Digital meets Culture

The EU research service for EU funding projects

“What is the social value of culture? While culture is increasingly being viewed from an economic perspective, there is much more at stake. Focusing on the valuation practices developed by different actors involved in the cultural sector, the EU-funded UNCHARTED project will identify Europe’s plurality of cultural values attached to specific cultural products, productions, services, activities and sites. It will consider the multiplicity of agents and the diversity of evaluation practices. Led by the University of Barcelona and involving 10 research partners based in France, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom, the project will focus on the valuation practices of the various actors involved in cultural life, from the audience and visitors to the artists to experts and politicians.”
With this presentation the UNCHARTED project is now mentioned in the CORDIS webpage dedicated to EU projects. CORDIS, the Community Research and Development Information Service, is the European Commission’s primary source of results from the projects funded by the EU’s framework programmes for research and innovation.
Its main mission is to bring research results to professionals in the field to foster open science, create innovative products and services and stimulate growth across Europe.
CORDIS has a rich and structured public repository with all project information held by the European Commission such as project factsheets, participants, reports, deliverables and links to open-access publications.
Link to UNCHARTED presentation on CORDIS webpage

Open access is a great resource, and GLAMS are more and more embracing this approach. But sometimes the consequences of allowing free reuse go beyond any immagination.

Public Domain and misuse: some thoughts

image: Rank Badge with Leopard, Wave and Sun Motifs, China, Qing dynasty (1644–1911), late 18th century, silk and metallic thread, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 30.75.1025.

Being so deeply embedded in the Europeana ecosystem, the new CEF project PAGODE – Europeana China (2020-2021) fully embraces the advocacy towards more open access content to be made available online in repositories like Europeana. The effort of cultural heritage institutions in showcasing their gems in digital format goes hand in hand with their mission of sharing this cultural heritage at large, for the benefit and enjoyment of the entire community.

Also, the general trend in Europe about digitization of cultural heritage and associated rights comes from a lenghty discussion that is continuing for years: does the digitization action add new rights to the digitized object? Despite there is not a general consensus on this, the direction is on maintaining the rights status of the physical object and specifically this means that if an artwork is in Public Domain because of copyright’s expiration, also the digital reproduction should be labelled as “Public Domain”.

Irrespectively of the associated rights, however, there is always a problem of possible misuse for this content that is available online and easily downloadable. And while in our minds there is this idea of the “evil” user who breaks copyright on purpose, and stoles the images to e.g. make unlawful money out of them, the problem on the control of what happens to the online content is much deeper.

An example of this, that particularly catched the attention of PAGODE – Europeana China because it relates to a Chinese cultural heritage item, has recently come to the stage: a beautiful image of a Chinese embroidered cloth (a so-called rank-badge) depicting a leopard, in PD from the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, was recently used to illustrate the cover page of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Journal, titled “Emerging infectious diseases”.

The Journal and CDC were immediately flooded with expressions of outrage and concern of many from the Asian-American community and beyond, at the inappropriate use of a Chinese work of art on the cover and tweet-posting of a journal issue devoted to scholarly articles on COVID-19 and other respiratory infections.

The power of imaging should not be underestimated, as the choice of this image in such a context may suggest an emphasis on animals in China as carriers of the disease, resulting in an unvoluntary but certainly irresponsible example of using a PD digital item. The sensitivity about associating the COVID-19 crisis straightforward with China is clearly understandable, especially in America in this moment of xenophobia concerns and protests; but the explaination of CDC cuts short, by stating this is all a misunderstanding, and simply confirming that the image was chosen just for decorative purposes, being a striking piece of art – as indeed it is. At the moment, no reaction is known from the Metropolitan Museum of Arts as the content holder of the misused digital image.

The entire story is deepened in an interesting article by Hyperallergic magazine.

But the question about protection against digital content misuses is still very open. It is not always a matter of whom makes money out of the content, but more of what happens to the content once it is freely available for “any” purpose.

While advocating the open access approach, we really must think that the content holder completely loses any control and responsibility on the reuse of this content, and on the possible consequences that may arise. This is one of the many reasons for which some archives still have doubts about embracing the open access tout-court, especially when they deal with potentially-sensitive content.

