Digital meets Culture

to realize 10 events (plus a final one in Belgium) we leveraged on a network of partners and colleagues from across the entire continent

WeAre#EuropeForCulture: partnerships across Europe

WeAre#EuropeForCulture is about engaging local communities with cultural heritage, to connect people and histories at local and European level. According to the European Commission guidelines, the project principally addressed teenagers, adults and ageing people, with a particular view in engaging, at each location, communities which are considered hard-to-reach, marginalized or minority.

The idea of the project was to hold co-creation events in 10 European countries plus a final one in Belgium, so that a vast and varied population could be addressed. To achieve all this, the project leveraged on the network of members of Photoconsortium Association: these are trusted colleagues from prestigious institutions, museums and archives, all well established on the territory and with a long-standing partnership with Photoconsortium for the realization of photographic heritage exhibitions and user engagement activities. The strength of this partnership with Photoconsortium members mainly lies in a deep knowledge and understanding of the local context and sensitivities, next to the expertise in engaging local communities without any language or cultural barrier, as the local organizations are of course native from the country.

The Photoconsortium partners who enthusiastically jumped on board, and without whom the project could not exist, are all relevant cultural institutions in their countries:

OSZK, Országos Széchényi Könyvtár, the National Library in Hungary
the NALIS Foundation, National Academic Library and Information System in Bulgaria
Museovirasto, the Finnish Heritage Agency in Finland
the Walery Rzewuski Museum of History of Photography, in Poland
the Museum of Graphics of Pisa, in Italy
the University of Basel, in Switzerland
Lietuvos dailės muziejus, the Lithuanian Art Museum in Lithuania
Ajuntament de Girona / CRDI, the Centre for Image Research and Diffusion of Girona, in Catalonia
the Digital Heritage Research Lab at the Cyprus University of Technology in Cyprus

and in the Netherlands a series of events was organized in collaboration with the Baking Lab and the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam.

Under the motto “It’s our history too!”, the work of the project’s and partners’ facilitators and the storytelling approach of each exhibition was specifically tailored to engaging the target community identified at each location, in their native language as well as in English, keeping in mind the connections between local history and European history and between individual stories and the bigger picture. The use of co-creation techniques enabled a deeper participation of the target communities in a participative and inclusive approach joining museum and exhibition professionals and citizens.

Also, the closing phase of the project, realized by KU Leuven, comprises a workshop and exhibition in Leuven and a final event and exhibition in Brussels at the House of European History, this latter to be held in February 2020.

About WeAre#EuropeForCulture: https://www.photoconsortium.net/europeforculture/

More about Photoconsortium and its network: https://www.photoconsortium.net

Firenze (Italy), 14-16 October 2020

Florence Heri-Tech 2020, new dates

NEW DATES! 14-16 October 2020

The International Conference Florence Heri-tech: the Future of Heritage Science and Technologies, involves a large number of researches and scholars from around the world and puts the industry’s current issues under spotlight, specifically on issues related to innovative techniques and technologies for Cultural Heritage. The Conference is part of the Florence International Biennial for Art and Restoration, an international event attracting prestigious institutions and companies and creating a unique opportunity to bring together the academic word with industry. The Conference will be a significant opportunity to bring together the academic world with industry.

Heri-Tech is the first International Conference to welcome major researchers and scholars from all over the world, focusing on current and future issues in the field on issues related to innovative techniques and technologies. The city of Florence will therefore be the international heart of Restoration and Cultural and Environmental assets as well as a forum for meeting and discussing for experts, operators and enthusiasts from around the world. The Conference will be a significant opportunity for exchange between researchers and companies for the promotion of productive excellence, technological evolution, the greater use of culture for younger sections of the population and specialization in the educational field for graduates and PhD students.

More info and call for papers: http://www.florenceheritech.com/

Areas and topics: https://www.florenceheritech.com/areas-and-topics/

engaging audiences on cultural heritage, with a little help from technologies

WeAre#EuropeForCulture: the QANDR tool

WeAre#EuropeForCulture is about engaging communities with cultural heritage, helped by the use of digital technologies. To deliver 10 exhibitions of local cultural heritage in 10 European cities plus an additional one in Leuven as part of the final stages of the project, a programme of co-creation sessions allowed people participate in the exhibition set up with their photographs, stories, opinions and other user-generated content. Students, children, artists, craftsmen, elderly people, fishermen, amateur photo-collectors, museum curators, archivists, librarians and any other kind of people of any age were engaged in a truly open and participative approach to cultural heritage.

