Digital meets Culture

The Battle of the Bulge

Bastogne War Museum – A new identity for a new memorial place

The Bastogne War Museum is a new place of remembrance devoted to the Second World War, located very close to the famous Mardasson Memorial, a memorial place enriched by a crypt decorated by Fernand Léger, one of the most famous French painters of the twentieth century. The museum is housed in a brand-new building with striking architecture.
Through the prism of the Battle of the Bulge, a tour of the new museum gives visitors an insight into the causes, events and consequences of the Second World War in a modern and interactive environment.
The original scenography is filled in by three scenovisions, real multi-sensory 3D scenes, which ensure a complete immersion in History.
The route through the museum is organised into a set of sections in order to streamline your visit.

section 1: pre war atmosphere

section 2: the war conflict
section 3: Belgium under occupation
section 4: Towards liberation
section 5: The Battle of the Bulge
Section 6:Allied victory
Section 7: Towards a new world order
The Bastogne War Museum has the ambition to respond to the expectations of an audience that largely did not know the war. This is an audience that in the best case has read about the subject. But often the visitors do not really have an idea and they know the events only through vague images in cinema and on television.
The point is to turn the “memorial tourism”, of which the memorial fact is less and less present in the collective memory, into a “history tourism” with a clear civil and educational calling

The Mardasson Memorial and the Bastogne War Museum share a common ambition: to honour the memory of those who fought for our freedom and to uphold the values of peace and freedom.
Read more about the Bastogne War Museum at www.bastognewarmuseum.be
Contacts:

Colline du Mardasson, 5 – 6600 Bastogne (Belgium)
info@bastognewarmuseum.be
T : +32 61 210 220

independent, life-sized sculptural figures move and interact with each other, and with the public, through light and sound, exploring the implication and impact of machine and human conversation.

Interaction Design students created a full-scale replica of 1968 semi-interactive installation “Colloquy of Mobiles”

from CCS’s website

When we talk about talking to each other in the 21st century — communication, connection — the emphasis is often on how technology enhances or diminishes personal interaction. Every day we engage with smart machines and interfaces, from phones, tablets and laptops to cars, refrigerators, Alexa and Siri. Very little of modern life remains untouched by machines capable of conversing with us and with each other.

But what are the implications, and impact, of conversational machines in human environments?

The issue dates back generations, but it took a crucially important turn in 1968 with the interactive installation, “Colloquy of Mobiles,” in the groundbreaking Cybernetic Serendipity Exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Created by Gordon Pask, cybernetician, educator and author of numerous influential writings on Conversation Theory, “Colloquy of Mobiles” was believed to be the first exploration of its kind into the nature of machine-machine conversation.

On May 24, Detroit’s College of Creative Studies’ master’s program in Interaction Design debuted “Colloquy of Mobiles 2018” — a full-scale reproduction of Gordon Pask’s installation.

The mobiles consist of independent, life-sized sculptural figures (so-called “male” and “female”) that move and interact with each other, and with the public, through light and sound. The female forms, in particular, are deeply compelling — their shapes likened to everything from sea creatures to the human heart. This organic quality hints at the educational value of Colloquy in the present day, one suffused with smart environments, which was not the case 50 years ago.

Colloquy Introduction – Paul Pangaro, Chair, MFA Interaction Design from College for Creative Studies on Vimeo.

“Colloquy’s playfulness and emotional, non-verbal quality draws us in and, yet, the kinds of things we do on digital devices and screens are the opposite of that,” said Associate Professor and Chair of MFA Interaction Design Paul Pangaro. “What did Pask see in 1968 about a future ecosystem of conversational machines? There are hints about how to make our machine-person interactions richer and more human. And, might Colloquy give us a better appreciation for being in the physical presence of people?”

Pangaro noted that regardless of age or culture, public response in the presence of the mobiles’ three-dimensional forms is always one of curiosity.

