Digital meets Culture

EUreka3D project presented during Workshop 1 at EuroMed 2024 (2nd December)

Paradata, Metadata, and Data in 3D Digital Documentation for Cultural Heritage: #DigitalTwins or #MemoryTwins

Since its adoption in 2006 as part of the London Charter for the Use of 3D Visualisation in the Research and Communication of Cultural Heritage, the concept of Paradata has played an essential role in ensuring transparency in the creation of scholarly 3D Cultural Heritage assets. With further recognition by the ICOMOS Seville Charter (2017) and the European Commission’s EU VIGIE2020/654 Study on quality parameters for 3D digitisation of tangible cultural heritage, Paradata has emerged as a key aspect of 3D digital documentation.

Paradata, alongside Metadata and Geometrical Data, forms a “trinity” of elements essential for ensuring high-quality, reusable 3D digital resources. However, despite its growing importance, the Digital Cultural Heritage (DCH) community continues to grapple with fully defining and differentiating Paradata and Metadata, as well as understanding their role in supporting scholarly research, sustainability, and compliance with the European Commission’s recommendations for 3D-digitised cultural heritage.

This workshop brings together professionals from across the spectrum of Digital Cultural Heritage to share their experiences, aiming to establish a common understanding of Paradata and lay the groundwork for a community-built set of standards and best practices for its application in 3D documentation.

Download the full agenda here.

2nd-4th December 2024, Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol, Cyprus

EuroMed 2024: the 10th International Euro-Mediterranean Conference on Digital Cultural Heritage

Organized by Cyprus University of Technology, conference EuroMed 2024 offers the Cultural Heritage community the opportunity to come together and exchange our know-how, explore our research and discuss development in our field, current and future, from both regional and global perspectives. The conference, celebrating its 10th edition in 2024, provides a unique opportunity to present results, review outcomes, and draw new inspiration with our friends, colleagues and peers.

EuroMed 2024 focus is on interdisciplinary research – cutting-edge technologies for the protection, preservation, conservation, and massive digitalisation of Cultural Heritage – and the emerging cross-sector Cultural Heritage Knowledge Economy – innovations ready for market exploitation, novel sustainable approaches towards heritage management, and new technologies available to user communities, SMEs, owners, managers and conservators of cultural patrimony.

Learn more and discover the programme at this link.

Collaboration agreement has started between Centre for Dance Research at Coventry University in November 2024

New collaborations of SECreTour in Coventry

The SECreTour Network is growing!

The SECreTour project has established a new collaboration with the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE) at Coventry University.

C-DaRE specialises in an inclusive interdisciplinary approach to artistic and scholarly dance research in areas like cultural heritage, computing and AI, intellectual property, health and well-being and practice research.

The Centre participates in many projects that focus on cultural heritage, and particularly intangible cultural heritage that involves performance-based practices, and which may well have a tourism dimension. The Centre’s partners include cultural organisations, artists and artist groups, research organisations and policy-led organisations, in the UK and across Europe.

You can find out more on:

Follow SECreTour online also on the SECreTour project’s website.

The contest aims to raise awareness and promote the culture of industry, the memory of work, the architectural, technological and landscape heritage of industrial archaeology

Winner of AIPAI Photo Contest 2024 announced

Following the AIPAI Photocontest 2024, the winners were annouced through a press release on the 13rd of November.

The first prize was assigned to Erica La Placa’s photographic project “Geometrie dell’Aridità: visioni interrotte”.

Read the press release here (ITALIAN).

The paper describes fundamental concepts to enable the Federation of EOSC Nodes that can deliver services and resources to European researchers collaboratively

Concept Paper “EOSC Federation: Architecture and Federating Capabilities”

The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) at its core was a catalogue of “research products”, such as datasets relating to various disciplines, and “services”, such as EGI Check-in and EGI DataHub, used in EUreka3D to operate its suite of services and tools dedicated to cultural heritage institutions who need to store, safely access, manage and share collections of 3D cultural heritage.