Sebastiaan ter Burg CC-BY

The co-creation sessions were coordinated by KU Leuven and Photoconsortium, in collaboration with the local partners hosting the workshops and exhibitions. As part of the technology made available for use in this project we find QANDR, Noterik’s tool to gamify any type of group discussion. QANDR offers several types of interactions, as a way to involve people into a discussion. It is possible to do polls, pointers, wordclouds, gradings, dilemma’s, ratings and it has an interaction model whereby it is possible to create moodboards together, which is fitting very well in the visually orientated project goal of making exhibitions together. QANDR works directly from the browser of the phones and also the mainscreen only needs an internet browser in full-screen mode, so it was very flexible and easy to use this tool on the different locations of the project. Detailed explanation about the tool is offered at this video.

QANDR in Pisa

Whether you’re engaging casually with a small group of elderly people, or instigating a more formal discussion with an aula full of tech savvy students: everyone loves to play with the moving dots, fiddle with the pie charts or upvote words in a wordcloud. QANDR outsmarts other interactive discussion tools on the market, and perfectly integrates presentation slides for a sleek finishing touch, says Sofie Taes, curator-storyteller-workshopper at KU Leuven, who coordinated the co-creation programme.

About WeAre#EuropeForCulture: https://www.photoconsortium.net/europeforculture/

More about QANDR: https://www.qandr.eu/portfolio/qandr-is-contagious/

Images from public archives and family collections, available on line

The Siberian Expedition during First World War

Text by Caterina Sbrana.

I propose a very interesting history page that you can explore through the vision of 2,200 images available online in the Siberian Expedition Digital Archive.

Created by Canadian historian Benjamin Isitt and the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre, the website about the Canada’s Siberian Expedition is based on a participatory approach, integrating learning resources, an online journal and Digital Archive. As explained in the web-pages of the Archive, the images come “from public archives, family collections and rare secondary sources” and they are “fully searchable in English, French, and Russian”. The Archive offers also participatory features, inviting people who “have photographs, letters, or a diary on Canada’s Siberian Expedition gathering dust” to contribute to the Archive with their materials, granting the permission “for non-profit educational usage of the images”.

In addition to offer to the users the opportunity of going through the images of the Archive, the website provides an interesting review of the historical context in which the expedition took place and the reason why 4,200 Canadians were sent to Vladivostok.

In 1917, Russia, engaged since three years in the First World War alongside the Triple Entente, had to face a series of internal problems that forced it to withdraw from the world conflict. The losses in terms of man and land, which occurred because of the world conflict, the tsarist absolutism and the worsening of the living conditions of the Russian proletariat and peasants were among the triggers of the October Revolution that brought to power the Council of People’s Commissars. From here, a bloody civil war begun, ending with the victory of the Red Army (Bolsheviks) on the White Army (counter-revolutionaries).

Bryant Family Collection, Nanton, Alberta

What was then the role of Canada after the fall of the last tsar Nicholas II? On siberianexpedition.ca we can read that: “According to machine-gun officer Raymond Massey, «The expedition was to complete what Winston Churchill had termed the ‘Cordon Sanitaire,’ which was to contain the Bolshevik revolution.»” It then continues: “This was the context in which Canada’s Prime Minister, Sir Robert Borden, committed troops for Russia. Borden spent the summer of 1918 in London, where the Imperial War Cabinet decided to intervene on four fronts surrounding the Bolshevik government. Because of Vladivostok’s geographic proximity from Canada’s West Coast, 1,500 British troops were placed under the Canadian command.”

The following picture shows a surprising amount of ammunition stockpiled on the Vladivostok wharves, which were shipped by the Canadians to aid the tsar’s forces before the Revolution.

Percy Francis Collection, Las Vegas, Nevada

The story of Canada’s intervention continues: “Canada’s privy council approved the formation of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (Siberia) as an array of foreign troops converged on Siberia and the Russian Far East: 70,000 Japanese, 12,000 Americans, 2,000 Italians, 12,000 Poles, 4,000 Serbs, 4,000 Romanians, 5,000 Chinese, and 1,850 French troops. When combined with the Czecho-Slovak Legion and White Russian forces, the total anti-Bolshevik strength between the Urals and the Pacific exceeded 350,000 troops.

In November 1918, the war ended on the Western Front and the White Russians underwent a change of command. Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak, former commander of the Czar’s Black Sea fleet, staged a coup at the Siberian city of Omsk. Kolchak proclaimed himself dictator of an “All-Russian government,” promising to unify White forces. The Allies had their point man in Siberia. “

Talking about life in Vladivostok in that period, siberianexpedition.ca tells that “The recollections and photographs of soldiers such as Eric Elkington offer rich insight into the social life of the military force and relations with Vladivostok’s civilian population, including a large number of ethnically Chinese and Korean residents and refugees from the Siberian interior. Soldiers’ recollections also reveal the dark side of military interventions – violence, human suffering, and the sex trade.”