“People want to touch the surface of the forms. These are not ‘devices’ or ‘machines’ as we think of digital interfaces today. They have an organic presence as if they are biological, not technological. Pask always looked at interaction without distinguishing between devices, machines, people. It was all universal in some way.”

Two Interaction Design (IxD) studios have worked on the project since January. IxD students consulted historical descriptions, diagrams, photographs and films to create a detailed scenario for how the 1968 mobiles functioned, along with instructions for how to recreate them. The students also built 1/6-scale models, complete with modern digital software, sensors and motors.

Based on original designs by Pask and Yolanda Sonnabend, designer TJ McLeish designed, constructed and fabricated all of the full-scale replica’s components, including the 3D forms, and he configured the motors, electronics and software that bring them to life. Building Brown Workshop in Chicago executed the intricate fabrication process for the female mobiles.

“They’re very sculptural,” said Amanda Pask Heitler, one of Gordon Pask’s daughters, who recalled her own impressions of the forms as a child during the 1968 London exhibition. “He wanted everything to be elegant. It was very important to him. He thought that the form of the thing mattered and that you should always aim to make things beautiful.”

More info:

Colloquy of Mobiles Website: https://www.colloquyofmobiles.com/

College of Creative Studies, where this blog is reproduced from: https://www.collegeforcreativestudies.edu/

Blog on Hyperallergic: https://hyperallergic.com/445834/colloquy-of-mobiles-2018-college-creative-studies-gordon-pask/

London (UK), 5 September 2018

Workshop: Co-creating augmented cultural experiences in Albertopolis

In conjunction with the international Engineering & Product Design Education Conference, and the EU PLUGGY project, Imperial College and Royal College of Art are hosting a free co-design workshop for participants to co-create cultural experiences based on the rich design and innovation history of Albertopolis using the tools for augmentation created by PLUGGY, REACH linked project.
PLUGGY (the Pluggable Social Platform for Heritage Awareness and Participation), is a 3-years Horizon 2020 EC funded project, which provides a social platform and a series of pluggable applications that aim at facilitating a continuing process of creating, modifying and safeguarding heritage where European citizens will be consumers, creators and maintainers of cultural activities.
You are warmly invited to join us for a late afternoon and evening of refreshments, problem solving, and hacking for culture!

What you can expect from the workshop
An afternoon of hands on cultural exploration and content creation that enriches your, and future visitor, experiences of the Albertopolis cultural heritage. You will be teamed up side-by-side with Imperial and RCA staff and students, cultural heritage professionals, designers and researchers and London’s community.

Agenda:
2:00 – 2:30 Registration, networking and Albertopolis orientation
2:30 – 2:45 Kick-off and introductions
2:45 – 3:30 Teams try out the PLUGGY applications based on Albertopolis experiences
3:30 – 4:15 Content developed
4:15 – 4:45 Teams pitch their work
4:45 – 5:30 Workshop wrap-up
6.00 – 8.00 Refreshments and drinks reception with Sonic playback

To secure your place at this event get a FREE General Admission ticket, clicking the button available below.
** Note; If you attend the conference, there is no need to book a ticket here. You can sign up for the workshop using the conference registration system. **

the symposium takes place 6–8 March 2019 at Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki. Call for papers deadline 31 August 2018.

“Moral Machines? The Ethics and Politics of the Digital World” symposium – call for papers

6–8 March 2019, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki.

As our visible and invisible social reality is getting increasingly digital, the question of the ethical, moral and political consequences of digitalization is ever more pressing. Such issue is too complex to be met only with instinctive digiphilia or digiphobia. No technology is just a tool, all technologies mark their users and environments. Digital technologies, however, mark them much more intimately than any previous ones have done since they promise to think in our place – so that they do not only enhance the ’ most distinctive feature but also relieve them from it. We entrust computers with more and more functions, and their help is indeed invaluable especially in science and technology. Some fear or dream that in the end, they become so invaluable that a huge Artificial Intelligence or Singularity will take control of the whole affair that humans deal with so messily.

