future of The Victor Co. are absolutely endless in terms of historic preservation and public awareness. While these videos won’t reach their full capability for at least another 10 or so years - these early attempts to harness this technology can only serve to generate awareness of history in every field. Readers can actually test a ‘lite’ version of this technology from a company called ‘MyHeritage’ which has licensed a version for their use from D-ID Technology Inc….creating a whole realm of possibilities that we, as a society, are only scratching the surface of.
