· DHinfra.at · News · 2 min read
CRASH: a hackathon on search in cultural heritage data, on the DHinfra cluster
On 30 November and 1 December 2026, teams build and test search prototypes on cultural heritage data in Graz. They work with the large open-weight language models and the GPUs of the DHinfra cluster. Participation is free, and registration is open until 1 November.
CRASH, the Cultural Heritage Advanced Search Hackathon, takes place in Graz on 30 November and 1 December 2026. For two days, teams build search prototypes on cultural heritage data and test them. Participation is free, and registration is open until 1 November at crash-this.github.io.
Built on the DHinfra cluster
The teams work on the DHinfra cluster. They call large open-weight language models, vision models and embedding models through the OpenAI-compatible API, and they run their own jobs on NVIDIA H200, RTX PRO 6000 and L40S GPUs. Their data stays inside the academic network. Every participant gets a cluster account and the documentation on 23 November, one week before the start.
Vibes and Checks
With current AI tools, a team can build a search application in an afternoon. At CRASH, each team also picks one area in which it tests its tool: efficiency, trust, control, access or discovery. At the end, each team shows its check. The audience chooses the winner of hearts, and a jury chooses the winner of numbers.
Who can come
CRASH is open to students, researchers and practitioners from universities, GLAM institutions and industry. Coding skills help, but a dataset or a problem you know well is just as welcome, and you can register without a team. Teams bring their own data or work on a prepared dataset of illuminated charters with ground truth, or on the Kulturpool API. Everybody can ask for travel support in the registration.
Programme
The hackathon runs from Monday 09:00 to Tuesday 17:00 at the UNICORN Startup & Innovation Hub in Graz. Two impulse talks frame the first day: at 10:00 on what people who work with cultural heritage hope AI can do for finding material, and at 20:00 on the methods and tools of search. Both talks are streamed. On Tuesday afternoon the teams present their results.
The schedule, the full call and the registration are at crash-this.github.io. Questions go to crash.organizers@gmail.com.
CRASH is funded by CLARIAH-AT.