The Siberian Expedition website and its Digital Archive are important resources to start learning about this controversial moment in the history of Canada and Russia, offering points for reflection and debate to world educators and students.

Family photographic archives, increasingly digitized, are very important historical and iconographic resources for telling the story of a community, but also of an entire nation. These resources become even more relevant when they are combined with digitised public archives, and all the materials is openly accessible and usable by all researchers, as it is in the case of the Siberian Expedition Digital Archive.

Furthermore, digital photographic resources do not suffer from the decadence that the flow of time causes on the printed photographs, preserving a vast range of knowledge that can stimulate further study and research.

Website: http://www.siberianexpedition.ca/index.php

Submission dates: 16 December- 20 May

CALL for POSTERS and VIDEOS is now open for the REACH project Final Conference

This call is addressed to researchers, practitioners, professionals, citizens and in general to the representatives from the cultural heritage sector who are interested in promoting the value of cultural heritage and in supporting its public recognition. REACH Final Conference “Designing Participation for Cultural Heritage” will be celebrated in Pisa, the 4^th and 5^th of June 2020, hosted by the prestigious Scuola Normale Superiore and will cover two full-day programme.
It will be the occasion for presenting and assessing the activities and results achieved during the project, considering their lasting and substantial impact within the scientific community.
We welcome posters and videos which share expertise across all disciplines related to the promotion of participation and social cohesion within Cultural Heritage. For consideration, abstracts must be submitted no later than April the 30th and sent to dissemination-reach@promoter.it.
Registration to the conference will be open soon.

Posters and Videos session topics:
• Societal Cohesion – Minorities, Majorities, Groups: everyday lives, especially the excluded, marginalized, and right-wing minorities, the politics of nationalism and majorities
• Societal Cohesion – legacies of imperialism/colonialism
• Sustainability and Environmental/Ecological Responsibility: ‘cultural landscapes’ bringing together holistically natural and cultural heritage in the Anthropocene Age
• Rapid Societal Change – Creativity, Authenticity, Audiences, Users and Emerging and Disruptive Technologies
• Narratives, Place/place-making and Identity

Submit abstracts using this Form
Click here for more information and guidelines for poster preparation and display Click here for the REACH Final Conference webpage
#reachpisaconference

Digital technologies contribute to the protection of the essence of Tibetan culture, inscribed in 2009 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity

Tibetan Opera, the most popular traditional opera of minority ethnic groups in China

Text by Caterina Sbrana.

Let’s continue our research on intangible cultural heritage to learn about the most popular traditional opera of minority ethnic groups in China, the Tibetan Opera, nowdays accessible online at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/china-watch/culture/traditional-tibetan-opera/, or at http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201909/03/WS5d6ddb68a310cf3e35569695_4.html.

The contribution of digital technology to the discovery and research on intangible heritage is becoming increasingly important and necessary to achieve what was declared in 2003 in the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

The Tibetan Opera, inscribed by UNESCO in 2003 within the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, is the third case study that we would like to tell. It follows the stories of two other projects on intangible heritage: the project about the Patrimoine Vivant de la France that collected 114 films and more than 300 testimonials of horse riding, gastronomy, hunting, masters perfume-makers etc., and the project of South China Research Center of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology that gives access to social practices, legends, puzzles, expressions.

As stated in the Convention, the expressions of intangible cultural heritage are threatened by globalisation, it is also true that digital technologies such as videos, recordings, interviews become fundamental to ensure that the oral traditions transmitted by our ancestors, including rites and feasts can be preserved to foster intercultural dialogue. This is what the Culture Department in Tibet Autonomous Region of P.R. of China started doing, dealing with traditional dances.

Image from the UNESCO website

Tibetan Opera has been inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage because it “represents the essence of Tibetan culture, and is recognized by its practitioners as central to their identity and a symbol of continuity that they endeavour to pass on from generation to generation” (http://en.chinaculture.org/focus/focus/2009feiyi/content_363115.htm).

As we read in the site of UNESCO, Tibetan Opera is a comprehensive art combining folk song, dance, storytelling, chant, acrobatics and religious performance. Most popular in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in western China, the performance begins with a prayer ceremony, including the cleansing of the stage by hunters and blessings by the elder, and it concludes with another blessing. The heart of the opera is a drama narrated by a single speaker and enacted by performers supported by groups of singers, dancers and acrobats.