CALL FOR PAPERS
The symposium “Moral Machines? The Ethics and Politics of the Digital World” welcomes contributions addressing the various aspects of the contemporary digital world. We are especially interested in the idea that despite everything they can do, the machines do not really think, at least not like us. So, what is thinking in the digital world? How does the digital machine “think”? Our both confirmed keynote speakers, N. Katherine Hayles (Duke University, USA) and Bernard Stiegler (IRI: Institut de Recherche et d’Innovation at the Centre Pompidou de Paris), have approached these fundamental questions in their work, and one of our aims within this symposium is to bring their approaches together for a lively discussion. Hayles has shown that, for a long time, computers were built with the assumption that they imitate human thought – while in fact, the machine’s capability of non-embodied and non-conscious cognition sets it apart from everything we call thinking. For his part, Bernard Stiegler has shown how technics in general and digital technologies in particular are specific forms of memory that is externalized and made public – and that, at the same time, becomes very different from and alien to individual human consciousness.

We are seeking submissions from scholars studying different aspects of these issues. Prominent work is done in many fields ranging from philosophy and literary studies to political science and sociology, not forgetting the wide umbrella of digital humanities. We hope that the symposium can bring together researchers from the hitherto disconnected fields and thus address the ethics and politics of the digital world in a new and inspiring setting.

300 words abstract deadline submission: 31st August 2018.

SAVE THE DATE: 13.-14.12.2018 POEM project Opening Conference in Hamburg

Call for Papers: “Participatory Memory Practices”

“Participatory Memory Practices: Connectivities, Empowerment, and Recognition of Cultural Heritages in Mediatized Memory Ecologies”
The conference addresses a multidisciplinary and international group of scholars and experts from memory institutions, civil society, policy makers, social entrepreneurs, the coding community and creative industries.
The goal is to collect contributions by the participants and implement a socially, inclusive public memory. To reach this purpose it is required to develop a comprehensive understanding on concepts, practices, and media infrastructures that facilitate the partaking of people from various backgrounds in the heritage building work of memory institutions (libraries, archives, and museums).
The Innovative Training Network “Participatory Memory Practices. Concepts, strategies, and media infrastructures for envisioning socially inclusive potential futures of European Societies through culture” (POEM) will provide this comprehensive knowledge by studying in practice theoretical approaches on how connectivities are built by institutions, people and groups, and media infrastructures for a socially inclusive, participatory heritage work.
Proposals should be sent until September 15th 2018 to poem.gwiss@uni-hamburg.de.
They should not exceed a length of 600 words and include bios of max. 200 words.
More information about the POEM Opening Conference at:
https://www.poem.uni-hamburg.de/en/opening-conference.html
Information about POEM Project:
https://www.poem.uni-hamburg.de/en/about.html

application deadline: 12 July 2018

TWA Cultural heritage Digitisation Grant fund returns for third year

After providing over £12,000 of support for UK cultural heritage institutions and business archives to digitise their holdings in its first two years, the TownsWeb Archiving Digitisation Grant has returned once more in 2018.

The Grant has funding awards of up to £5000 available to help archives, museums, libraries and galleries digitise and open up access to their collections.

Any UK heritage organisation is welcome to apply for the funding, simply by completing and submitting the Grant application form. As in previous years, each bid will be scored across three core criteria: heritage need, social and community impact, and research impact.

As in previous years, applications will be assessed by a three-strong judging panel made up of John Chambers, chief executive of the Archives & Records Association; Claire Adler, independent HLF mentor and heritage consultant; and Paul Sugden, lead digitisation consultant at TownsWeb Archiving.

