Digital meets Culture

From May 30 to August 23, 2020

Jönköpings läns museum in Jönköping, Sweden, invites Video Art Miden to present the video art exhibition “ARTificial Intelligence”

The video art selection, curated by Gioula Papadopoulou (art director and curator of Video Art Miden) presents 8 works that deal with various concepts concerning the “homo digitalis” era and artificial intelligence, exploring the physical detachment and the gradual digitalization and virtualization of our world, our societies and our minds.

All works have one thing in common: they are tracing and decoding human behavior in the digital era and explore our relationship with our self and “the other”. What do we have to sacrifice in order to approach a supposedly perfect future world?

Participant artists/works:
– Juergen Trautwein & Silvia Nonnenmacher, Meta_Face, USA 2017
– Di Hu, Les Objets Du Système, China 2019
– Landia Art and Economy Foundation, Chatbot Dialogs, Germany 2019
– Landia Art and Economy Foundation, Human Applications, Germany 2019
– Elliott Nicole J. Waller & Fabian Forban, AEI (artificial emotional intelligence), Sweden/Germany, 2019
– Yvana Samandova & Borjan Zarevski, Artificial Intelligence VS Aristotle// beta 0.98, France, 2019
– Katerina Athanasopoulou & Eleni Ikoniadou, Her Voice, UK 2019
– Sven Windszus, PURE WHITE, Germany 2017

[Show as slideshow]

Jönköpings läns museum is an art and cultural history museum, which brings to life the county’s cultural heritage. The museum’s buildings also contain archives, magazines, an extensive picture archive and a studio for painting preservation.

Video Art Miden founded by an independent group of Greek artists, is an independent organization for the exploration and promotion of video art. It has been one of the earliest specialized video-art festivals in Greece and has been recognized as one of the most successful video art platforms and an important cultural exchange point for Greek and international video art. Miden screening programs are hosted by significant festivals, museums globally.

Download detailed information here.
More info about Video Art Miden: https://www.instagram.com/videoart_miden/
More info about the works here
More info about the exhibition may be found at the museum’s website

EuropeanaTech presents papers elaborated by experts following the conference held in Hamburg in November 2019

SWIB (Semantic Web In Libraries) on EuropeanaTech

img.: Schematic depiction of a knowledge graph in the performing arts domain; from the paper by Julia Beck, Frankfurt University Library, CC0.

The SWIB (Semantic Web in Libraries) annual conference is one of the essential events related to Linked Open Data in libraries and other related organisations. EuropeanaTech has long been involved in this event as presenters, review board members and organisers.

SWIB19, the 11th conference was held 25 – 27 November 2019 in Hamburg and as always, featured a top notch program featuring institutes from around the world who continue to further the possibilities and potential of LOD within digital cultural heritage.

With the current issue of EuropeanaTech Insight, we took inspiration from the 2019 program, and invited several authors to elaborate on papers that were presented at the conference. Featured within this issue are articles from, ADAPT Centre, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, Frankfurt University Library, Germany, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany, GWDG, Germany and kcoylenet jointly with Dublin Core Metadata Initiative.

Read the EuropeanaTech issue at: https://pro.europeana.eu/page/issue-15-swib-2019

We hope that you find these papers valuable and thought provoking. Work and research regarding Linked Open Data continues to be a top priority within the EuropeanaTech community. For those curious about the full program including slides and videos, you can find these here.

Selected in the category Education, Training and Awareness-Raising

Uccu Roma Informal Educational Foundation is one of the winners of the European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra

The European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra, funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, promote best practices related to heritage conservation, research, management, education and communication. They contribute to a stronger public recognition of value of cultural heritage for Europe’s society, economy and environment.
Specialist juries assess the projects and select the winners in four categories: conservation, research, dedicated service by individuals or organisations, education training and awareness-raising.

The last 7th May, European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra announced the winners of the 2020 edition: 21 exemplary achievement from 15 countries.

We are very pleased to announce that Uccu Roma Informal Educational Foundation, partner in the REACH Minority Heritage Pilot, is one of the winner in the category “Education Training and Awareness-Raising”.

The Foundation was established in 2010; the aim was to create a platform for the meeting and dialogue between young Roma and non-Roma to reduce stereotypes, prejudices and intolerance against Roma through the fostering of interaction and the sharing of Roma culture and history.

It organizes several educational workshops in Hungary, where Roma is the largest minority group, in particular in Budapest, Pécs, Miskolc and Ózd.