Image from the UNESCO website

Actors wear traditional masks of a variety of shapes and colours that contrast with their simple makeup. Performances may take place in public squares or temples (or, today, on stage), with the centre of the space marked by a tree placed on the ground, wrapped in colourful paper and surrounded by purified water and theatrical props. Rooted in Buddhist teachings, the stories told in Tibetan Opera recount the triumph of good and the punishment of evil and therefore serve a social teaching function for the community.

This multifaceted representative of Tibetan art and cultural heritage also acts as a bridge among Tibetans in different parts of the country, promoting ethnic unity and pride. I suggest you a video on Tibetan Opera, known as Lhamo or Ache Lhamo in Tibetan. The video, available on Youtube, allows to admire dancers in extraordinary religious ceremonies and it looks like watching a fossil culture that returns to life.

Thanks to the spread of those videos representing the Tibetan Opera dances, supported by digital availability and online distribution, a local interest in this intangible cultural heritage has also increased: if in 2010 there were only 30 Tibetan folk teams work, almost a decade later, the teams have increased fivefold.

Digital technology is not only necessary for the preservation of intangible heritage through the creation of multimedia documents, stories and videos that can provide a longer life to vulnerable cultural jewellery but also to share precious cultural experiences and to improve the knowledge and awareness of history and traditions of the civilisations of many nations and regions worldwide.

Website: https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/tibetan-opera-00208

The artistic work created by Gianluca Cingolani successfully engaged students in dynamic dialogues on the boundaries, limits and possibilities of digital art

The exhibition Fragmenta, dialoguing with Generation Z

From 16 November to 6 December at Today Museum of Bejing the solo exhibition Fragmenta dedicated to the digital art of Gianluca Cingolani was held, garnering great interest, in particular, on the part of the Generation Z audience.

Gianluca Cingolani is a multidisciplinary artist, working with video, photography, graphics and music. Striding across these different disciplines, his process of creating art is centered on the technique of digital compositing, through which he slowly builds his work, layer by layer, integrating, overlapping, manipulating signs, photographic traces, video frames, sounds, all of which are fragments of memories and ancient knowledge.

The combination of ancient and new understanding of classical and contemporary languages, as well as of digital and non digital dimensions, was one of the central themes of the exhibition. On this theme a collateral event, ie a conference about the relations between digital art, memory and history has been organized, on the 23^rd of November, at the Today Museum, attended by students coming from Bejing University, China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing Film Academy and Univrsity of International Business and Economics.

The artistic work created by Gianluca Cingolani successfully engaged Gen Z students in dynamic dialogues on the boundaries, limits and possibilities of digital art, on the several ways of operating in the digital dimension.

With his exhibition Fragmenta Cingolani advocated abandoning the passive use of digital instruments, to start a dialogue between digital instruments and ancient and complex work processes, as he combines combining routes and knowledge sourced from graphics, photography, and visual arts in his own work. The digital thus becomes not a mere tool to be used, consumed, but, instead, the instrument for a new “ars combinatoria”, for a novel form of artistic creativity.

#therulesofthegame, 10-13 October 2019

Culture Moves project: Dance (Algo)Rhythms

The CultureMoves research team of the C-DaRE center of Coventry University – Sarah Whatley, Rosa Cisneros and Marie-Louise Crawley – participated in the ‘Moving Culture: Tourism, Dance and Digital Storytelling’, organised by the Culture Moves project in Pisa.

Key stakeholders from the cultural heritage, tourism, education and creative industries, with speakers from internationally renowned organisations such as Pep Gatell (La Fura dels Baus), Milena Popova (Europeana), Alfredo di Liguori (PugliaPromozione), and Sara di Giorgio (CulturaItalia) discussed new forms of creative and digital engagement, presenting inspiring examples of best practice.

The conference was the occasion to host the opening of Dance (Algo)Rhythms, a video installation for the promotion of the Apuan Riviera region carried out by the Culture Moves project. Conceived and designed by Studio RF (Roberto Fazio), Dance (Algo)Rhythms proposes the creative re-use of digital content to tell the story of a place in a human-computer interactive form. The digital content used in the work was kindly provided by Europeana, the EX APT photographic archive (Provincial Archive of Massa-Carrara) and by the historical archive of the Marble Railway (Municipality of Carrara). The public were invited to visit the installation, enter into a relationship with the digital content, and by their movements, modify it, giving life to new artistic forms. On the evening of 11th October, live dance performances took place within the video installation during which classical, historical and hip-hop dancers transformed the main elements of the Apuan Riviera – mountains, marble quarries and coastline – into a digital scenography.

The appointment in Pisa is just the latest of a series of encounters organised by C-DaRE on the theme of dance and digital space.

