Digital meets Culture

The new technology to promote accessibility to vulnerable cultural heritage sites

Factum Arte and Cabildo de Gran Canaria together to reproduce a pre-Hispanic sacred cave

The site of Risco Caído was incorporated into the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2019 as ‘Risco Caído and the Sacred Mountains of Gran Canaria Cultural Landscape’.

It is a complex of 21 artificial caves used as living and storage spaces and cult cavities and it is a prime example of the pre-Hispanic cave-dwelling cultures of the Canary Islands.
The site is not easy to reach and its preservation is particularly delicate given its fragility.
Cave No. 6 is particularly interesting, because it has been interpreted as having a sacred function related to the movement of sun and stars and it can be considered as an example of a pre-historic solar calendar.

© Oak Taylor Smith for Factum Arte

Factum Arte has been working with the Cabildo de Gran Canaria since early 2019 to record and re-materialise an exact facsimile of ‘Cave No. 6’.
The result of this project has been the realization of an exact facsimile of the Cave at 1:1scale that will be more accessible to the public since easier to get to than Risco Caído and meanwhile will assist this fragile site in its long-term preservation.
This is a clear example of how the new technology can serve to promote accessibility to vulnerable cultural heritage sites around the world whilst monitoring and maintaining their present condition.

The facsimile will be on permanent view at the new Risco Caído Interpretation Centre in the town of Artenara.

More information about the processes involved in the creation of the facsimile, photos and video, are here.

online event, 2nd – 5th November 2020

Web-EuroMed2020 on Digital Cultural Heritage

The newly established UNESCO and European Research Area (ERA) Chairs on Digital Heritage are announcing the International Web-Conference EuroMed 2020 dedicated to

Digital Cultural Heritage Documentation, Preservation and Protection

This unique conference is in cooperation with the European Parliament, the European Commission and the EU digital library Europeana and in collaboration with the prestigious publisher Springer-Nature to celebrate the 1.500.000 downloads of our publications.

2^nd – 5^th November 2020, Cyprus

www.euromed2020.eu

The conference starts on the 2^nd of Nov. at 08:00am CET (09:00am EET) and will continue every day until the 5^th of November. It will be streamed via ZOOM and via Facebook simultaneously.

1) ZOOM: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_T33t2XzmS6uX7NT0wA95Ng

2) FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/Unesco.DCH

The agenda-booklet of the event is available HERE .

The conferece includes five key workshops with outstanding invited speakers:

Workshop-1: The 2nd EU Workshop on how digital technologies can contribute to the preservation and restoration of Europe’s most important and endangered Cultural Heritage
Workshop-2: The 5th International Workshop on 3D Research Challenges in Cultural Heritage to be organized by the EU H2020 ERA Chair Mnemosyne project
Workshop-3: Digital Transformation for User Engagement in Cultural Heritage
Workshop-4: 1st International Workshop on Cultural Tourism: Discovery Europe
Workshop-5: Digital Heritage Crowdsourcing: Present and Future

For more information about all the workshops: https://www.cut.ac.cy/euromed2020proceedings/workshops.html

Fourteen years of European – Mediterranean Conferences on

Digital Heritage Documentation, Preservation and Protection (EuroMed): 2006 – 2020

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and crisis around the World, all the authorities and governments are taking exceptional measures to avoid the spread of the disease and to keep the number of patients as low as possible. Even though these efforts and solidarity between all of us has led to improvements and containment and to confinement measures being lifted, the virus is still present and spreading across the world. For this reason, and given the persisting sanitary risks linked with an international gathering of several hundreds of experts, the EuroMed2020 Organising Committee decided, to organise this year conference fully online and to cancel the planned organisation of the traditional EuroMed conference, scheduled for November 2^nd – 7^th , 2020 in Nicosia, Cyprus (EuroMed2020).