The walking tours that takes place in the 8th district of Budapest and in the city of Pécs are the most successful activities promoted by the Foundation; they are led by Roma youngsters who contribute, with their own experiences, to the discovery of the districts and their link to the cultural heritage of Roma.

The programme means to provide young Roma people with useful work experience and encourages them to feel proud of their heritage.

One of the most important long-term impacts of the initiative has been the personal development of the young Roma volunteers: they are trained by the Foundation’s staff to moderate and facilitate workshops in primary and secondary schools throughout the country. In these meetings they introduce young people to Roma culture, through history, art and heritage and encourage an open intercultural dialogue between the participants.

The jury stressed that:
“This grassroots initiative empowers Roma people and addresses intolerance and social exclusion through the fostering of interaction, dialogue and the sharing of knowledge and understanding of Roma culture. The programme of the Uccu Roma Informal Educational Foundation encourages personal development and a good quality of life for the construction of a peaceful and democratic community with respect for cultural diversity, according to the principles of the Faro Convention. The programme has succeeded in creating a network of young Roma activists who act as mediators ensuring the agency of the community. The way in which the Uccu Roma Informal Educational Foundation has provided a platform for exchange and dialogue in everyday life is a great example of social innovation in that they have utilised cultural heritage in the construction of a more cohesive society. This is applicable in many other countries where these problems are present“.

See the video

survey by UNESCO and International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives

Magnetic Tape Alert Project: mapping archives that are in danger

Today’s knowledge of the linguistic and cultural diversity of humanity is widely based on magnetic tape recordings produced over the past 60 years. Magnetic audio and video tape formats are now obsolete. Spare parts supply and service is fading, replay equipment in operable condition is disappearing rapidly, and routine transfer of magnetic tape documents is estimated to end around 2025. The only way to preserve these sounds and images in the long term, and to keep them accessible for future generations, is their digitisation and transfer to safe digital repositories.

While many professional memory institutions have already secured their audiovisual holdings, or have planned to do so in time, a great part of audio and video recordings are still in their original state, kept in small academic or cultural institutions, or in private hands.

With the Magnetic Tape Alert Project, the Information for All Programme (IFAP) of UNESCO, in cooperation with IASA, the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives, intends to alert stakeholders of the imminent threat of losing access to their audiovisual documents. Part of this is to conduct a survey of existing audiovisual documents on magnetic tape that are not yet digitally preserved. The survey focusses on unique recordings rather than copies.

The information obtained through the survey on collections at risk will serve as a basis for the planning of adequate solutions for the safeguarding of these irreplaceable original documents in the long-term.

Take the survey here: http://www.mtap.iasa-web.org/

Deadline 31 May 2020

From the collaboration between Getty, Google Arts & Culture

Art Transfer, the new app to transform common life into artwork

The rapid shuttering of museums due to COVID-19 has had serious consequences; museums, to stay connected with audiences when they can’t physically visit collections, found new and unusual ways to bring together their public. So they have entered in the houses of thousands people making available their cultural collections on-line.
Also the Google Arts & Culture platform offers virtual tours and museum collections using gigapixel photographs and StreetView technology.

But now, why not transform the world around, maybe the closed spaces in which we are forced to stay, or ourselves in famous artworks?

The J. Paul Getty Trust and Google have teamed up to launch Art Transfer, new feature on the Google Arts & Culture app, that lets users apply the characteristic styles of Van Gogh, Kandinsky, Cézanne, Kahlo and many more to any image, transforming even the most mundane photos into veritable masterpieces.
The tool is very easy to use even if not all the artwork options produce equally faithful results.
Also this is a new way to participate in the world of art and to reminder that art history is cool.

A 24 months research mapping the impact of cultural heritage in European societies.

