Digital meets Culture

The Hague, 21 May 2019

RomArchive project winner of the Creative Europe Reasearch Award

The 21 May the European Commission and Europa Nostra, the leading European heritage network, announced the winners of the European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards 2019, the Europe most prestigious honour in the field, funded by the Creative Europe programme.
Among the awarded initiatives there is the one of regarding the development of a digital archive of the Roma, an internationally accessible space that would make Romani cultures and histories visible as well as respond to stereotypes with a counter-history told by Roma themselves.
RomArchive is a growing collection of art of all types, complemented by historical documents and scholarly texts. The idea for the archive is based on the extensive research and numerous interviews that the project initiators, Franziska Sauerbrey and Isabel Raabe, conducted with Romani artists, curators, activists, and scholars from all over Europe. Rosa Cisneros from Coventry University’s Centre for Dance Research was a key member of the Dance curatorial team: she has been involved in the project for several years taking care of the majority of the writing and curating for the dance section.
Until its launch, RomArchive’s development, was mainly supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.
RomArchive’s development, until its launch, was mainly supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.
The innovative aspect of RomArchive is that reflects the diversity of Romani national and cultural identities. Members of the community are involved in all positions of responsibility – as curators, artists, scholars, and members of the project’s advisory board. The curators determine the contents of the archive and gather collections related to dance, film, literature, music, theatre, the visual arts, and flamenco along with first-person testimonies related to the persecution of Roma under the Nazi regime and scholarly material on the civil rights movement.
“The subject of this research is essential for the history of the people of Europe”, the jury said, “Roma, with twelve million people, constitute the largest neglected minority in Europe. This archive is particularly innovative as it pays attention to the self-representation of Romani identities, expressing both tangible and intangible aspects of this heritage and moving away from the stereotypical perceptions of Roma”.
The wealth of Romani artistic and cultural production – tightly interwoven with that of Europe as a whole – is rendered visible and accessible by RomArchive, to the benefit of all Europeans. “European identity is based in its diversity and in sharing a sense of values and of belonging, to which this project contributes,” the jury said.
The website is already available in English, German, and the Romani language with further languages envisioned in the near future.
“The digital archiving of Romani arts represents a first initiative in knowledge collection and dissemination and already represents 5,000 objects. This multilingual website, available in Romanes, is a constantly growing platform,” the jury noted.
More information
https://blog.romarchive.eu/
European Heritage Europa Nostra Awards

Brussels (Belgium), 24-26 September 2019

European Research and Innovation Days

The European Research & Innovation Days draft programme is now available!

This programme will be updated in the coming weeks and registrations will open in early June. When you register you will receive an automated email acknowledging receipt of your registration. Please note however that this does not mean confirmation of your participation – confirmation of your participation will come in a second email.

This event – the first of its kind – is shaping up to become the annual meeting place for key actors and actions driving a vibrant innovation economy in Europe. Bringing together Europe’s best and brightest researchers, scientists, innovators and policy-makers to debate and shape the future research and innovation landscape.

The event will feature three main elements:

POLICY CONFERENCE: 24 – 26 SEPTEMBER

Bringing together world leaders and policy-makers from industry, finance, academia and the entrepreneurial community to debate and shape the future research and innovation landscape. The conference will be an extremely important part of the strategic planning process that will set the foundations for the launch of Horizon Europe (2021-2027) – the proposed €100 billion EU programme for research and innovation;

INNOVATIVE EUROPE HUB: 25 – 26 SEPTEMBER

This is an unparalleled meeting and exhibition space for inventors, investors, entrepreneurs and the whole range of services, businesses, civil society organisations, agencies and intermediaries that make European science technology so dynamic.

SCIENCE IS WONDERFUL! EXHIBITION: 25 – 26 SEPTEMBER

Free and open to everybody, the ‘Science is Wonderful!’ exhibition is a celebration of the very best research and innovation Europe has to offer, from light-bulb moments to game-changing new technologies. Through hands-on experiments and face-to-face chats with researchers, visitors will learn about fighting cancer, global warming, hunger and drought, among many other pressing issues in our daily lives.