We know that this decision will be appreciated and this was the best way to proceed during such an unprecedented situation.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Paper submission deadline: 15^th September 2020 (24:00 London-UK time) http://www.euromed2020.eu/index.php/important-dates

The 8^th biannual European-Mediterranean (EuroMed-2020) conference is co-organised by the UNESCO and the EU ERA Chairs on Digital Cultural Heritage. It brings together multidisciplinary researchers, policy makers, professionals, fellows, practitioners and stakeholders to explore some of the more pressing issues concerning Cultural Heritage today. In particular, the main goal of the conference is to focus on interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary research on tangible and intangible Cultural Heritage, using cutting edge technologies for the protection, restoration, preservation, massive digitalization, documentation and presentation of the Cultural Heritage contents. At the same time, the event is intended to cover topics of research ready for exploitation, demonstrating the acceptability of new sustainable approaches and new technologies by the user community, owners, managers and conservators of our cultural patrimony.

Topics and themes:

Researchers and practitioners willing to participate to the Web-EUROMED 2020 conference are invited to submit papers on original works addressing the following subjects and research themes:

DIGITAL HERITAGE DOCUMENTATION and PRESERVATION
PROTECTION, RESTORATION AND PRESERVATION OF TANGIBLE AND INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE

More detail information regarding the themes can be found at: http://www.euromed2020.eu/index.php/call-participation

Submission of Papers

Submissions for the event are completely electronic through the on-line submission website available at http://www.euromed2020.eu/index.php/paper-submission

The conference accepts only original, unpublished work written in English which will be blind-reviewed and published by the prestigious SPRINGER-NATURE LNCS.

We are soliciting two types of contributions:

PROJECT Research papers: they present new innovative research developments and results. They will feature a full-length oral presentation and will be published in a high-quality proceedings volume. Each submitted paper must not exceed 12 pages in total.
SHORT papers /Posters: they present preliminary ideas and works-in-progress. These papers will have a short oral presentation and will be also available as posters during the entire time of the event online. Each short paper must not exceed 8 pages in total.

The 10 best submitted papers will be published on a special issue of upcoming International Journal Heritage in the Digital Era.

Due to the pandemic Covid-19 the conference will be this year online and free of charge, however the registration is mandatory

Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory, a unique access point to the digital collection of fragmented and scattered documents of Mandela's archive

Nelson Mandela Foundation is promoting the preservation of Madiba’s legacy

Text by Caterina Sbrana.

The Nelson Mandela Foundation (NMF), founded in 1999 by Nelson Mandela also known as Madiba, is a non-profit organisation committed to promoting Madiba’s living legacy through the collection of all documentation scattered throughout the world. The aim of NMF is to collect this vast resource, facilitate the access to it and promote its preservation and use. To achieve this goal, NMF records where documents are stored and enters into partnerships, to ensure that they are preserved and accessible.

As we approach Nelson Mandela International Day or Mandela Day celebrated on July 18th (Mandela’s birthday) we consult part of the archive dedicated to Madiba.

Nelson Mandela and P.W. Botha’s secret meeting, South Africa – Repository: Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory -Name of creator: Ehlers, Ters (Private secretary to President Botha). Image from https://archive.nelsonmandela.org website.

To understand the meaning of the project, just read the presentation. “The Mandela archive is fragmented and scattered all over the world in various places. […] However, a small amount has been collected since the establishment of the Centre of Memory in 2004, which has been categorised into […] archive groups and special collections. As these records and collections are organised and processed, the finding aids to them will be made available”.

The Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory delivers the core-work of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, and digital materials provided on its platform are for research purposes. The online archive is divided into thematic groups to provide user-friendly access: Records, Awards, Papers, Photographs, Sound and Video, Speeches, Bibliography and Filmography.

The Photographic Collection includes various historical photos.

Photo of Madiba with a poem: “A hero from the Southern Land” by Aisha Kingu – We knew that the text was sent through an e-mail by Aisha Kingu to Mandela- Repository: Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory. Image from https://archive.nelsonmandela.org website.

