Digital meets Culture

Submission deadline for 2-page abstract: 10 March 2020

Call for book chapters: CEPROQHA Project

Data Analytics for Cultural Heritage: Current Trends and Concepts

Editors: Abdelaziz Bouras ¹, Abdelhak Belhi ^1,2, Abdulaziz Khalid Al-Ali ¹, Abdul Hamid Sadka ³

College of Engineering, Qatar University, Qatar
DISP Laboratory, Université Lumière Lyon 2, Lyon, France
Brunel University, London, United Kingdom

Book Scope

In light of the recent advances and techniques in the cultural domain using artificial intelligence, the book aims at addressing new and current challenges related to the effective implementation of AI technologies in the cultural context. The book chapters are mostly related to the application of AI to the cultural heritage digitization process aiming at empowering the value of the digitized assets through advanced artificial intelligence techniques. We particularly focus on improvements to the data acquisition stage as well as the data enrichment and curation stages using advanced artificial intelligence techniques and tools.

For this book, we consider the following focus areas in the cultural heritage domain:

Data acquisition
Data enrichment
Data management
Data preservation

MORE INFO and SUBMISSION: https://www.ceproqha.qa/call-book-chapters/

Introduction

Art and culture are some of the most reputable history transfer mediums through civilizations and generations. Cultural objects are distinguished by their higher value and attractiveness as they hold a lot of cultural and historical information. The physical preservation of cultural assets was known to be the only tool to conserve these objects for the long term. This process is reported to take a considerable amount of time and tends to be often costly. However, since the emergence of digital technologies, and thanks to their reliability and continuously dropping costs, the digital preservation of cultural objects is continuously catching the eyes of heritage organizations and is studied as an efficient and reliable alternative to the physical preservation. Cultural institutions such as museums, galleries, and heritage management organizations are currently investing a lot of efforts and resources to digitize and preserve their collections using cutting edge acquisition technologies. This process was often reported to be successful as we started to see multiple initiatives such as virtual museum tours, high-quality replicas of cultural objects, digital enrichment, linked data, etc. More recently, and with the recent breakthroughs in the AI domain, new techniques have been developed and aim at enriching the acquired data using artificial intelligence. In the past, cultural data enrichment was only possible using semantic tools or manual annotation which did not fully leverage the hidden information that can be extracted using AI technologies. Nowadays, artificial intelligence techniques for classification and content generation are being studied by multiple research groups around the world and thanks to the abundance of cultural data, some new challenges were presented to researchers to make the assets digital preservation more effective.

Throughout this book, we mainly consider the challenges related to the improvement of the data acquisition, data enrichment and data management processes in the cultural heritage data lifecycle pipeline using advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies with an emphasis on recent applications related to deep learning for visual recognition, generative models, natural language processing, super resolution, etc.

Athens (Greece), 5-6 March 2020

Interfaces Conference: Cultural Synergies, Creativity and Innovation

Cultural practitioners, policy makers, cultural managers, artists, curators and creative entrepreneurs are invited to a 2-day international event that explores how cultural synergies could contribute to innovation and creativity in the field of culture. In this final international activity of the INTERFACES network co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union, we aim to explore how cultural synergies could contribute to innovation and creativity in the field of culture.

Join us at Onassis Stegi in Athens and participate in the discussion on how we can strengthen audience development as a mean of improving access to European cultural and creative works, promote transnational mobility of artists and foster capacity building through innovative approaches in the cultural sector.