PAGODE – Europeana China is co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility Programme of the European Union, under GA n. INEA/CEF/ICT/A2019/1931839

28 May -14 June, on the website of the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art

The virtual showcase of UC Davis graduate students for the Arts & Humanities 2020 Graduate Exhibition

The Arts & Humanities 2020 Graduate Exhibition, the annual exhibition of the UC Davis graduate students, is an essential component of the Master of Fine Arts programs in art studio and design and is also open to visual, performing, and literary arts graduates within the College of Letters and Science.

Every year it is held at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, but in the particular situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, for the first time it is taking place digitally on the museum’s website.

From May 28 to June 14, thirty arts and students from the disciplines of art history, art studio, creative writing, cultural studies, design, music, native American studies present their works in a virtual exhibition.

The works include wide range of topics and techniques and each student had used a different approach in creating and presenting their work.
Web galleries include photographs and videos of art as well as audio recordings, and recorded presentations of research and theses and written statements.

As in previous years, most of the participants are from the studio art program and design department.

A virtual opening celebration was held online the 28th May and it included welcome remarks and the announcement of the Keister & Allen Art Purchase Prize for studio art and the Savageau Award for design.

The future of Art market is digital

VORTIC: the new virtual reality app brings art galleries straight to collectors’ homes

The entrepreneur Oliver Miro, with decades of sales experience in the family art gallery, has launched an extended reality platform that offers to private galleries the opportunity to virtually reproduce their spaces, adapting the artworks here displayed. This new tool not only allows galleries to be visited virtually, but represents a new way of conceiving the art market. In fact, collectors can use virtual reality to simulate the effect that the artwork they intend to buy produces inside their own homes. The collector is then able to decide whether to buy or not the artwork without moving it from the art gallery.
The project was started three years ago with the aim of avoiding vain movements of artifacts for commercial purposes, but it certainly represent an attractive resource in a period of crisis such as the one we are currently experiencing with the COVID- 19 pandemic, which obliged a plenty of small-medium art galleries to close, in fact they can use the digital platform for reproducing their exhibitions and be virtually visited by collectors.
The platform is made up of two complementary, augmented and virtual reality apps: the first is called Vortic Curate, it is accessible through subscription and allows galleries to set up virtual exhibitions customized for specific collectors by the use of high resolution 3D scanning technology.
For collectors Vortic offers two apps: Vortic Collect is an AR app available for smartphones and tablets through which collectors can attend to exhibitions, fairs and private views. They can also place works using augmented reality to see how they would look in their own homes.
The second is Vortic VR, the virtual reality version of the app that allows audiences to fully immerse themselves in the digital exhibitions through VR. The app is supported by Oculus headsets, and let audiences explore exhibitions in 3D from any angle.
The full capacity of the platform was showcased through a co-presentation of artists from David Zwirner and Victoria Miro

Vortic Website

The online event on the topic: Cultural Heritage as Oxygen in Times of Crisis

27-30 October 2020, the ROCK Open Knowledge Week

From 27th October 2020 to 30th October 2020, the ROCK Open Knowledge Week will take place online on the topic: Cultural Heritage as Oxygen in Times of Crisis.

After the annulation of the conference in Bologna, scheduled on 14-15 May, Rock project presents this event during which the ten ROCK cities – Athens, Bologna, Cluj-Napoca, Eindhoven, Lisbon, Liverpool, Lyon, Skopje, Turin, and Vilnius, will share their results, lessons learned, and best practices.
They will present innovative solutions and tools, developed over the three years of the project, which aimed to shape sustainable and heritage-led urban futures.
They also will underline the importance of cultural heritage as a driving force of urban sustainability.

At ROCK Open Knowledge Week will participate local administrations, businesses, policy makers and researchers, more generally to all those looking for new ways in which cultural heritage can contribute to the regeneration, sustainable development and economic growth of cities.

The event will take place online and the participation is open for everyone and free of charge.

It will be possible to engage with other participants in chat rooms, answer surveys, leave ideas on a brainstorming whiteboard, and, in a dedicated Q&A space, ask questions.