In the Private and Personal section there are photographs that reproduce the passport of Mandela while in the Tributes section you can find different kind of awards to Madiba.

The Speeches section consists of interviews, speeches, messages, media releases, testimony, lectures, toasts, oaths and declarations made by Nelson Mandela.

Consulting this site, every researcher interested in the life of Nelson Mandela finds an incredible amount of information, even very nice and special ones. I can mention a few: from 2 December 1994 to 12 January 1995 there was in South Africa a Mandela Trophy for cricket; in Kampala, Uganda, there is the Mandela National Stadium; in the section Awards there is a subseries called “Human geography named after Mandela” and many more curiosity can be found.

Honorary Citizenship of the City of Sao Bernardo, Brazil. 2000. Repository: Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory. Image from https://archive.nelsonmandela.org website.

The collection, series and archival records contained within the Access to Memory (AtoM) instance, a web-based open source application for “standard-based archival description and access in multilingual, multi-repository environment”, is an effort to capture both local and international repositories as well as to describe the collections hold at the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory.

To this revolutionary but at the same time pacifist man, leader of the anti-apartheid movement that costed him prison in 1956 on charges of treason, the United Nations in November 2009 dedicated, even before his death in 2013, UN Mandela Day celebrated for the first time on 18 July 2010.

It is not difficult to understand how the work of collecting documents by the Nelson Mandela Foundation is of fundamental importance for our present and future generations.

https://archive.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/about

https://atom.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/za-com-nmfpc-nmf-photographic-collection

https://archive.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/za-com-mr-t-7-6-2200

https://archive.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/za-com-mr-t-1435

https://atom.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/te-jul1989-madiba-botha

Video games to live new travel experiences

Take a trip while staying at home

Traveling while staying in our homes. Exploring the world, having fun, living new experiences, even while the pandemic limits our travels.
How is this possible? This is thanks to immersive and accessible video games that are interactive escapes which bring players to different parts of the planet, putting them in someone else’s shoes to explore the world through their eyes.
The choices are big and each game infuses different emotions while it is possible to discover distinct details of the places.

Are you ready? Here are some suggestions.

You can go to Beijing: this interactive experience, shot when China began its lockdown in January 2020, is a “playable documentary,” has players tag along with a food courier in Beijing.
Out For Delivery, by Yuxin Gao, Lillyan Ling, and Gus Boehling.

You can go to the Dutch countryside with your grandmother: in this game you and your grandma can take a long walk in the lush woods looking for some mushrooms. In this case the natural landscape is rendered in abstract artwork.
Lieve Oma, by Florian Veltman.

Do you feel nostalgic? You can put yourself in the author’s shoes and visit old Detroit, reliving his childhood. This game uses real personal photos and videos to create its strong sense of place.
From Home Movie, by Bryan LeBeuf and James Daniello

You can embark on an immersive road trip through the western coast of Italy during the roaring 1970’s: this road trip puts you on the Aurelia road while a multiple-choice back-and-forth dialogue reveals your lives and Italy’s political tumult. Detours can be made and there are 16 possible endings. You’ll find different story possibilities through dialogue options and where you choose to drive.
From Wheels of Aurelia, by Santa Ragione

Would you like to know what it is like to be in the midst of the 2019 protests in Hong Kong? This is your game: the sights, sounds, and stresses feel gritty and real and the sense of immersion is incredible, it’s not for the faint-hearted!
Free Hong Kong, by Unnamed Protester

These are just a few suggestions but the possibilities are truly many.
So what are you waiting for? Have a good trip … staying home!

Gallery of innovative and interesting Cultural Heritage projects

UNCHARTED poster on the REACH digital gallery

The REACH project had to cancelled their final conference planned for the 4-5 June 2020 in Pisa due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, the REACH Consortium decided to keep alive the call for posters and videos until October 2020 and to publish the contributions received on a dedicated digital gallery that collects contributions from innovative and interesting Cultural Heritage projects that involve resilient communities and social participation from all over Europe.

