The edited volume Digital Echoes: Spaces for Intangible and Performance-based Cultural Heritage will provide a compendium of innovative cases and practices, as well as critical, historical and theoretical approaches examining the integration of digital environments in the creation, documentation, circulation and reception of culture, with a focus on intangible and performance-based cultural heritage. The key aim of this book is to expand the body of theory and provide a valuable resource for innovating further practice on digitally-mediated engagements with cultural heritage as audience, user, artist, author, researcher and co-creator.

As museums, archives and other memory institutions open and digitise their collections, there is now a growing corpus of cultural content freely available on the web. For dance and performance based cultural heritage, unique and rare audio visual content, scores and documentation are now becoming available. The availability of this content has the potential to inspire contemporary art practice and drive new modes of user and audience engagement with cultural productions. User engagement is facilitated by a variety of access modes, many of which encourage active interaction with content for in-depth exploration, contributing metadata, tagging, interpreting, creating customised access paths and personal collections. Contemporary artists, authors and practitioners can draw inspiration, engage in asynchronous creative dialogues, reuse and propose extant content in novel creative interpretations. Yet this array of opportunities comes with its own set of open questions and challenges: technical, intellectual, social and political. In particular, reuse and creative interpretation of cultural content needs to abide by legal regulations that are often vague or insufficiently disseminated and understood by artists and practitioners. Moreover, co-creation practices and increased use of crowdsourcing by artists and cultural institutions compel us to question the nature of cultural heritage, established notions of “author” and “creator” and who is entitled to claim ownership and act as steward and guardian for cultural productions.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Digital access to cultural content
• Creativity and the creative process
• New audiences and new modes of audience engagement
• Documentation and digital preservation
• The role of the artist and changing creative practice
• Pure and hybrid forms
• Envisioning futures
• Critical and reflexive engagements
• Legal issues
• Interdisciplinary practice
• Social and cultural impacts

A detailed description on what is expected to be addressed for each topic is provided here:

1. Digital access to cultural content: Best practice, tools and platforms that provide unique forms of access to cultural content; How valuable are digital tools for mediating interactions between the user/artist/creator and cultural productions?
2. Creativity and the creative process: How does widespread availability of cultural content impact on creativity? What spaces of possibility open and what challenges are posed by reusing cultural content in new artistic productions? What tools and platforms are there that facilitate creative processes and creative engagement with cultural content?
3. New audiences and new modes of audience engagement: Novel approaches, tools and platforms that enable unique forms of engagement with heritage as user and audience; The changing role of the audience as co-creator and notions of “prosumer”/”produser”; Crowdsourcing best practices initiated by cultural institutions and artists/practitioners.
4. Documentation and digital preservation: Approaches and best practice for documentation and preservation; The role of documentation in audience education; Coping with challenges and innovative solutions for preservation; Beyond video-centric and towards new preservation models.
5. The role of the artist and changing creative practice: How does digital technology intervene in creative practice? How does it affect landmark activities in the creation, production and circulation of art? What is the role of the artist in surfacing and revealing inherent tensions in the companionship with technology as creative partner? What does it mean to creatively and artistically appropriate technology?
6. Pure and hybrid forms: What kind of hybrid forms of practice/creation/cultural spaces are there? What possibilities do they open, and what challenges? What are the underlying drives that encourage interest in hybridity and spaces in between?
7. Envisioning futures: Where are we heading as we open up to the past and increasingly integrate it in contemporary life and contemporary artistic practice? How will liveness, face to face interaction, and co-located cultural events and enactments evolve and change as digital practices advance, and enabling technologies become more ubiquitous and more sophisticated?
8. Critical and reflexive engagements: Do we need to re-define established notions of culture and heritage? What is cultural heritage and who is it for? As co-creation practices are increasingly adopted by artists, practitioners and cultural institutions, who are the rightful owners or stewards of cultural knowledge and cultural productions? How do these practices challenge notions such as “cultural value” and established mental models distinguishing between creator and user, performer and audience?
9. Legal issues: How are Intellectual Property Rights regulated at national and European levels? What challenges and issues are there in dealing with IPR in specific scenarios of reuse and interpretation of cultural content? What economic possibilities and business models are supported by IPR and digital technology? What other legal aspects should artists pay attention to when reusing and integrating cultural content in their artistic productions?
10. Interdisciplinary practice: What dialogues are emerging across different domains and disciplines dealing with specific areas and aspects of cultural heritage? What are the tools that facilitate interdisciplinary dialogues and co-creation of knowledge?
11. Social and cultural impacts: How does the circulation of information enabled by digital culture impact on our daily lives? What are the uses and abuses, ethical and legal issues of digital sharing processes in the social and political sphere? What are the conflicting drives operating in this field from open media practices encouraging freedom of expression to censorship policies preventing copyright infringement and personal defamation?

EXPECTED CONTRIBUTIONS
We seek contributions that will be useful references for the research community, policy makers, professionals from the heritage sector, cultural ministries and agencies, and widely communities and citizens interested in the selected topics. Contributions can focus on best practices, case study investigations, and historical, theoretical and critical examinations of the topics addressed.

PUBLISHER
This handbook of research is scheduled to be published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, is an independent academic publisher, committed to providing a forward-thinking publishing service that was founded by former lecturers and researchers from the University of Cambridge, we publish original academic work across a wide range of subjects, with a particular focus on The Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.cambridgescholars.com.

This publication is anticipated to be released in 2016.

DEADLINES
Abstract submission deadline: May 18. 2015
Contributions submission deadline: First full draft Nov 1.2015 * We reserve the right at this point to make further selection
Revised contributions submission: April 30. 2016

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE
Please submit your proposals by providing the following:

• Title of your contribution
• Abstract and indicative reference list (350 words excluding references)
• Brief comment on which of the recommended topics the proposed contribution is addressing (200 words) and 8 keywords for the chapter
• Please include all tables, figures and images with appropriate legends (JPEG Format)
• Contact information (last name, first name, role, institution if applicable and email)

The proposals must be in English and submitted in PDF format (only 1 file).
To be sent via email to Lily Hayward-Smith.

The submitted proposals will be evaluated by the editorial advisory board.

CONTACTS
For additional information/clarifications please contact Rosamaria Cisneros at or Amalia Sabiescu.

Donwload the Call for Book Chapters in PDF