New project for The ESPON European Grouping on Territorial Cooperation

The young project, started this May 2020, will complement the ESPON Targeted Analysis of 2019: “The Material Cultural Heritage as a Strategic Territorial Development Resource: Mapping Impacts Through a Set of Common European Socio-economic Indicators” (https://www.espon.eu/cultural-heritage).
The consortium is composed by three no-profit bodies with decades of European collaboration and joint research experiences:
•Istituto per la Ricerca Sociale (IRS, Project Leader)
•European Association of Cultural Researchers (ERICarts Network and Institute)
•Associazione Economia della Cultura (AEC)
HERIWELL will face more than 40 thematics and will involve a wide number of experts and specialists from across Europe.
Its main object is to develop of a pan-European methodology and territorial analysis of impacts of cultural heritage that can be associated with societal well-being, including but not limited to quality of life, social inclusion, educational benefits and other aspects. The research will cover both material and intangible cultural heritage and the impacts should be associated with:
– The presence of material cultural heritage (stock of buildings and other objects)
– Use of the material and intangible cultural heritage (including participation in related activities)
– Digitalisation of cultural heritage
– EU-funded investments in cultural heritage
– Activities (policies and measures, including participatory ones) aimed at increasing positive impacts of cultural heritage and diminishing potentially negative influences (if feasible).
The main outcome of HERIWELL will be a methodological framework, defining the most important societal domains in which impacts of cultural heritage can be observed, supporting such impacts with evidence.
In addition, it will provide a tentative classification of cultural heritage impacts on societal well-being considering three dimensions:
1.Quality of Life (including education/skills and the use of ICT for cultural purposes; health; cultural participation and satisfaction; environmental quality);
2. Social Cohesion (e.g. equal opportunities and integration; cultural accessibility and governance; community participation, volunteering and charitable giving; trust);
3. Material Conditions (e.g. income and jobs related to culture; real estate prices, cost of living).
For more information, download the overview of HERIWELL research project here

A 24 months research mapping the impact of cultural heritage in European societies.

New project for The ESPON European Grouping on Territorial Cooperation

Deadline submission of information about papers' title and authors: May 15, 2020

International Conference: Digital Presentation and Preservation of Cultural and Scientific Heritage – DiPP2020

The conference is organised under the patronage of Burgas Municipality and aims at presenting innovative results, research projects and applications in the field of digitisation, documentation, archiving, representation and preservation of global and national tangible and intangible cultural and scientific heritage. The main focus is to provide open access to digitised cultural heritage and to set up sustainable policies for its continuous digital preservation and conservation. Representatives of a number of public and specialised libraries, museums, galleries, archives, centres, both national and foreign research institutions and universities will be invited to participate and exchange experiences, ideas, knowledge and best practices of the field.
There will be also Workshop on Open Access to Scientific Publications, Data and Data Science, which will primarily focus on the following activities: Open Access indicators, disseminate partners’ best practices, discuss research problems in the field, discuss the possibilities of establishing a network of open access repositories, contribute to the problems of the harmonization of national legislation and practices and discuss the possibilities of developing training courses for creators and managers of scientific digital repositories to ensure interoperability.
When
September 24–26, 2020
Where
Burgas, Bulgaria
How
In response to travel and meeting difficulties eventually posed by the COVID-19, and taking into account that all risk of exposure should be minimized, DiPP2020 Committee has taken the decision to provide a fully virtual format and the registered delegates will be able to participate virtually as well as in-person.
Deadline for DiPP2020 paper submission: 5 June 2020.
Extended instructions are available at: http://dipp.math.bas.bg/
Main organizer
Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
Co-organisers
Regional Academic Center – Burgas, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Regional Historical Museum – Burgas, Burgas Free University
DiPP2020 web site: http://dipp2020.math.bas.bg/

Contact
Desislava Paneva-Marinova, Detelin Luchev
Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
1113 Sofia, 8, Acad. G. Bonchev Str., room 271
office phone: +359 2 979 2874
e-mail: dipp@math.bas.bg, dessi@cc.bas.bg , dml@math.bas.bg
Call for papers

Deadline submission of information about papers' title and authors: May 15, 2020

International Conference: Digital Presentation and Preservation of Cultural and Scientific Heritage – DiPP2020

the new project about Chinese heritage in Europe was presented on 6th May at the online meeting of Europeana Aggregators

PAGODE at Europeana Aggregators Forum

The Europeana Aggregators Forum is the gathering where twice a year the community of Europeana most trusted partners meets to review strategies and collaborations, and make plans for the future. All the aggregators work with cultural heritage institutions to gather authentic, trustworthy and robust cultural data and make it accessible through Europeana. Through the Europeana Aggregators Forum, aggregators work to exchange the knowledge and best practice that support the digital transformation of cultural heritage institutions.

Due to the covid-19 restrictions, that of 6-7 May 2020 was the first only-virtual meeting, and despite it was a bit sad not to meet in person, the plenary and the various breakout session were perfectly working and efficient. PAGODE was enthusiastically presented to colleagues with a video and a short pitch. A call to networking to other aggregators and cultural heritage institutions was also launched in the light of having PAGODE as a seed for a new community around Chinese cultural heritage in Europe.