The deadline for TWA Digitisation Grant applications is 12^th July 2018. Find out how to apply and read more details at:

https://www.townswebarchiving.com/twa-digitisation-grant/

deadline to provide your input and views is 30th June 2018

H2020 ViMM Project: Consultation for the final version of the EU Manifesto on Digital Cultural Heritage

The H2020 Virtual Multimodal Museum Project (ViMM: www.vi-mm.eu) is a high-visibility and participative Coordination and Support Action (CSA), funded under the EU Horizon 2020 programme (CULT-COOP-8-2016). The project brings together Europe’s and the world’s leadingpublic and private sector organisations working on Virtual Museums and in the wider sector of Digital Cultural Heritage, to support high quality policy development, decision making and the use of technical advances. The partner consortium (seebelow) is supported by an Advisory Board and (in the meantime) with more than 800 Experts, in building the ViMM Framework, involving decision-makers and expert practitioners in defining and resolving issues spread across 7 interlinked Thematic Areas (‘the 7 Ds’): Definitions – Directions – Documentation – Dimensions -Demand – Discovery – Decisions

Major project’s results will include:

A highly interactive and wide-reaching ViMM communication Platform which:

enables focused contributions and Working Group discussion by everyone interested
provides access to innovations, cases of excellence and decision-support
Key events at policy and practitioner/ stakeholder levels and extensive use of social media
A clearer, evidence-based view of the impact of Virtual Museums and Digital Cultural Heritage on society and the economy
A Manifesto and Roadmap for Action to be validated at the final ViMM international conference in 2019.

The project is on the stage to develop the EU Manifesto.

Building on the results from its seven (7) Thematic Areas and the twenty one (21) Working Groups, ViMM is now calling for comments from the Digital Cultural Heritage (DCH) community on the draft of its first planned major statement: the ViMM Manifesto: https://goo.gl/4MU7Gr

Therefore, we invite and welcome general comments on the ViMM Forum https://goo.gl/DAxT25

Alternatively, please download the document, make comments by activating in MS Word the Track Changes and send us the new document to manifesto@vi-mm.eu. The given deadline is: 30^th of June 2018.

Your comments at this stage are highly valued. The final version of the Manifesto will provide a basis for the Roadmap and Action Plan for DCH which follow it.

Please be sure that you register on our platform (if you haven’t done it yet: www.vi-mm.eu) and/or follow and like us on the Social Media:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/vimmuseum?lang=en
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8578688

deadline is 25th June 2018

Edinburgh Short Film Festival call for entries!

The ESFF screens 8 nights of short film every Autumn at cinemas across Edinburgh, featuring the best International, UK & Scottish short films from drama to documentary, comedy to animation, experimental to web series.

We’re also awarding prizes for Best Film, Best Animation and Best Scottish Short and we’re working with partner festivals to showcase our favourite shorts to audiences internationally, including this year: Barcelona Int. Short Film Festival, Fastnet Film Festival, the Sardinia Film Festival, Firenze FilmCorti 2018, the Adriatic Film Festival and Hidden Door among others!

But get your skates on – The FINAL Deadline is Monday June 25th!
https://www.edinburghshortfilmfestival.com/call-for-entries/

Kalamata (Greece), 5-7 July 2018

From zero* to infinity! Video Art Miden*

Video Art Miden is expanding and broadening, and is ready to present a rich program of international video art in Kalamata -more specifically at the Historic Center and the beach of the city. Celebrating the strong relationship of the organization with the city in which it started and initially developed, the curatorial team comes back with public projections of contemporary video art from all around the world, from July 5 to July 7, each day activating a different urban area of the city.

Video Art Miden is counting 14 years of continuous artistic & curatorial activity, gathering the most interesting works of Greek and international video art and finding new ways and new venues for projection and promotion of this specific form of art, in Greece and abroad. During this year’s summer events in Kalamata, the audience will have the opportunity to watch more than 170 video works, selected from the recent call for entries addressed by Miden to video artists internationally.

