Digital meets Culture

20th March 2018,Royal Museum of Arts and History, Brussels

High-level Horizon 2020 conference of The European Year of Cultural Heritage

The event, organised by the European Commission Directorate General for Research and Innovation, in close cooperation with the Directorates General for Education and Culture and for Communications Networks, Content and Technology showcased the dialogue between contemporary European society and the most promising innovation initiatives in the field of Cultural Heritage, supported by the EU.

The conference is part of the programme of the European Year of Cultural Heritage and contributed to its legacy by launching a public discussion about the objectives of European research and innovation policy for Cultural Heritage beyond 2020.

Most European citizens consider Cultural Heritage to be very important to create cohesion at the European level and new job opportunities. A public survey also found that the resources currently allocated by public authorities to the promotion of Cultural Heritage are considered insufficient for this purpose.
The conference on the 20th of March aimed to cope with this requirement.

Cultural Heritage is a kind of inheritance selected by a nation or a community, and reflects social and economic systems of value and cultural politics, including human rights.
The most important challege for EU research and innovation policy is improving access and sharing of Cultural Heritage by promoting new ideas, new forms of social organisation and human agency.
European action shall contribute to the development of integrated approaches that will enhance the contribution of Cultural Heritage to sustainable development through the preservation and regeneration of urban and rural cultural landscapes.
New methodologies, coordination and more integrated approaches between national and European levels are required in order to increase the input that Cultural Heritage gives to the improvement of sustainable economic growth, new job creation and external trade.
The European Year of Cultural Heritage celebrates the diverse representations of Cultural Heritage across Europe, at EU, national, regional and local levels. The aim is to encourage more people to discover and engage with Europe’s Cultural Heritage, and to reinforce a sense of belonging to a common European cultural space.

Of particular interest for REACH have been the two presentations of Prof. Civantos, by the University of Granada, Partner of the REACH Social Platform, who reported on Community-led traditional cultural landscape management, and Ms Pamela Lama, by the Municipality of Bologna, Italy, who presented the achievements of the ROCK project, that is associated to REACH.

Conference report and outcomes are available at the conference webpage:

https://ec.europa.eu/info/events/innovation-and-cultural-heritage-2018-mar-20_en

Information and registration to INNOVATION AND CULTURAL HERITAGE Conference are available on https://ec.europa.eu/info/events/innovation-and-cultural-heritage-2018-mar-20_en

Conference Program

Transposition journal's new issue wants to focus on the dialectic between tangibility and intangibility in music exhibition, conservation, and transmission

Call for papers on the theme “Music: Intangible Heritage?”

The peer-reviewed journal Transposition, Musique et sciences sociales opens a call for papers for its n° 8 issue, on the theme “Music: Intangible Heritage?”.

Abstracts of proposals (~1500-2500 words) in French or English should be sent by February 1, 2018, to: transposition.submission@gmail.com. Articles will be expected by the end of Spring.

Transposition invites the broad spectrum of social and human sciences to take up a critical reflection on the heritagisation of music, taking the growing dissemination of the “intangible cultural heritage” paradigm as the starting point for a more general analysis of the interplay between music, heritage, and intangibility. From case studies to theoretical proposals, papers can focus on the following themes:

Music and “intangible cultural heritage”: political and aesthetic issues.
Musical heritage in question: history and renewals of heritage conservation practices.
The tangibility and intangibility of music.

The complete call is available through this link.

Brussels (Belgium), 20th March 2018

Innovation and Cultural Heritage

Horizon 2020 conference of The European Year of Cultural Heritage

20th March 2018

Royal Museum of Arts and History, Brussels

The high-level conference – organised by the European Commission Directorate General for Research and Innovation, in close cooperation with Directorates General for Education and Culture and for Communications Networks, Content and Technology – will showcase the dialogue between contemporary European society and the most promising innovations in the field of cultural heritage that European policies and funds have supported. The conference sessions will highlight policy, social, technological, methodological innovations and new, promising partnerships for cultural heritage. The speakers – leading European politicians, museum curators and scientists – of the conference will discuss policy developments, success stories and future challenges.

The conference is part of the programme of the European Year of Cultural Heritage and will contribute to its legacy by launching the public discussion about the objectives of European research and innovation policy for cultural heritage beyond 2020. The beautiful Royal Museum of Arts and History of Brussels provides a most suitable and motivating environment for discussions about European cultural heritage and innovation.

Programme: https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/conferences/innovation_and_cultural_heritage_conference_2018_-_agenda.pdf

Website and registration: https://ec.europa.eu/info/events/innovation-and-cultural-heritage-2018-mar-20_en

Live streaming also available

A great opportunity to identify good practices for the promotion and preservation of small towns heritage.