The REACH project encourages people to engage in culture and cultural heritage in order to foster creativity and innovation and to empower the social values associated with culture. It is a action to build upon participatory experiences with cultural content and to empower cultural heritage a greater, more relevant and even transformative role in the economy, communities, and territories.

The REACH Final Conference would have been the place to be for presenting the UNCHARTED project and launching its key messagge.

For this reason the team behind UNCHARTED produced a special presentation poster to introduce the topics, the research plan, the medology and the expected results of the project.
The poster is now published on the digital poster gallery hosted by the REACH project’s website.

UNCHARTED poster
Digital Poster Gallery
Posters and Videos from REACH community

17-18 September, on-line Conference

Museums and Social Responsibility – Values revisited

NEMO and the German Museums Association, within the framework of Germany’s presidency of the Council of the European Union, are co-organising an online conference from 17-18 September 2020.

This conference is the first of three events organised by museum organisations located in the countries holding the presidency of the Council of the European Union and that will focus on different aspects of social responsibility.

It is titled “Museums and Social Responsibility – Values revisited” and it will focus on what social responsibility means for museums:
what can museums do?
what is still missing to make an impact on European society?

Museums address issues related to social cohesion, social inclusion and social diversity; the conference will focus particularly on community involvement and development to discuss what social responsibility means for museums and on the contribution that they can made.

The main topics: Community involvement, Education and culture, Employment creation and skills development, Technology development and access issues, Wealth and income creation issues, Social investment, Health Issues.
They will be debate through workshops, short lectures, panel discussions.

To participate in the conference, you must register

Further information:
Speakers
Registration
Main page

The selected stories

The European Heritage Days Stories

The European Heritage Days Call for European Heritage Days Stories is one of the key initiatives within the European Year of Cultural Heritage (EYCH) 2018 and aims to identify the European Dimension of heritage sites and heritage work undertaken by the communities in Europe.

The Call was launched on February 2020 and it adress to communities that have past or existing “Stories” of European heritage and would like to share them. As a second phase, these stories could potentially develop into a speciﬁc project to further contribute to their communities.

This initiative pursues several objectives:

To encourage people to engage with Europe’s cultural heritage
To collect stories to have an insight into how communities understand the European dimension of local heritage.
To identify and promote communities involved with their heritage, in line with European values and with a long-term perspective of collaboration.
To reward communities and encourage them to develop their Stories further.
To motivate and encourage communities to participate in the European Heritage Days.

In the last few days the selected stories that have been nominated to receive a grant were published:
A Hidden Gem in Slovenia – Franja Partisan Hospital – Slovenia
The partisan hospital, built during the World War II in a remote gorge in the Cerkno region in western Slovenia, tells the story of courage, humanity and solidarity.

‘Little Portugal’ Street Party – A Celebration of Great Yarmouth Migrant History – UK
A story of regeneration in one of the most deprived areas of the UK, where the arrival and growth of Portuguese migrant workers, over the last 20 years, has produced the transformation of the historic ‘King Street’ area of Great Yarmouth in unique neighbourhood.

Heritage Carers – Portugal
CARERS’ stories collects the testimonies of the HERITAGE CARERS along the Route of the Romanesque, stories that will eventually be lost, stories of children, of their parents, of their parents’ parents, of their grandparents’ grandparents.

Commonlands: a history of community participation – Italy
A story of communities involving in the Cultural Community Mapping in Alpine Areas to co-design and manag cultural and touristic initiatives, enhancing local tangible and intangible heritage.

CVAR: A route to our shared cultural heritage – Cyprus
The story of the Centre of Visual Arts and Research in Nicosia, with the mission to make use of cultural heritage as a resource for promoting cross-cultural understanding, bringing communities together, discovering and embracing cultural diversity from the past to the present.

Grandma March Day – children creative workshops – North Macedonia
The “Grandma March Day” is the traditional manifestation created to support the successful multinational UNESCO application in order to celebrate the custom “Martinki” small amulet made of red and white woven thread.