For further information, registration and programme, please watch this page.digita

from 27th October 2020 to 30th October 2020

ROCK Open Knowledge Week

After the annulation of the conference in Bologna, scheduled on 14-15 May, Rock project presents the ROCK Open Knowledge Week, an interactive online experience on the topic: Cultural Heritage as Oxygen in Times of Crisis.
The event is aimed at local administrations, businesses, policy makers and researchers, more generally to all those looking for new ways in which cultural heritage can contribute to the regeneration, sustainable development and economic growth of cities.

At the Open Knowledge Week, the ten ROCK cities – Athens, Bologna, Cluj-Napoca, Eindhoven, Lisbon, Liverpool, Lyon, Skopje, Turin, and Vilnius, will share their results, lessons learned, and best practices.
Over the three years of the project they had develop innovative solutions and tested numerous tools aimed at shaping sustainable, heritage-led urban futures.
They demonstrated the value of cultural heritage as the driving force behind urban sustainability.

The event will take place online and the participation is open for everyone and free of charge.

It will be possible to engage with other participants in chat rooms, answer surveys, leave ideas on a brainstorming whiteboard, and, in a dedicated Q&A space, ask questions.

For more information and to know when registration will open, please watch this page.

A different picture of 1950s

User Engagement and Digital Cultural Heritage: Reflecting on the Kaleidoscope Project

The project 50s in Europe Kaleidoscope was concluded in February 2020. The project explored user engagement with digital cultural heritage by focusing on archival photographs related to the project theme ‘1950s in Europe’.
Digital Tools
Kaleidoscope gathered user-experience feedback on two tools: the WithCrowd annotation tool and the Visual Similarity Search. The Visual Similarity Search draws on deep learning techniques enabling the linking of resources/images based on visual similarity. Both tools propose innovations in digital exhibition methods by using participatory approaches.
Content Collection and Curation
Digital storytelling was used as a strategy to engage stakeholders via a project exhibition entitled ‘Blue Skies, Red Panic’. The exhibition was realized in various forms: as a travelling exhibition touring cities in Europe including: Pisa, Girona, Antwerp, and Berlin; and as a virtual exhibition showcased on Europeana.eu. The process of sourcing and sharing heritage photographs aimed to enhance the digital collections, increase user interaction, and explore innovations in curatorial practice.
Focus Groups and Workshops
During the Kaleidoscope project a number of events were organised by the consortium. Focus groups and workshops reached target audiences of cultural heritage professionals, academic researchers, students, artists and local citizens. The memories workshop in Girona entitled ‘Family Photo Talks’ used oral history as a co-creative methodology. The Crowdsourcing workshop in Athens invited participants to contribute to the Kaleidoscope annotation campaigns focused on the themes of 1950s Style and Design and 1950s Transport and Travel. While the Rephotography workshop in Coventry focused on repeat photography as a way of engaging users with ‘then’ (1950s) and ‘now’.
Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)
The projects educational focus has created an international outreach, which extends beyond the lifecycle of the project. Kaleidoscope collaborated with the Culture Moves team to develop the MOOC ‘Creating a Digital Cultural Heritage Community’. Modules include a core module introducing user engagement theory, and modules focused on photography and museums. The MOOC currently (May 2020) has 2,035 registered users and is still open for enrolments.
For more information look at:
Impact and Future Exploitation Report
Photoconsortium webpage