In early November, the team of C-DaRE met with artists, researchers, practitioners and dance experts across the north of the UK (Leeds / Slanjayvah Danza; Manchester / Anton Mirto; Amy Voris) to undertake theoretical and practical explorations of Europeana and the CultureMoves digital storytelling and dance annotation tools (MovesCollect, MovesScrapbook, MotionNotes).

On the 7th November, an interactive workshop was organised at One Dance UK’s international conference in Salford, Re:generations 2019.

The team also presented at the InDialogue 2019 conference in Lincoln.

For more information on the CultureMoves project and what we are up to: https://www.culturemoves.eu/post/82309953

Riga (Latvia), 09-12 June 2020

ELAG 2020, call for papers open until 12 February

img. Līga Landsberga [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)] Wikimedia commons.

ELAG is the European Library Automation Group and the next 44th ELAG conference will take place in Riga, Latvia from 09 to 12 June 2020.

You can contribute to the ELAG conference in several ways by submitting:

A presentation proposal: They are the core of the ELAG programme. Presentations allow you to present your work in 25 minutes in a plenary session. After which there are 5 minutes for questions.

A workshop proposal: Workshops are run throughout the main ELAG programme and are used for group discussions on a selected topic. The workshop leader acts as the moderator of these discussions. Workshops are split into 2 sessions on 2 days of 1.5 hours each. On the last day the participants of the workshop need to present a short 10-15 minute summary about the results of the workshop during the plenary session.

A bootcamp proposal: Bootcamp start on the day before the conference. They typically provide hands-on training on software, tools relevant to the community. Bootcamps can be short (2-3 hours) or take a whole day (6 hours).

Some ideas and previous topics for workshops and bootcamps: DevOps & infrastructure bootcamp, Fail4Lib (history of fails in your software projects), deep learning in libraries, a deep dive into tools like Ansible, Apache Nifi, and Catmandu; or other!

Guidelines for conference presentations, workshops and bootcamps are available at: https://wp.me/P5cYg0-s

To submit a presentation, workshop, or bootcamp proposal, please complete the form here: http://bit.ly/ELAG2020cfp.

The deadline for proposals is February 12, 2020. All proposals will be reviewed by the ELAG 2019 Programme Committee, and the results of the review process will be sent by March 11, 2020.

If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to Peter van Boheemen, Chair of the ELAG 2019 Programme Committee, at peter.vanboheemen@wur.nl.

Save the date: Wednesday, March 25 - Friday, March 27, Berlin (DE)

2020 March – Documentation Strategies in (Archaeological) Open-Air Museums

Cattura 1 What’s an open-air museum?
What is it for?
How can it be preserved?
Open-air museums are the faithful reconstruction of medieval villages.
Starting from the discovery of (pre)history archaeological sites and architectural sources, experts and professionals are able to recreate the environment of the houses starting from the same foundations and using the same techniques of construction and materials as in the origin.
Open-air museums don’t handle just the architectural aspect, but also the dwellings and the whole village comes back to life through the representation and staging of the ancient crafts and daily habits that characterized the evolution of the local people in the medieval period.
EXARC is the International Association of Archaeological Open-Air Museums and Experimental Archaeology and since many years has been engaged in the reconstruction and maintenance of this cultural heritage.
Cattura3 EXARC is an affiliated organization of ICOM, the International Council Of Museums.
It’s main goal is to transmit the knowledge of how life used to be in the past, of the traditions and crafts that characterize the evolution of a people in a specific historical period.
To tell this wonderful story, EXARC faithfully recreates the same environment by transporting the visitor hundreds of years back into time.
Using empirical, sensorial and visual methodologies, these museums explain what the world was like before our times and what we can learn from the past.
According to EXARC, this wealth of knowledge risks to be lost.
First of all because it is required the application of digital technique of preservation in order to pass on and use this cultural heritage for future research and dissemination.
On this regard, we must be concerned that many open-air museums do not have appropriate technical skills to perform this activity and are likely to disappear.
Secondly, the only way to preserve a specific type of knowledge is by teaching to future generations the art of ancient crafts and craftsmanship and this is something that it is not really assumed.
On the basis of these reflections, EXARC, in collaboration with Museumsdorf Düppel (DE), organized the international conference of next March and for this occasion launched a call for papers to trigger a debate about experiences and example of documentation in other open- air museums both on the (re) construction, up-keep and decay of houses as well as on craft activities.
The conference will take full days of 26 & 27 March, including an afternoon program and dinner on the 27th.
On Wednesday 25th there will be an optional excursion to the Stadtmuseum Berlin.
Click here for the program and full information about the conference

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