RomArchive – The Digital Archive of the Roma – Germany
This archive collects objects and narrativesto show the richness of the arts and cultures of the Sinti and Roma and illustrates their contribution to European cultural history.

A tale of a river – Spain
Stories of life by the Asón river, the bonds between the elements of heritage left by the river, the personal stories and shared history

Home for Cooperation – an unsuspected space in-between, breathes hope – Cyprus
The story of how the conservation a building of shared cultural heritage can provide the ground on which communities can build on, learn, cooperate, imagine and create together new possibilities.

Drainspotting – A European Story, Made in Sheffield – UK
A story of how a city developed, how its citizens were protected from disease and how a hidden network of pipes, culverts and wires connects all of them.

One name, one life, one sign – Georgia
Georgia project is a public initiative aimed at preserving the memory of victims of political repression and state arbitrariness during the years of the Soviet regime in Georgia.

The 16th Athens Digital Arts Festival is co-financed by the Hellenic Republic and the European Union through the Regional Operational Programme of “Attica” in the framework of NSRF 2014-2020.

A virtual platform connects the world's leading galleries

Art Basel Viewing Rooms

Text by Caterina Sbrana.

The home page of Art Basel Viewing Rooms is beautiful. Every page of Art Basel is beautiful. It’s a continuous and amazing discovery. Art Basel was founded in 1970 by gallerists from Basel and 50 years later stages the world’s premier art shows for modern and contemporary art.

The home page of Art Basel’s Online Viewing Rooms

The pandemic from Covid-2019 cancelled all events scheduled in Hong Kong, Basel, Miami Beach from March 2020 until next June 2021.

On March 12, 2020, it was announced to the press that the art fair scheduled to open on March 20 in Hong Kong was cancelled due to the severe outbreak and spread of the new coronavirus, but at the same time a new way of visiting the exhibition was announced: the opening of Art Basel’s Online Viewing Rooms.

The first online event, from March 20 to March 25, 2020 put together “235 leading galleries from 31 countries and territories”, especially Asian, and they presented over 2,000 premier artworks.

You need to register and create an account to visit Art Basel’s Online Viewing Rooms, but it is worth especially in this period when it is not easy to move freely. Never as now digital technology and the web help to promote culture and business.

Adeline Ooi, Director Asia, Art Basel said: ‘I am so pleased that we are able to provide our exhibitors with an alternative platform to show the wonderful work that they had been working so hard to bring to Hong Kong this spring. The work on display is stunning. While nothing can replace the experience of seeing art in person, we hope that this initiative can bring some support and visibility to all the galleries and their artists affected by the cancellation of our March show.’

Infographic for upcoming Online Viewing Rooms Event with basic information: title of the event, date, time and location

Art Basel’s Online Viewing Rooms is an opportunity for cultural growth, while for galleries to continue their business.

Global Director Art Basel, Marc Spiegler, confirms the importance of the online exhibition for leading galleries : ‘As the art market continues to evolve, Art Basel has continually investigated how new technologies can give us new opportunities to support our galleries. The Online Viewing Rooms will provide galleries with a further possibility for engaging with our global audiences, complementing the essential personal interactions that continue to underlie the art market.’

One of the sector of Art Basel concerns art galleries

From Art Basel home page you can browse through the different sectors and, selecting a particular leading gallery, you are transferred to its home page as you can see above, as an example. You can find galleries from Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, and Africa that present the works of modern and contemporary artists displaying paintings, sculptures, drawings, installations, photographs, film, video and digital artworks.

Adeline Ooi said ‘nothing can replace the experience of seeing art in person’, I agree and say that nothing can replace the experience of the trip, however the opportunity to visit art galleries located in different parts of the world and discover new artists, even if only in digital form, is an experience not to be missed.

You can join artists and gallery owners socializing in a virtual walkthrough of each gallery’s respective online booths. Just follow the events proposed by Art Basel’s Online Viewing Rooms.