Diary notes

Host: European Commission’s Research & Innovation Directorate-General

Venue: KANAL-Centre Pompidou, Quai des Péniches in Brussels, Belgium

Date: 24-26 September 2019

Next steps

Registration will open in early June.

In the meantime, you can keep up to date with developments by following our hashtag #RiDaysEU on @EUScienceInnov Twitter / Facebook and by visiting the Conference website

30th May 30 2019, the Medieval Civic Museum, Bologna (Italy)

The first ROCK Roadshow: Technical tests of transmission!

The European ROCK project – Regeneration and Optimization of Cultural Heritage in Creative and Knowledge cities – funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 program and coordinated by the Municipality of Bologna has organized its first Roadshow that will be hold in Bologna the 30th of May.
Key concepts will be: active participation, cultural heritage, digital potential.

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The ROCK project is an important laboratory for sharing good practices and experimenting with innovative solutions for the enhancement of the cultural heritage and for the sustainable future of cities.
The event’s goal is to introduce the innovative tools and solutions provided by the project for the enhancement of the cultural heritage and for the sustainable future of cities.
On this regard, one of the main topics will be the presentation of the innovatorsinculturalheritage.eu platform as well as a rich repertoire of innovations for the management of urban innovation based on the enhancement of cultural Heritage. Participants will be invited to test the applications and products personally.

The programme is organized in 4 sections:

1. The ROCK project: innovation and participation. A brief introduction of the ROCK project

2. Participation in Cultural Heritage: tools in comparison. Presentation of the main applications ( Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor, Cultural Gems, WunderBo) and how they work.

3. Seeing is believing

Experiential moment of Cultural Gems and WunderBo through the involvement of facilitators and experts, aimed at testing and collecting feedback and suggestions from the participants.

4. Conclusions

Future activities of ROCK and upcoming stages of the Roadshow (Lisbon and Skopje, in the Republic of Macedonia)

Further informations:

at Galerie Mordoch, visitors are immersed in the digital world and the world of computers to question the notion of self-portrait

Machine Vision 2019 – digital exhibition in Paris

Digital artist Miguel Chevalier has a solo exhibition « Machine Vision 2019 » at Galerie Mordoch in Paris, where he is presenting his latest research into the theme of the digitized body, a theme he has been exploring since the 1980s.

L’œil de la machine is a new interactive digital artwork that explores the notion of the self-portrait. It also addresses the question of the new types of images produced by surveillance cameras equipped with facial recognition systems. Visitors are immersed in the digital world and the world of computers as soon as they enter the gallery, whose walls are covered with wallpaper made up of fragments of algorithms like, a code waiting to be deciphered. Two variations created by software written by algorithmist Claude Micheli are displayed, one on an 82-inch vertical screen and the other on a curved, horizontal monitor measuring 65 inches.

Miguel CHEVALIER “Machine Vision 2019” Galerie Lélia Mordoch, Paris (France) from Claude Mossessian on Vimeo.

By standing in front of them, the viewer shifts from the real to the virtual world for the duration of an ephemeral artistic performance. His/her portrait is deconstructed in real time in a constant interaction between man and machine. Captured by a camera connected to a computer that processes the data according to different geometric algorithms, the visitor’s silhouette undergoes a process of tessellation as it is fragmented and divided up into thousands of polygons. The exhibition also presents an exclusive preview of different creations that address the theme of infinity, either presented on monitors or in the form of one-sided sculptures that endless turn on their axis. The exhibit also includes works in the manner of a voronoi diagram that are screen-printed on Dacryl® panels, such as a self-portrait of the artist, or a representation of Le Marcheur, a symbol of 21st century man. The exhibition is in Paris until 25th May.

Adelaide (Australia), 21-25 October 2019

Designing the Archive: 2019 Conference ASA-ICA-ARANZ-PARBICA

Text by Caterina Sbrana.

The Australian Society of Archivists (ASA), Archives and Records Association of New Zealand Te Huinga Mahara (ARANZ), the International Council on Archives (ICA) and the Pacific Regional Branch International Council on Archives (PARBICA) organize an international conference called Designing the Archive that will be held from 21 to 25 October 2019 in Adelaide, South Australia.

ph. Hiro Ishino

“The conference program aims to explore the use of empathy, creativity, innovation, experimentation, prototyping, and co-design in the development of recordkeeping systems, information governance frameworks, archival programs and services, archive buildings and spaces, or digital archives”.