This event will be a great opportunity to exchange insights with over 25 cultural practitioners, policymakers and representatives of 16 Creative Europe funded cooperation projects and of course network with fellow professionals from the field of Culture and the Arts. The main objective of the conference is to engage a discussion between the different European projects and networks and enable a transfer of knowledge and experience from within projects funded by the Creative Europe programme just before the official launch of the new programme for 2021-2027. We propose to focus on the following topics:

Inclusion, Diversity, Access, and Equity in the Arts and Culture Sector
Art, Space and the Public Sphere
Networking, Cooperation & Professionalization in the Culture Sector
Arts, Innovation & Digital Media

Day 1, Thursday 5 March 2020, 18.00-21.00

Day 2, Friday 6 March 2020, 09.00-20.00

FULL PROGRAMME: https://www.onassis.org/whats-on/interfaces-conference

REGISTRATION: https://www.eventora.com/en/Events/interfaces

Brussels, 26th February 2020

IMP Concluding Symposium: Museums and intangible heritage: towards a third space in the heritage sector

– How can museums avoid the trap of “freezing” intangible cultural heritage in time by integrating it into more static collections?

– How may we assure that heritage practitioners and communities are sufficiently being heard in display settings?

– What are the best ways to bring audiences into the museum, allowing for participatory experiences, yet avoiding the commodification of intangible heritage?

These are some of the main themes faced by the Intangible Cultural Heritage Project and that will represent the basis of its conclusive symposium which aims to identify the best way for establish a solid liaison and cooperation between Intangible Cultural Heritage and museums for a mutual benefit.

The project started in 2017 and over the past three years it explored the interaction of museum work and intangible heritage practices in a comparative European context.
It organized 5 previous conferences which featured in depth theoretical contributions, workshops, artistic co-creations, numerous discussions and many inspirational testimonies from the fields of museums and intangible cultural heritage.

This concluding symposium is addressed to key stakeholders from the fields of intangible heritage and museums, such as heritage practitioners, museum professionals, policy makers, academics and representatives of transnational networks.
The aim is to explore the various ways in which museums and safeguarding living heritage go together and to step into reciprocal understanding of different methods, possibilities and approaches.
The outcomes of the public forum will be used for drafting future-oriented recommendations and methodologies for both policies and practice.

More information:
Symposium webpage
Symposium programme

IMP Concluding Symposium

Museums and intangible heritage: towards a third space in the heritage sector

On February 26, the Intangible Cultural Heritage Project will hold its final symposium in Brussels.
The conference aims to draft the conclusions of the cognitive and investigative activities started in 2017 and developed through a series of meetings all focused on identifying the best way to combine the tangible cultural heritage preserved in museums with the tangible cultural heritage related to practice and way of living. The symposium organizers explain that cooperation between intangible heritage and museums can bring enormous benefit to both sides. For example, museums can enrich their object-based collections by including testimonies and practices relating to living, intangible heritage. Heritage practitioners and communities, on the other hand, can gain a wider audience, and can benefit from museum documentation and preservation expertise in order to safeguard their particular branch of intangible cultural heritage.
But often, misunderstandings and conflicts take the place of a fruitful collaboration. The Intangible Cultural Heritage and Museums Project (IMP) faced the causes of this lack of communication and look for solutions to overcome them.
The final symposium addresses key stakeholders from the fields of intangible heritage and museums, such as heritage practitioners, museum professionals, policy makers, academics and representatives of transnational networks.
The main topics of discussion will regard the best ways to bring audience into museum and to promote participatory experiences.

The outcomes of the public forum will be used for drafting future-oriented recommendations and methodologies for both policies and practice.
Symposium webpage
Discover more about IMP

Registration is open!

CultureMoves MOOC “Creating a Digital Cultural Heritage Community”

The MOOC “Creating a Digital Cultural Heritage Community” is now open for registrations. Here students can learn more about how to create a community for digital cultural heritage through innovative practices for user engagement: https://www.edx.org/course/creating-a-digital-cultural-heritage-community.

Developed in collaboration with the Kaleidoscope project, the MOOC will last for 8 weeks, with learners being able to join at any point and go through the coursework at their own pace, choosing and picking the modules they are most interested in, choosing either a dance or photography-focussed pathway, to explore digital curation and annotation.