Download the program (PDF, 2 Mb)

The summer events this year include morning and night screenings, with many different thematic programs, alternating and differentiating morphologically and conceptually, expressing the basic trends of our time. The program starts dynamically on Thursday night (July 5) at the Atrium of the Archaeological Museum of Messenia, at the Historic Center of Kalamata; the next night the screenings will be located at the beach (Thalassa Lounge, July 6), with music-based videos screened next to the wave, as an alternative music party, and on Saturday night (July 7) Miden returns to the City Center, at the Anagnostara pedestrian road, where it completes its activities with indoor and outdoor screenings (Stoa Londou, Bandapart Recording Studio).

This year, the morning screening zone and the tributes to foreign festivals (Now & After / Russia and Cairo Video Festival / Egypt) will be hosted in the Archaeological Museum of Messenia, on Friday and Saturday (6 and 7 of July). A special theoretical presentation by the curatorial team will be held on Friday morning (July 6) in the Archaeological Museum of Messenia with invited directors and theoreticians of the video art field, including Art Historian and New Media Art Curator Anna Hatziyiannaki, who has conducted an important and innovative curatorial work in the areas of new media, cyber-art and bio-art in Greece, and Marina Fomenko, founder and artistic director of “Now & After” International Video Art Festival.

All events are open and free for the public, as always.

Video Art Miden 2018 events in Kalamata are supported by the Municipality of Kalamata, FARIS Municipal Cultural Organization, the Ephorate of Antiquities of Messenia and the Archaeological Museum of Messenia.

Art Direction: Gioula Papadopoulou and Margarita Stavraki

Curatorial team: Gioula Papadopoulou, Margarita Stavraki, Giorgos Dimitrakopoulos, Maria Bourika, Stavros Kapetis, Danny Kargas, Nikos Podias, Sofia Grigoriadou, Panagiotis Voulgaris

Collaborators: Vassilis Papaefstathiou/ Kalamata Filmhouse, Mena El Shazly and Mohamed Allam (Cairo Video Festival), Marina Fomenko (Now&After), Yannis Scoulidas, Christos Tsamardas

The complete program and more info can be found on the website: www.festivalmiden.gr and at fb: www.facebook.com/festivalmiden

Program navigation

This year’s program includes the following thematic units:

– A special tribute to Greek Video Art, with 3 screening units (Inscapes, Anatomy of silence, The world is a theater) which highlight new morphological and conceptual trends that inspire Greek video artists nowadays, focusing especially on the young generation.

– Three thematic units dedicated to Performative Arts, narrative video, video-performance and videodance (Act… with or without expression, Fragments of a story, vDance). These programs investigate the video art “loans” from the performing arts and deal with the morphological transformations of narration, space, object and body movement in these categories of video creation.

– Two screening programs that deal with the concept of Space, investigating boundaries between private and public, familiar and unfamiliar, monumental and the anti-monument (In between, A chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure).

– Three more light and colorful programs (Daydream, Freeze Frame, Scenes from an unwritten fairytale), which create their own poetic narrations through music, animation and digital experimentations.

– Finally, four thematic screening programs, which explore our political attitude and resistance (Get [it] out of your system), the world of fashion and our dependence on it (Flow along surface), the naked body as a medium of dialogue and expression (Shell) and, finally, a screening program for a dystopian present future (The way it looks back at you).

Besides the selections by the curatorial team of Miden, the program includes 2 more curatorial contributions from significant international festivals and a special presentation of music videos by famous film directors, curated by Kalamata Filmhouse:

–Cairo Video Festival (cvf.medrar.org) started in 2005, the same year as Miden. Eight editions have taken place since, bringing artists from different countries to exhibit their video art and experimental film works in Egypt. The festival is dedicated to the power of creative minds. The selection hosted by Miden, curated by Mena El Shazly & Mohamed Allam, sets morphological questions on the boundaries between different forms of visual arts and the incorporation of elements from other arts, especially from the painting legacy, in the art of video.