The following themes will be discussed in the conferences and workshops: Innovation in next generation digital archives, Co-design of recordkeeping systems, Designing community and Indigenous archives, Designing recordkeeping systems for creative, technical and scientific activities, Designing governance and programs to meet citizen and customer needs, Design of archival spaces and buildings for preservation, exploration and discovery and Creativity in the archives.

Organizers claim that “The program provides an opportunity to explore how we manage records and archives of the design process itself across a range of industries from architecture to fashion, engineering to environmental management”.

The conference is adressed to Archivists and professionals from the archives, schools, religious bodies, NGOs, companies, government institutions, digital archivists, people keeping and working with community and indigenous archives and collections, managers involved in design of recordkeeping systems, and long term retention of digital and analogue data, professionals who work with design archives (e.g. architecture museums, fashion archives, etc).

The conference logo was created through a design process involving Pitjantjatjara artist Audrey Brumby and graphic designer Matthew Aldous in collaboration with Indigenu Gallery Director Tony Straccia. It represents people connecting and linking, going around communities talking, sharing, spreading stories and messages.

The conference takes place in the middle of Adelaide Plains, in Tarntanya land – the red kangaroo place in the Kaurna language, in Adelaide Oval. It is situated on the northern side of the Riverbank Precinct between the city centre and North Adelaide. “The oval dates back to 1871 and has been extensively redeveloped in recent years”.

The importance of the archives is fully described on ICA website where we can read: “Archives are witnesses to the past. They provide evidence, explanation and justification both for past actions and current decisions. Archives enable society to undertake a wide range of roles that enable civilised communities to take root and flourish, from enabling education and research, providing entertainment and leisure, to protecting human rights and confirming identity. Archives are unique, contemporaneous records and so once lost cannot be replaced. It is only through proper identification, care and wide access that the vital role that archives has can be fully realised to the benefit of humanity”.

Key dates

19 – 20 October 2019 – ICA Governance Meetings
21 October 2019 – ICA workshops, ASA SIGs and AGM
22 – 24 October 2019 – Conference (3 days) and ICA General Assembly (22 October)
25 October 2019 – ICA Summit on Indigenous Matters, workshops and cultural visits

Programme and more information:

https://www.ica.org/en/schedule

https://www.ica.org/en/why-archiving

21 May 2019, Pécs, Hungary

The charming Roma Cultural Heritage

The upcoming local encounter of the Minority Heritage Pilot f REACH Project will be focusing on Roma intangible cultural heritage.
It is hosted by the Gandhi High School in Pécs, the first Romani high school which became a part of the National Register of Best Safeguarding Practices of UNESCO in Hungary.
Two other Roma heritage communities, listed as an element of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Hungary will be represented as well: the Nagyecsed Hungarian and Gypsy Dance Traditions and the Rajkó Orchestra and Art School.
Beyond the three UNESCO recognized organizations, experts and professionals from Roma culture heritage sector will join the event, such as instructors of the UCCU Foundation and professors from the Department of Romology at the University of Pécs. The meeting begins at the Kóstolda Roma Home Restaurant, which is not only important for getting to know the traditional Gypsy cuisine but also stands an important venue for the local Roma culture.

20 May 2019, Brussels

First meeting of ECHOES cluster

The 20th of May , at the EU premises in Covent Garden 2, Brussels, the first meeting of the ECHOES cluster will be held under the auspices of the EU Commission.

The mission of ECHOES (Enabling Cultural Heritage Oriented European Strategies, http://www.echc.eu) is the enhancement of all actions addressed to the conservation and valorization of Cultural Heritage in all its forms and materials in order to strengthen and make sustainable the new conservation developments.

Some of the main goals of echoes are

To create a platform for analysis, characterization and evaluation of restoration and conservation methodologies
To support the scientific community to create network with different expertise in CH conservation
To establish and standardize good practices in CH conservation to expand the lifetime of CH
To wide and stimulate discussion and consultation with stakeholders, and to raise the awareness of citizens on the importance of CH providing an open forum for discussion, problem solving and presentation of case-studies
To support EC policy development in the field of tourism and industry related with CH conservation and valorization
To play a major role in providing input to the Leadership in Enabling and Industrial Technologies (LEIT) policy on research road mapping in conservation science.