Upcoming workshop. Small towns in promotion of its cultural heritage: possibilities and experiences

SAVE THE DATE: February 15, 2018. Jana Palacha square, 2, Praha 1, 2nd floor, room 201. Charles University leader of the HORIZON 2020 REACH Project pilot on small towns heritage, promotes the first workshop with associated partners of Czech Republic.

Small towns are a distinct feature of European settlement and are often per se part of CH, for their architecture, monuments, churches, and for any other form of CH in public places, as well as for the intangible heritage linked to the territory. Despite this, they remain in the shadow of the big cities and metropolis.

The workshop, that will take place in the venue of the Faculty of Arts of CUNI, will face the main critical points of the theme and, in accordance with REACH Pilot goal, will try to answer to questions such as
“How to involve the small town in the game?”
“How to gain external attention for the small town?”
“How to motivate citizens to participate?”,
addressing the matter from the perspective of the “big actors” as well as from the local one.

To download the Workshop program in English
To download the Workshop program in Czech
To download the REACH Project presentation in Czech

It is a Virtual Reality Club, a pavilion developed for The Wrong, digital art biennale

join Mutant Club, a multisensory experience to be explored

This application was presented at The Wrong, the largest and most comprehensive biennale celebrating digital art today. A global event aiming to display digital culture, open to participation, and spreading its content through online pavilions: virtual curated spaces in any online accessible media where selected artworks are exhibited.

Mutant Club proposes an immersive and multisensory experience based on Virtual Reality, interactions, and sounds, curated by Enrique Salmoiraghi.

Featured artists
Federico Marino / Miguelangelo Rosario / Simon Falk / Alexander Wurts / Glitch_Ω / Emidio Bruno / Noke Yuitza / Luisa de la Rosa / Pure Honey / Zeat / P.C.T / Gustavo Fajardo / Frenetik Void / Rollercoasterwater / Diuhn / Ville Kallio / Daniel Vasconcelos / Dennis Richter / Jake Ball.

Deep & synthetic sounds are seeping through the walls of this floating UFO, giving the art revelers, a hint of what’s hidden on the inner side. But within these organic shapes, a different kind of experience awaits: a club for all those mutants living on the Inter-net-space where diversity reigns and the limits of consciousness are constantly being pushed.
To celebrate integration, the club admits every form of posthuman life. The code is to follow its own personal style and be open to meeting a variety of humanoids, avatars, aliens and any kind of digital lifeform who are welcome to party in this cyber happening.
This pavilion proposes a VR immersive and multisensory experience on the craziest virtual dancefloor. An opportunity to dance among living artworks and enjoy hot music.
Come and join the party! www.mutantclub.net

deadline for submissions: 15th March 2018

Call for papers: Archaeology and Architecture in Europeana

The call for papers is open for a one-day workshop on Archaeology and Architecture in Europeana, organised by CARARE and hosted by the University of Lund, to be held in Lund on the 20th June 2018.

The physical remains of Europe’s rich heritage are all around us. From the historic houses we live and work in, the places we worship, places we visit to explore tombs, earthworks, architectural ruins or monuments to industries past, the museums we visit, the shape of our landscape and the ground beneath our feet. Digital technologies are widely used to capture the heritage for conservation and research, for analysis, to support learning and tourism, and for enjoyment.

This workshop will explore how digital content for the archaeological and architectural heritage can be made available to users of Europeana, experiences and best practices in providing content, and potential re-uses of the content for education, tourism and researchers.

Topics of interest include:

Case studies of archaeology and architecture content in Europeana
Approaches to publishing 3D models online for users on Europeana
Linking contextual and historical information to digital resources for archaeology and architecture
Linked data for archaeology and architecture
Uses of archaeology and architecture datasets for education, cultural tourism, creative industries, etc.

We invite proposals for oral presentations and demos.

Important dates

15 March 2018 – Call for contributions closes

20 June 2018 – Workshop

Submit an abstract

Send the abstract for your presentation or demo to this email address events@carare.eu, with your name and affiliation. The abstract should be no longer than 300 words.

Register

Please register for “Archaeology and Architecture in Europeana” on our Eventbrite registration page

Win up to €20,000 for the best ideas reusing Europeana's openly licensed content for innovative learning

Europeana #edTech Challenge

The Europeana #edTech Challenge is a funding opportunity for entrepreneurs, developers, designers and educators who explore digital opportunities for education and training.