The CultureMoves team have written a series of dance-specific modules for the MOOC exploring Cultural Heritage; Intangible Cultural Heritage and Annotation; Dance and Site; Im/material Cultural Heritage – Costumes, Masks and Museums; as well as a Historical Dance Module, developed in collaboration with Early Dance Circle and Chalemie (UK), with guest tutors Barbara Segal and Sharon Butler. These modules offer a series of activities for learners at different stages, ranging from undergraduates to PGR students, to showcase and encourage uptake of the CultureMoves tools. Learners will be encouraged to critically engage with and discuss the intersections between culture, dance, tourism and digital technologies, with a particular focus on dance in unconventional spaces and in relation to touristic landmarks. Reading lists and links to other tools, materials and resources are also available. Assignments will include philosophical and theoretical discussions, practical questions and tasks, reviews to check learning and a discussion forum.

Dance and Cultural Heritage: the material from Europeana to create new choreographies!

The LabDays of CultureMoves

In December 2019 and January 2020, the CultureMoves team held its final project LabDays, working with a range of choreographers, dance artists and dance students across the West Midlands region.

On 2nd December 2019, a CultureMoves LabDay co-ordinated in conjunction with Birmingham Dance Network and took place at DanceXchange, Birmingham (UK), where we held one of the very first CultureMoves LabDay Coffee and Conversation events last year. The CultureMoves C-DaRE team was thrilled to be working alongside BDN and six locally-based dance artists and choreographers – Sophie Barraclough, Rosie (Rosanna) Cook, Steph (Stephanie) Donohoe, Shelley Eva Haden, Fleur Hall, and Rob (Robert) Hemming. During this LabDay, we invited the dancers to engage with digital content and consider the relationship between dance, public space, tourism and cultural heritage. The dancers explored the European online cultural heritage library, Europeana, thinking about space, memory, place, body and trace, and what heritage / intangible cultural heritage means to them as dance artists and choreographers. The dancers then familiarised themselves with MovesScrapbook and MovesCollect plug-in to curate material from Europeana and use this to create new choreographic scores in the studio.

On Tuesday 28th January 2020, the COVUNI CultureMoves team spent an enjoyable afternoon at the University of Worcester for the project’s final Educational LabDay workshop, exploring the value of the CultureMoves digital toolkit in a dance educational setting.

The participants were five very engaged final year Dance undergraduates working on a specialist Dance and Technology module and their lecturer. The CultureMoves team first gave an overview of the project and all three of the CultureMoves digital tools, and then the students worked on developing movement scores from Europeana content, also using MovesCollect and MovesScrapbook to document how they used this content as a springboard for creating new choreographic phrases and sequences. We ended the afternoon with a lively discussion about how we archive, document, annotate and remember dance. We discussed how digital annotators might be useful for this and the students are now very keen to try out MotionNotes as well!
The CultureMoves team would like to thank Megan Caine for co-ordinating the Birmingham LabDay on the BDN side and to DanceXchange for hosting us, and Dr. Paul Golz, Course Lead and Senior Lecturer for the Dance and Applied Practice, Physical Education and Dance at the University of Worcester, for inviting the CultureMoves team to Worcester for the Educational LabDay workshop.

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Idrija (Slovenia), 13-15 March

Idrija 2020 promotes HeritageHack , the hackathon for cultural Heritage.

The Idrija 2020 Association organized, from the 13th to the 15th March, a 3-day hackathon for cultural Heritage called HeritageHack.

The Association was founded in 2012 when 5 professionals, highly educated and native to Idrija, rethought the cultural heritage of their small former mining town, nowadays a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with the aim to develop the municipality of Idrija into a youth-friendly municipality, that attracting the young and bringing people together.