The meeting aims to discuss key topics for the ECHOES development (governance and structure) and to come out with position papers for the next framework programme Horizon Europe.

The main themes will be:

Best practices in retrieving end user requirements for preventive conservation;
Best practices in dealing with “language” problems between the diverse disciplines involved in CH R&D;
Priorities for Horizon Europe (e.g. Harmonised approach for collection management, interoperability of the collection management data);
Developing and disseminating innovative decision-support tools to promote exploitation of advanced/enabling technologies in cultural heritage prevention, conservation and restoration;
Support public-private partnerships at national and international level to promote cooperation and cross-fertilization across technology developers, end-users, policy makers, scientific bodies and business operators on innovation solutions for cultural heritage prevention, conservation and restoration.

Links to the presentations of the event:

Echoes Meeting – Prof.Baglioni
Echoes Topic 1
Echoes Topic 2
Echoes Topic 3
Echoes Topic 4

For more information, please visit the ECHOES website here and consult the brochure here.

As an extraordinary example of Cultural Cooperation, archival material about the French Revolution is now available to the International scholarly community

Agreement between Stanford University and Bibliothèque nationale de France

by Caterina Sbrana.

The cultural partnership between Standford University and the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), begun a few years ago, led to the creation of a digital archive that brings together both the resources of the archive known as Images de la Revolution française and the Archives parlementaires. The French Revolution Digital Archive (FRDA) nowadays includes thousands of resourcs regarding the French Revolution, making them available to the international scholarly community and enabling digital research.

The first archive includes thousands of high-resolution digital images regarding the French Revolution: about 14,000 visual objects like prints, illustrations, medals, coins, and other objects, showing aspects of the Revolution. These materials have been selected, mainly from the collections of the département des Estampes et de la photographie, but also from other departments of BNF. It is possible to do a search by artist, subject, genre, and place.

The Archives parlementaires is a chronologically ordered collection concerning the sources of the French Revolution: it includes parliamentary deliberations, letters, reports, speeches and other first-hand accounts from a wide variety of published and archival sources. It was conceived in the mid-nineteenth century. FRDA contains AP volumes referring to the years 1787-1794. It’s possible to easily find places, dates and terms in the published index. Users can see either scanned images of AP pages or text only.

As we can read in the presentation of the project “the FRDA was first conceived in 2006 by Stanford French professor Dan Edelstein, with input from other scholars and librarians, and was launched in spring 2013. It has been supported by grants and collaboration from The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the ARTFL project, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford University’s Division of Languages, Cultures, and Literatures, Stanford University Department of History, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France”.

Students also have an interactive Timeline of the Revolution on which they can read events year by year.

The use of the contents for non-commercial purposes is free of charge, while the one for commercial purposes is covered by a license.

Discover the FRDA: https://frda.stanford.edu/en

April and May filming

Dancing Bodies in Coventry Project

Dancing Bodies in Coventry is a multimedia project that aims to start to document the legacy of dance in the city of Coventry. Funded by a Coventry University Group City of Culture Grant, the project is being run by Rosa Cisneros and Marie-Louise Crawley from C-DaRE (Coventry University). The team also includes filmmaker Maria Polodeanu, photographer Antony Weir and sound designer David Sherriff.

Sarah Worth director of Highly Sprung Performance Theatre Company (April 2019) Photo Credit: Antony Weir

The project is a number of films that will begin to cover the past, present and future of dance in Coventry, and a series of related podcasts, that will form an online archive focused on dance and begin to tell the story of dance in Coventry. The project also aims to go out into the city and creatively share these materials with a variety of communities.The project brings forward a range of dance artists, festival organisers, dance schools and local groups, and allows them to share their stories with the wider Coventry community.