Do you have an exciting project in the intersection of culture, education and technology? We’re offering €20,000 for the best products, services or businesses that bring together cultural heritage and educational technology. Apply for the challenge before 28 February and show how to use cultural content to inspire learners of all ages.

We invite applications from individuals or teams of creatives interested in designing fantastic edTech projects using Europeana’s openly licensed content. Eligible proposals include but are not limited to digital applications, games, web services, learning software and digital learning materials (for instance, MOOCs). We accept proposals at various stages of maturity, including existing applications and educational platforms that would like to further develop their business potential.

Discover more about application criteria and terms & conditions: https://pro.europeana.eu/post/europeana-edtech-challenge

Rotterdam (The Netherlands), 15-16 May 2018

EuropeanaTech Conference 2018

SAVE THE DATE – The third international EuropeanaTech conference took place on the “ss Rotterdam” in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, May 15-16 as part of the European Year of Cultural Heritage.

EuropeanaTech 2018 brought together an international network of technical and R&D specialists from memory organisations, research institutions and creative industries to share innovative progress and forecast the technical future of Europeana and digital cultural heritage.

It offered the opportunity to work with and learn from leading specialists, practitioners and researchers from across the world, to benefit from the mutual exchange of ideas, technology and code and as an event it leads the way in how technologies bring Europe’s cultural heritage closer to people

https://pro.europeana.eu/event/europeanatech-conference-2018

EuropeanaTech is about the practical application of research concepts and the latest technologies to digital libraries. For this edition of EuropeanaTech, we concentrated on the three D’s: Data, Discovery and Delivery. Intertwined are the concepts of participation, linked and big data; language and tools. Across all the subjects we are looking for the inclusion of rigorous evaluations of the outcomes. The conference was a mix of invited speakers and successful presentations of both gorgeous successes and glorious failures.

List of Topics

DATA

User generated content and metadata: from crowdsourcing of descriptive data and transcription projects to Wikidata and structured data on the Commons to how to combine institutional and user generated metadata. We are looking for what has worked, or what hasn’t and can be done better.
Enhancing the results of digitisation: various applications connect the act of digitisation with required data processes for the use of the data. What are the latest techniques, have they been applied at scale, do they work in the in the more challenging audio-visual areas? We are interested in everything from 3D capture, OCR, sound/video labelling, named entity recognition and feature detection, to machine or deep learning to help classify and categorise the digitised data.
Decentralisation vs Centralisation: We know that aggregation works as a process to bring together disparate data, standardised, normalise it and make it available to other parties, but we also know that this is labour intensive, very hierarchical, and does not distribute knowledge and expertise. On the other hand more decentralised ways of working have yet to be really proven in practice. Presentations that give the latest thinking on how we can best enable access to cultural heritage data and reduce friction costs are welcome, particularly with evaluation on the relative strengths and weaknesses.
Multilingualism: Google has more or less cracked full text translation of mainstream languages, but we are still struggling with niche languages and metadata. Presentations that evaluate the current thinking or give insights into the latest work in the area would fit well in this section of the creation and use of multilingual data in Cultural Heritage.

DISCOVERY

User Interaction: Search is still the dominant means of gaining access to the wealth of cultural heritage data now online, but does it represent that wealth? Search is ungenerous: it withholds information, and demands a query, what are the alternatives? Papers on generous interfaces and frictionless design are sought to shed new light on how Cultural Heritage can show itself more deeply. Evaluating the benefits and weaknesses to the user in the process.
Artificial Intelligence: For this subject topics ranging from machine learning to neural network-based approaches to Cultural Heritage are welcome. This includes applications of AI from image feature recognition to natural language processing, and from building search interfaces on features/colour similarity between images and discovery to the use of human metadata and computer vision. We would also be interested in the audio and moving image equivalents. Anything dealing with the combination of metadata tags, image similarity and machine learning based on user input would be very relevant as would Artificial Intelligence technology for content curation.

DELIVERY

Digital Innovation: The corporate culture of our memory institutions, set up to preserve and conserve our heritage and the organisation of digital innovation are not a marriage made in heaven. The Labs/Skunkworks model is increasingly seen at best as an interim stage and at worst as a dead end for organising innovation. So how should GLAMs go about organising for digital innovation? How can governments and/or funders best support digital transformation of the GLAM-sector?
Evaluation techniques: Evaluation should be part of everything we do in the publicly funded space of most of cultural heritage, but the how is struggling to gain a common language, one that we can apply so funders get a picture of the project within its broader context. Evaluation has been requested to be part of all papers submitted but the latest in techniques and agreement on a framework for the sector would constitute useful insights.
Open source community: What is the health and standing of the open source community within the cultural heritage sector? Does it thrive or is it a nice idea that is not a reality? How can projects with a limited lifespan create and sustain products for the sector at large while developing and engaging a thriving community around them? From digitisation to search engine development should there be more emphasis on the need for vibrant open source communities and more resources to realizing them? Papers on barriers and successes are requested.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS - deadline 31st January

workshop: The politics of metadata in participatory approaches: Opportunities, practices, and conflicts (DHN 2018)