The EOSC landscape has changed dramatically in the last year, due to a process of redesign initiated by the European Commission. The EOSC Portal, which is where researchers could find services onboarded to EOSC, is no longer available, and has been replaced by the EOSC Federation of Nodes. The EOSC Federation is re-developed in the form of multiple EOSC Nodes that are interconnected and can collaborate to share and manage scientific data, knowledge, and resources within and across thematic and geographical research communities.

Project EOSC Beyond, with which a collaboration has been established for the integration of EUreka3D services and tools, published a concept paper which describes fundamental concepts to enable the Federation of EOSC Nodes, especially technical aspects, and defines key terms. It presents the EOSC Federation Architecture and introduces the concepts of EOSC Federating Capabilities describing how the Nodes of the Federation should interact to deliver them jointly. It also details how to develop a network of Nodes that can deliver services and resources to European researchers collaboratively.

ACCESS PAPER ON ZENODO>>> EOSC Federation: Architecture and Federating Capabilities, authored by Diego Scardaci (EGI Foundation), Mark Dietrich (EGI Foundation), and Paolo Manghi (OpenAIRE) on behalf of the EOSC Beyond Technical Coordination Board

Community feedback: To enhance and fine-tune the paper, we are also launching a survey to gather community feedback. The survey is available until 29 November 2024, and an updated version of the document will be presented by Q2 2025. Researchers, service providers, and stakeholders are invited to participate and contribute to shaping the future of EOSC.

Online, November 13th, 11:00-16:00 (CET)

Europeana Network Association Outreach Event 2024

img. courtesy: Europeana Pro website

The Europeana Network Association (ENA) is excited to invite you to join the ENA Outreach Event to learn more about how ENA can support your skills, networks and career. The event, running between 11:00-16:00 (CET) on 13 November will cover three main areas; ENA in your country and region, ENA and networking and training, and ENA specialist communities.

The first two sessions will focus on how ENA can support you and colleagues in your country (11:15-12:30 CET), and on the benefits of being an ENA member, including how to access networking opportunities, training and Europeana’s tools and services (14:30-16:00 CET). Participating is going to connect you with a 5,000+ strong community of experts working in, with or around the cultural heritage sector.

The day’s final session (14:30-16:00 CET) will focus on the seven seven specialist ENA communities (Climate Action, Communicators, Copyright, Education, Impact, Research and EuropeanaTech) to explore the connection between ENA and the common European data space for cultural heritage, a great opportunity for the participants to hear from ENA members, share your experiences and discover new initiatives.

The event is free to join, online, and once you register for a ticket you will be able to join for specific sessions or the whole event. You can register at this link.

Dublin, 23-25 October 2024

SECreTour at the 17th ECTN conference for smart and sustainable tourism

The 17th annual conference of the European Cultural Tourism Network (ECTN) held in Dublin from 23 to 25 October 2024 concluded with a great success.

The conference was dedicated this year to European cooperation for smart and sustainable tourism and it was supported by the Dublin City Council-European Capital of Smart Tourism 2024.

Together with very interesting communications from projects and local innovative initiatives, several representatives from very important bodies and organizations of the European Union attended and addressed the conference including UN Tourism, European Travel Commission, ENAT (European Network for Accessible Tourism) Europa Nostra, Committee of the regions and others.

The ECTN conference provided the opportunity to bring together a wide range of stakeholders and experts from both the cultural and tourism sectors with 45 presentations from 19 countries.

There were discussions and presentations on the latest trends in the field of cultural heritage, smart and sustainable tourism, including innovation, digital transformation and the development of transnational cultural tourism products.

The European Cultural Tourism Network (ECTN) was founded in 2009, it is based in Brussels and is the only pan-European in this field.

SECreTour participated in the conference with two presentations.

One presentation was delivered by Antonella Fresa of Promoter Srl, who talked about Tourism, archives, and culture: a digitally mediated relationship between preservation and experience. The presentation is available for download >>>

The other presentation was delivered by John Tierney of EACHTRA, who talked about Hyperlocal tourism intelligence; Ireland Historic Graves – Sustainable and Accessible.