DBiC Declan McHale Irish Dance Academy _1

Declan McHale from the Irish Dance Academy in rehearsal for the World Championships (April 2019) Photo Credit: Antony Weir

In such a way, Dancing Bodies in Coventry aims to lay the groundwork for thinking about documenting the legacy of dance in Coventry and opens up conversations around Coventry’s intangible cultural heritage. This work contributes to Coventry City of Culture 2021 as it aims to bring local voices to the forefront allowing several key stakeholders to benefit through the knowledge production and knowledge sharing of the project, especially in bringing forward ‘lesser known’ independent dance artists and voices that have previously been somewhat hidden.
Dancing Bodies in Coventry also feeds into ongoing conversations around dance, heritage and legacies that are taking place at C-DaRE and in the wider dance research field. The films will feed into the CultureMoves project (and especially the forthcoming MOOC). Our hope is that an up-to-date Coventry dance archive can help inform this wider European project’s thinking on dance’s place within online archives as intangible cultural heritage.

Filming has been taking place in locations across Coventry throughout the months of April and May.

Adrian Dowling discussing ECLIPSE Club (April 2019) Photo Credit: Antony Weir

Imagineers Productions and Media Mania’s “Venture” Performance Carousel (April 2019) Photo Credit: Antony Weir

To date, the operators have been moving through the city, finding out about site dance practice and uncovering the city’s dance stories by interviewing and filming a range of artists and academics including: Declan McHale from the Irish Dance Academy, Adrian Dowling who is running the ECLIPSE Club reflections project, Lily Hayward-Smith, Jenna Hubbard, Ella Tighe, Flux Dance, Katye Coe, Natalie Garrett Brown and Emma Meehan from the Sensing the City project, Oliver Scott from Mercurial Dance, Jane Hytch and Kathi Leahy from Imagineer Productions, Sarah Worth from Highly Sprung Physical Theatre Company, Kate Lawrence from Vertical Dance Company, Sarah Whatley, and Coventry University’s current dance undergraduates. The work encountered encompasses a variety of dance and movement forms including Irish traditional dance, flamenco, house music, physical theatre, vertical dance and more contemporary and somatic-based practices.

The project is now entering its post-production phase and completed films will be available online in July 2019. Watch this space!

For more information contact:
Rosa Cisneros
E: ab4928@coventry.ac.uk.
Twitter: @RosaSenCis
Marie-Louise Crawley
E: ad1803@coventry.ac.uk
Twitter: CrawleyMLC

Hommage to the work of the painter artist Pierre Soulages, who will celebrate his 100th birthday on 24 December 2019.

“Pixels Noir Lumière” new digital exhibition by Miguel Chevalier

Digital artist Miguel Chevalier currently has the solo exhibition “Pixels Noir Lumière” in Soulages Museum in Rodez that pays tribute to the work of the painter artist Pierre Soulages, who will celebrate his 100th birthday on 24 December 2019. The exhibition presents two immersive generative and interactive digital installations, “Pixels Liquides” and “L’Origine du Monde”, which explore light as an artistic material.

Miguel CHEVALIER “Pixels Noir Lumière 2019” Musée Soulages, Rodez (France) from Claude Mossessian on Vimeo.

“Pixels Liquides” is an interactive installation projected on the wall (13.40 m x 7.80 m) like a large moving painting. Flows of virtual paintings of different shades of black and blue flow on the wall that has become canvas, creating large abstract paintings in real time. The virtual web is constantly changing. It reveals a light painting with surprising material effects. The movement of the spectators disrupts the work. It is a form of “electronic dripping”, where the spectator, like a digital brush, imposes his own gestures and modifies the work in its development.

“L’Origine du Monde” is an interactive installation projected on the ground (12 m x 7.50 m) inspired by biology, microorganisms and cellular automata. The installation presents different black and white virtual paintings composed of universes of cells that proliferate, divide, merge in a rhythm sometimes slow, sometimes fast. This organic world sometimes mixes with unstable mega pixels of black and white. The artist blends the cells, the basic elements of life with the pixels, the basic elements of artificial “life”. These fluid universes react visually according to the movements of visitors. Disruptions in the trajectory of these cells are created under their feet. “L’Origine du Monde” creates new visual experiences thanks to the superposition of different layers of images. The floating shapes create impressive optical illusions.

These two immersive installations are above all living experiences that engage the visitor’s body and their mobility in space. The relationship to the image is built in the register of displacement to explore all the potentialities of the work, just as for Pierre Soulages’ “Outrenoirs” to capture the variations of light on the paintings.