Idrija 2020 Association and the story connected to it was selected as a good example at the Heritage Days Stories contest that enabled its to receive the financial support of the European Commission and the Council of Europe for organising the HeritageHack.
Idrija 2020 co-founded the ID20 Istitution that gathers a team of young highly skilled and experienced young professionals in the fields of architecture, business development, design and heritage innovation; the aim of ID20 was to unite and provide opportunities and support at other organisations and individuals in taking one step further in innovation of cultural heritage and transform heritage from a thing of the past to a matter of future.
The activities promoted by ID20 comprise:

HeritageLab: where young people create new products and services, based on local heritage. In 2018, HeritageLab won the European Social Innovation Competition.
Support for organisations that build on the rich cultural and natural heritage of their surrounding (heritage institutions, municipalities, tourist and non-governmental organisations) in reaching and engaging their customers and partners.
lasting, meaningful design that brings value to existing buildings, to leave the environment better than today.

The call is open to creative and inspirational ideas from different sectors, to give answers to the challenges of cultural heritage and to find entrepreneurial ideas for generations to come.

The deadline is the 29th February 2020.

Young people between 18 and 30 can participate at Hackathon and tackle the challenges that the heritage institutions in the town (museums, Municipality,..) are dealing with. They will be provided with data and experienced mentors and will get the chance to discover the heritage in Idrija first hand and try out different digital devices (AR, VR,..).

The best ideas will be generously rewarded!

Further information:

Leaflet
Location: Inzaghi Shaft Machine House, Vodnikova 3, Idrija, Slovenia
Link to event web page (Slovene): https://www.id20.si/heritagehack/
Facebook event (Slovene): https://www.facebook.com/events/463456994362607/
Association & Institute web page (English): https://www.id20.si/en/home/

Be creative with cultural heritage! 13-15 March.

HeritageHack: in Idrija to tackle the challenges of cultural heritage!

From the 13th to the 15th March, in Idrija (Slovenia), the HeritageHack will take place. It is a 3-day hackathon for cultural Heritage, financed by European Commission and the Council of Europe, and organized by Idrija 2020 Association.

This Association was founded in 2012 by 5 professionals, highly educated and native to this small town, with the aim to develop youth sector and policies in fields as local strategic development, entrepreneurship, revitalisation of heritage; the mission was to develop the municipality of Idrija into a youth-friendly municipality, that attracting the young and bringing people together.

Idrija 2020 co-founded the ID20 Istitution to unite and provide networking opportunities and support at other organisations and individuals in taking one step further in innovation of cultural heritage. The Institute gathers a team of young highly skilled and experienced young professionals in the fields of architecture, business development, design and heritage innovation, united by the idea to transform heritage from a thing of the past to a matter of future.

The activities promoted by ID20 comprise:

HeritageLab: offers a comprehensive step-by-step incubation programme for young people from small and semi-peripheral towns that promote and highlight the local cultural heritage and create new businesses and services, stemming from a new understanding of heritage.
Support for organisations that build on the rich cultural and natural heritage of their surrounding (heritage institutions, municipalities, tourist and non-governmental organisations) in reaching and engaging their customers and partners.
lasting, meaningful design that brings value to existing buildings, to leave the environment better than today.

In this framework started the call addressed to young between 18 and 30 who can participate and compete for a prize of 1000 €.

The call is aimed at creative and inspirational ideas from different sectors, to give answers to the challenges of cultural heritage and to find entrepreneurial ideas for generations to come.

Deadline: 29th February 2020

More info:

Heritagehack leaflet
Location: Inzaghi Shaft Machine House, Vodnikova 3, Idrija, Slovenia
Link to event web page (Slovene): https://www.id20.si/heritagehack/
Facebook event (Slovene): https://www.facebook.com/events/463456994362607/
Association & Institute web page (English): https://www.id20.si/en/home/

celebrating the diversity of European cultural heritage and empowering a participative approach of citizens

Sharing EYCH project WeAre #EuropeForCulture

A ceremony and an exhibition on 6-7 February 2020 at the House of European History in Brussels marked the “formal” conclusion of the WeAre#EuropeForCulture project, financed in the framework of the European Year of Cultural Heritage, which realized a series of inclusive and participative pop-up exhibitions across 2019 in various European cities, to celebrate the diversity of European cultural heritage and to empower citizens in a more participative approach to cultural heritage.