– International Video Art Festival Now&After (www.now-after.org) has been carried out in Moscow since 2011. Now&After focuses on presentation, development and promotion of both Russian and international video art, getting together emerging and established artists from around the world to present their works to general audience. Now&After was held in major museums and art spaces in Moscow, such as the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Schusev State Museum of Architecture, CCI Fabrika and many others. Founding director and curator of Now&After is Marina Fomenko, who is visiting Miden this year and participates in the open lecture. She presents a selection of videos which deal with phantoms of power that haunt us even when we try to ignore them, investigating the ways that forms of power are recorded in collective memory.

–Kalamata Filmhouse (a long-standing partner of Video Art Miden in Kalamata) presents a selection of music video-clips, directed by renown film directors in an attempt to connect the musical message to the moving image.

_______________

Video Art Miden: profile

Video Art Miden is an independent organization for the exploration and promotion of video art. Founded by an independent group of Greek artists in 2005, it has been one of the earliest specialized video-art festivals in Greece and builded an international festival identity, presenting an annual video art festival for a decade. Since 2015, Miden continues its work changing its form to a more flexible and broadened event programming, setting as basic aims to stimulate the creation of original video art, to help spread it and develop relevant research.

Through collaborations and exchanges with major international festivals and organizations, it has been recognized as one of the most successful and interesting video art platforms internationally and as an important cultural exchange point for Greek and international video art. It also provides an alternative meeting point for emerging and established artists and a communication hub between artists, organizations, festivals and art spaces around the world.

Miden screening programs have traveled in many cities of Greece and all over the world, and they are hosted by significant festivals, museums and institutions globally.

(*Miden means “zero” in Greek)

artworks, video art works, experimental films, performances art and dance pieces are very welcome!

Call for artists: Venice Experimental Video and Performance Art Festival

July 26-27, 2018 | Deadline: June 28, 2018
September 27-28, 2018 | Deadline: July 19, 2018

ITS LIQUID GROUP, in collaboration with Venice Events and Ca’ Zanardi, is proud to announce the open call for Venice Experimental Video and Performance Art Festival, the international spread festival, that will be presented during the same period of the BIENNALE ARCHITETTURA 2018 – 16th International Architecture Exhibition.

Venice Experimental Video and Performance Art Festival is organized and curated by Arch. Luca Curci (founder and director of THE ROOM Contemporary Art Space, ITS LIQUID GROUP and LUCA CURCI ARCHITECTS), in collaboration with Venice Events at THE ROOM Contemporary Art Space, and organized and curated by Arch. Luca Curci and Andrea Chinellato (director of Palazzo Ca’ Zanardi) at Palazzo Ca’ Zanardi.

Venice Experimental Video and Performance Art Festival will be started in Venice, at Palazzo Ca’ Zanardi on July 26, 2018 and at THE ROOM Contemporary Art Space on July 27, 2018 during PLACES, second appointment of SURFACES FESTIVAL, and will be also presented on September 27, 2018 at Palazzo Ca’ Zanardi and on September 28, 2018 at THE ROOM Contemporary Art Space during SPACES, third exhibition of SURFACES FESTIVAL in Venice.

SUBMISSION CATEGORIES
– Experimental Cinema and video art
The number of works you can submit is unlimited and free. The submitted films must be the original works of the filmmakers/artists. The participation is open to: artists, photographers, filmmakers, and videomakers.

– Performance Art
The number of works you can submit is unlimited and free. Selected performance pieces will be presented live during the festival. The participation in the festival for selected performances is FREE.

Artists, photographers, performers, dancers and video makers are invited to submit artworks, video art works, experimental films, performances art and dance pieces. To take part in the selection, send your works’ submission with a CV/biography, some still images, links of videos/films via e-mail to lucacurci@lucacurci.com

For more information or to take part in the selection send an e-mail to lucacurci@lucacurci.com

more: www.itsliquid.com