Registration deadline: 31 July 2020

Reimagining Museums for Climate Action: An International Design Competition

Reimagining Museums for Climate Action asks designers, architects, academics, artists, poets, philosophers, museum professionals and the public at large to radically (re)imagine and (re)design the museum as an institution, to help bring about more equitable and sustainable futures in the climate change era. The competition aims to explore how museums can help society transform to a low carbon future, adapt to the impacts of climate change, and safeguard ecosystems.
As the world confronts a global pandemic that is impacting on all aspects of social, cultural and economic life, many of the certainties we may have had about the future seem less concrete. While thousands of museums around the world are currently closed, new forms of engagement and experimentation have emerged to rethink the relationship between museums and society. Alongside a profound sense of loss and insecurity, there is hope: hope that the multitude of ways in which communities globally have responded to COVID-19 might inspire new forms of radical action to address the climate and ecological emergency. In this moment, it is particularly important to consider the unique capacities of museums to shape more just and sustainable futures.
Entries will be judged by an international panel of museum, architecture and design, climate change, heritage and sustainability experts. Eight finalists will each receive £2,500 to develop their ideas into exhibits, which will be displayed at Glasgow Science Centre ahead of and during COP26, the United Nations Climate Change conference, in 2021. COP26 is due to take place at the Scottish Event Campus (SEC). Glasgow Science Centre (GSC), which is situated next to the SEC, will play a key role in the conference. The exhibition will be accompanied by talks, workshops and other activities encouraging debate around the future role of museums, in times of rapid environmental change.
The competition has been developed by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Heritage Priority Area, led by Professor Rodney Harrison (UCL Institute of Archaeology (IoA)), in partnership with Colin Sterling (IoA), Henry McGhie (Curating Tomorrow), and Emma Woodham (GSC). It launches on the 18th May 2020, for International Museums Day.
Register your interest by 31st July 2020 to submit by the final deadline of 15th September 2020.
Further information is available on the competition website www.museumsforclimateaction.org
Please send any queries to enquiries@museumsforclimateaction.org
Please follow us on Twitter @climatemuseums and Instagram.com/museumsforclimateaction

a project dedicated to Chinese heritage in Europe, supporting the Europeana.eu digital heritage portal

PAGODE – Europeana China

img: CC BY-NC-SA, KIK-IRPA Brussels (Belgium) – http://balat.kikirpa.be/object/121619

Co-financed by the European Union under the CEF Connecting Europe Facility Programme, PAGODE wants to contribute to generating rich user experience and high audience engagement with Europeana, the European digital library, by proposing a thematic approach in the aggregation, curation and presentation of Chinese cultual heritage preserved in Europe.

What it is about

PAGODE will aggregate to Europeana a minimum of 10,000 new objects, annotate and enrich more than 2,000 digital objects already in Europeana, and activate Cultural Heritage Institutions to plan new digitisation and enrichment of thousands and thousands of digital cultural heritage items. This wealth of material will be organized in Europeana to create a new thematic collection rich in high quality content to explore, compelling editorials, galleries, blogs and a virtual exhibition.

Focusing on the various forms of the presence of Chinese culture in Europe, the overall aim of PAGODE is to add further value to Cultural Heritage Institutions that own Chinese collections, to reach new end users, and to encourage creative reuse of the cultural heritage content in the domains of multicultural integration, cultural tourism, education and research.

PAGODE will promote further understanding of the cultural values of China and the cultural exchange between China and Europe, allowing Cultural Heritage Institutions to connect and share their collections and metadata across new sectors and borders and in this way to increase awareness and usage of Europeana to a wider audience, internationally. The project’s originality lies on the creation of a framework for a holistic overview of all Chinese collections within the scope of the pan-European area. As such, it would offer the foundations for further scholarship in this field, and even more important for the reinterpretation of questions of the circulation, trade, collecting and display of Chinese art in modern Europe with the aim to have a thorough understanding of the collecting history and Europe-China relationship from the historical and contemporary perspectives.

Website: www.photoconsortium.net/pagode

Friday, May 29 - The Series Starts

“Changing with the Times” – ICSB Arts & Entrepreneurship Series

Put forth by UNESCO, artists around the world engage with the “ResiliArt” movement to demonstrate how “confinement can also be a period of openness to others and to culture, to strengthen the links between artistic creation and society.” The movement remains strong despite the uncertainty and loss that many art institutions are currently facing.

Similar to the experiences of many other businesses, art galleries and exhibits must take on new forms in our new world. Just as we have seen many innovative businesses take control of the situation by enhancing their digital presence, we will learn how artists and exhibit curators are innovating to continue their businesses.

In imagining the way to captivate the social, cultural, and financial sectors of art, artists and entrepreneurs alike must reproduce the resilience of their work in the business’s reconstruction in the new normal.

“Join us as we share in the experience of hearing from Lenore Miller, Director of the University Art Galleries and Chief Curator at the George Washington University.”