Download the Booklet of WeAre#EuropeForCulture with photos and stories from the project’s events! PDF, 6 Mb.

The project coordinators Fred Truyen, Antonella Fresa and Sofie Taes were received by the European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture and Education, Youth and Sport Ms. Mariya Gabriel who expressed kind words and congratulations for the active engagement in the WeAre#EuropeForCulture project, “making sure that cultural heritage is accessible to all people”.

During the event at the House of European History, a ceremony awarded some very special guests: participants from all over Europe who took part in the realization of the local pop up exhibitions. Among them, Szilvia Rebeka Toth from Budapest, Yoana Borislavova Ilieva from Sofia accompained by her mother Gergana Petrova Dimitrova and sign language interpreter Slavina Lozanova; Pertti Stenman from Finland; Maria Àngels Palahí with his son Marc Oliveras from Girona; Vasarė Mikalkevičiūtė and her mother Jūratė Mikalkevičienė from Vinius; Yiotis Ttofis Kyriakou from Cyprus; in representation of the Basel event Vera Chiquet and Peter Fornaro from the University of Basel; Myrthe Vinck, Marie-Aline Geurts and Kato Debeuckelaere in representation the Leuven event; in representation of Pisa event Susanna Capannini and the director of the Museum of Graphics Alessandro Tosi.

Presentations:
Antonella Fresa (PDF, 2 Mb)
Sofie Taes (PDF, 12 Mb)

Videos about the pop-up exhibitions:

EU project to better preserve areas of cultural heritage from hazards and risks

The ARCH project to make historical areas more resilient

ARCH is an European funded project led by Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS (Germany) with participation of four European municipalities (Bratislava, Camerino, Hamburg, Valencia), research scientists, city network ICLEI and standardisation organisation DIN.

Its purpose is providing unified, collaborative approaches for disaster risk reduction of historic areas with regard to climate change-related and other natural hazards.

The project, that aims to better preserve areas of cultural heritage, will develop a disaster risk management framework to improve the resilience of historic areas to natural hazards.
It will focus on the cities of Bratislava, Camerino, Hamburg and Valencia; it will co-create tools to help these cities save their cultural heritage from hazards and risks associated with the effects of climate change.

Camerino (Italy) was an important medieval city and has a rich and prestigious historic town centre. It was hit by devastating earthquake in 2016 that caused serious damage. Camerino is also at risk of hydrogeological events and heavy snow.

Hamburg (Germany): here the ARCH project will focus on the UNESCO World Heritage site and the updating of the management plan and monitoring system of the Speicherstadt and Kontorhaus District, in particular on present and potential damages caused by natural hazards, like flooding, heavy rain events and changes in the tidal differentials.

The heritage of Bratislava (Slovakia) includes a medieval town centre with architectural, monumental, and archaeological, as well as natural heritage. The mainly risks are from heat waves, drought, fluvial and pluvial flooding, erosion, and other extreme weather events.

The research of ARCH in Valencia (Spain) will focus mainly in its historical agricultural region Huerta analizing its dual role:
• region who soffers the climate change: to know the impact help to draw resilience strategies.
• region that helps mitigate the effects of the climate change in the city.

The main results of Arch can be summarized in these points:
• Disaster risk management and resilience assessment framework for historic areas
• Data capturing and information management.
• Simulation models to give decision-makers a deeper understanding of the potential Hazard that impacts the historic areas.
• Risk-oriented vulnerability assessment.
• production of a collaborative, web-based disaster risk management platform to help local authorities create and implement sustainable protection and reconstruction strategies.
• Resilience options inventory: a collection of measures and pathways to build resilience will be provided, methods of assessing their usefulness and options for how to finance them.

Further information: https://savingculturalheritage.eu/