The participation in the conference offered a great opportunity to establish many new contacts with organisations and projects from all over Europe, in the scope of contributing to the SECreTour networking efforts.

For any inquiry about the SECreTour Network, please contact us at the following email address:

Secretour-network@promoter.it

The EUreka3D project advances conservation and public access to Cyprus’ Timios Stavros Church through 3D Digitisation

UNESCO World Heritage Site Church of Timios Stavros successfully 3D digitised

The EUreka3D project partner UNESCO Chair on Digital Cultural Heritage at Cyprus University of Technology’s (CUT) Digital Heritage Research Lab (DHRLab) processed the record of the 14th-century Church of Timios Stavros (Holy Cross) at Pelendri village to provide an HBIM reference model aiding conservators and architects in the maintenance and protection of the building as part of the EUreka3D project.

The model, and its accompanying data, will be made publicly accessible through Europeana using the EUreka3D Data Hub. Additionally, it will be further developed to engage audiences and cultural tourists by incorporating both tangible and intangible heritage assets into compelling narratives that highlight the history and significance of the site through digital technologies.

Inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985, the Church of Timios Stavros (Holy Cross) at Pelendri village is one of ten monuments making up the World Heritage List Painted Churches in the Troodos Region, Cyprus, and is decorated with exquisite wall paintings of the Palaiologan period (1261-1453AD).

this high profile event, taking place in Bucharest and online, addressed various themes and challenges on digital technologies to enhance sustainability, inclusion, and diversity in the heritage sector.

EUreka3D at 17th European Cultural Tourism Network (ECTN) Conference

The 17th annual conference of the European Cultural Tourism Network (ECTN) held in Dublin from 23 to 25 October 2024 concluded with a great success. The conference was dedicated this year to European cooperation for smart and sustainable tourism and it was supported by the Dublin City Council-European Capital of Smart Tourism 2024.

ECTN 2024 Conference

One presentation was delivered by coordinator of EUreka3D project Antonella Fresa, who talked about Tourism, archives, and culture: a digitally mediated relationship between preservation and experience (download PDF) with a specific focus on achieving quality in 3D digitisation. The presentation covers the role of metadata and paradata in digital preservation, presents the 3D Digitisation Guidelines based on the VIGIE Study 2020/654, and explores the whys of 3D digitisation – help with sustainable tourism, accessibility, preservation of fragile tangible cultural heritage,

The presentation in the conference offered a great opportunity to establish many new contacts with organisations and projects from all over Europe, in the scope of contributing to the EUreka3D networking efforts.

The deadline for submitting photographic projects for the AIPAI PHOTO CONTEST has been extended

AIPAI Photo Contest 2024: deadline extended to October 31

The deadline for submitting photographic projects for the 3rd edition of the AIPAI PHOTO CONTEST, the photography contest organized by the Italian Association for Industrial Archaeological Heritage ETS, has been extended to October 31. The contest is organized in collaboration with DICEA – Sapienza University of Rome, Do.co.mo.mo Italia, Ministry of Culture – General Secretariat – UNESCO Office, Appia Antica Archaeological Park, Appia Antica Regional Park, AEM Foundation (Milan), ISEC Foundation (Sesto San Giovanni), Maire Tecnimont Foundation (Rome), Musil Foundation (Brescia), RoMe Museum Exhibition, and Photography Network.

For the winners are up are three 1000 euros prizes, publication in the magazine “Patrimonio Industriale” and display in a traveling exhibition of the winning, mentioned and selected shots.

The contest, designed to raise awareness and promote industrial culture, memory of work and the architectural, technological and landscape heritage of industrial archaeology, is open to professional photographers, amateurs, students, temporary or permanent groups and associations, without limits of age and nationality who will be able to tell, document and represent the industrial heritage through a photographic project, to be presented by 00:00 on October 31, 2024.

Read more about the contest