Second call for proposals / Workshop at the conference Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries 7 March 2018 at the University of Helsinki

This workshop seeks to expand critical perspectives on metadata in relation to public cultural heritage image collections online.
In our image-saturated time, the definition of therticipatory online practices such as crowdsourcing enable cultural heritage institutions to accelerate the development of digi also be seen as platforms for audience engagement, creating a deep connection to cultural heritage through online collaboration. Furthermore, open data and enhanced standards enabling interoperability might support new forms of collaboration between institutions, researchers, and the general public.
However, these participatory open science practices create new challenges due to the character of the networked publics involved and the established structures between and within institutions, but also new opportunities and practices when it comes to understanding and defining our shared images. Therefore, critical perspectives on metadata in relation to photographic collections online are vital. This calls for an interdisciplinary approach in the intersection between computer science, image studies, and cultural studies.

For this workshop, therefore, we invite participants to look more closely at different types of participatory practices online in relation to the cultural heritage domain, and at different levels of interaction. Possible sites of analysis could be the interaction between participants, the participation in the work by different stakeholders, the potentially privileged levels of interaction with the metadata, or tensions in the agency of the participants in relation to the task.
This half-day workshop explores the topics in mini presentations and brainstorming sessions, and will result in a research agenda for addressing these questions.

The position-paper should be 2-4 pages and using the Springer LNCS templates.
Send submissions and inquiries to the following email address:
politics-of-metadata@googlegroups.com

Deadline is Wednesday, January 31, 2018.

For more information visit the website: http://politicsofmetadata.blogs.dsv.su.se/

a White Paper aiming at fostering conversations in the audiovisual archiving and cultural heritage communities about the challenges they face

Towards a New Audiovisual Think Tank for Audiovisual Archivists and Cultural Heritage Professionals

The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision has released its new White Paper, Towards a New Audiovisual Think Tank for Audiovisual Archivists and Cultural Heritage Professionals. The White Paper, the first effort from a new ‘AV Think Tank’ on audiovisual archiving initiated by Sound and Vision, aims to facilitate stakeholders active in the preservation of audiovisual heritage to identify their strategic priorities over the coming decade. The paper also puts forward 10 recommendations for collective action to address these priorities.

Written by Peter B. Kaufman of Intelligent Television and MIT, the White Paper is the result of months of open conversation with leading experts in the field representing various positions, archives, and cultural heritage institutions. The White Paper was publicly presented at the FIAT/IFTA 2017 World Conference in October in Mexico City, and input from many of the delegates was incorporated.

Johan Oomen, head of R&D at Sound and Vision, stated, “This White Paper is one of the first steps that we are taking to establish a new international thought leadership group – the AV Think Tank – with experts from around the globe. Through the AV Think Tank, we aim to lay the groundwork for an AV archiving sector that enables more long-term use of its assets, more learning, and more educational activity.”

The White Paper is meant to start a conversation with the audiovisual archiving and cultural heritage communities and within the AV Think Tank itself. It addresses the current context of the work that audiovisual archivists and cultural heritage professionals do and many of the challenges they face. It puts forth ten recommendations as strategic priorities for the coming ten years around which action, research and development, and resources could be organised. Each recommendation is accompanied by a timeline of first collective actions to take.

The AV Think Tank is committed to following up on these recommendations through a series of activities. The AV Think Tank is creating task forces and working groups focused on these issues. These groups will conduct further research and connect with other relevant stakeholder groups; lay the groundwork for policy and practice recommendations through the creation of handbooks, strategy papers, and other publications; and develop actions plans that connect directly to the interests of AV archivists and cultural heritage professionals. Through these activities, this group of international experts, in consultation with the wider community, is working to articulate an international research and action agenda for our shared strategic priorities for the next ten years.

The White Paper can downloaded directly as PDF here. To join the conversation about our shared strategic priorities, follow and comment on the White Paper on Medium here.

The AV Think Tank invites comment from and conversation with anyone interested in the present and future of our shared moving image cultural heritage.

To contact the AV Think Tank, please email: avthinktank@beeldengeluid.nl