Digital meets Culture

Artists from UK and around the world converge at International Surrealism Now Project.

“International Surrealism Now” art exhibition goes to US

The next editions of International Surrealism Now will be held in United States, Mississippi at Cullis Wade Depot Art Gallery, MSU Welcome Center; it will be in January and February and in Partícula Coimbra, next February, and Multimedia Poros Museum in Condeixa-a-Nova, Portugal 2016.

The follow artists will exhibit in United States, Mississippi at Cullis Depot Gallery located above the Mississippi State University welcome center:

American: Jay Garfinkle, France Garrido, Joe A. MacGown, K.D. Matheson, Patrick McGrath Muniz, Shahla Rosa, Olga Spiegel.

Portuguese: Santiago Ribeiro, Paula Rosa, Victor Lages, Francisco Urbano.

Video by Steve Smith

“International Surrealism Now” is a project by the surrealist painter Santiago Ribeiro, who has dedicated himself to promoting the surrealism of the 21st century, through exhibitions worldwide. The “International Surrealism Now” began in 2010 in Coimbra, when Santiago Ribeiro conceived a major exhibition organized by Bissaya Barreto Foundation. This event has been in Conímbriga celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Monographic Museum (second most visited museum in Portugal). The show has also been in Paris with the support of GAPP – Art Gallery Portugal Presente and Liba WS, organized once again by the Bissaya Barreto Foundation and Santiago Ribeiro, and in Madrid with the support of Yamal Din. After that it went to Dallas with the support of the American surrealist artist Shahla Rosa. Lately it has been presented at the medieval Castle of Paço da Ega, organized by Rede de Bibliotecas and House Mayor of Condeixa-a-Nova

At present, the “International Surrealism Now” includes artists from 30 countries: Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Spain, USA, Philippines, France, Holland, Indonesia, England, Iran, Iceland , Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Vietnam.

The exhibition consists of a variety of artworks including drawing, painting, photography, digital art and sculpture.

Artists: Agim Meta, Spain / Ana Neamu, Romania / Ana Pilar Morales, Spain / Anna Plavinskaya, Russia/USA / Andrew Artist Baines, Australia / Asier Guerrero Rico ( Dio ), Spain / Brigid Marlin, UK / Bien Banez, Philippines / Daila Lupo, Italy / Dan Neamu, Romania / Daniel Hanequand, Canada / Daniele Gori, Italy / Domen Lo, Slovenia / Edgar Invoker, Russia / Egill Ibsen, Iceland / Erik Heyninck, Belgium / Ettore Aldo Del Vigo, Italy / Farhad Jafari, Iran / France Garrido, USA / Francisco Urbano, Portugal / Gromyko Padilla Semper, Philippines / Héctor Pineda, Mexico / Hector Toro, Colombia / Hugues Gillet, France / Isabel Meyrelles, Portugal / Keith Wigdor, USA / Leo Wijnhoven, Holland / Leo Plaw, Germany / Liba Waring Stambollion, France / Joe MacGown, USA / Lubomír Štícha, Czech Republic / Ludgero Ludgero Rôlo, Portugal / Lv Shang, China / Maciej Hoffman, Poland / Magi Calhoun, USA / Maria Aristova, Russia / Martina Hoffmann, Germany / Mehriban Efendi, Azerbaijan / Naiker Roman Cespedes, Spain / Nazareno Affonso, Brazil / Nikolina Petolas, Croatia / Octavian Florescu, Canada / Oleg Korolev, Russia / Olga Spiegel, USA / Otto Rapp, Austria / Paula Rosa, Portugal / Paulo Cunha, Canada / Pedro Diaz Cartes, Chile / Philippe Pelletier, France / Rudolf Boelee, New Zealand / Santiago Ribeiro, Portugal / Sergey Tyukanov, Russia / Shahla Rosa, USA / Shoji Tanaka, Japan / Shan Zhulan, China / Sio SandraJaya, Indonesia / Slavko Krunic, Serbia / Sônia Menna Barreto, Brazil/ Steve Smith, USA / Stuart Grigz, UK / Svetlana Kislyachenko, Ukraine / Tatomir Pitariu, USA / Ton Haring, Holland / Victor Lages, Portugal / Vu Huyen Thuong, Vietnam / Yamal Din, Spain / Yuri Tsvetaev, Russia / Zoran Velimanovic, Serbia.

Happy New Year from the MediaArea team!

MediaConch Newsletter #3 (January 2016)

New Release

What’s new in MediaConch 15.12?

Database support introduced

With an introduction of a database built into the GUI, the most noticeable improvement is speed. Instead of parsing a file every time it is analyzed, it will only be parsed once, with subsequent policies then applied to the pre-analyzed content. Having a database will, in the future, allow users to apply custom policies to the full library content without having to wait a long time. This will also allow for the generation of custom statistics based on collections instead of just individual files. For example, if a percentage of the parsed library has “Error X,” it will be easier to gather similar files and determine which writing library was producing the error. This is one of many ideas other developers could implement with so much data available in the database.

New logo

MediaConch finally has its own logo, never to be confused with MediaInfo again! More details about the logo can be found in this blog post about the design.

More explicit licences

MediaConch and MediaInfo library are licensed as GPLv3+ and MPLv2+, as stated in the software. Additionally, a list of third party libraries and their licences are available on our Github readme page.

Implementation test improvements

Implementation tests now load logic from an XML representation of the Matroska EBML Schema. The XML tests on valid parent elements, element multiplicity, and mandated child elements, among other things.

EBML

As part of our goal to standardize and clarify the formats, Matroska/EBML draft specifications are being regularly updated. These changes are reflected in MediaConch 15.12.

Other bug resolutions

Support for negative timecodes in Matroska files

Better support of non-English filenames

Display format is now also applied on invalid files

MediaTrace now documents the parser used for raw streams within Matroska.

MediaConch releases updated software on a monthly basis. Nightly builds are also available for testing the most recent development.

Homebrew

For Mac users, MediaConchCLI can now be downloaded via Homebrew. brew install mediaconch will install the latest version of the software. Moving forward, brew upgrade mediaconch will upgrade the package to the latest release.

Artefactual Collaboration

MediaConch will be working with the Artefactual team to integrate into their Archivematica software during the upcoming year. Artefactual will provide testing and feedback on software tools being developed by MediaArea as part of the PreForma project. Artefactual will also integrate select MediaConch tools into Archivematica and provide associated documentation and support for those features.

CELLAR

Ongoing work towards the standardization of Matroska and FFV1 can be followed via the recently-founded IETF working group, CELLAR (Codec Encoding for LossLess Archiving and Realtime transmission).

More information on CELLAR and opportunities to join in the discussion via mailing list are available on their website: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/cellar/charter/

FOSDEM

Project lead Jérôme Martinez will be presenting on our work at the upcoming FOSDEM conference in Brussels (30-31 January, 2016). FOSDEM is a conference held annually for open source software developers. The title of his talk is “CELLAR, Status report on an IETF Working Group for Matroska, FFV1, and FLAC.”

Conference website: https://fosdem.org/2016/

Event page: https://fosdem.org/2016/schedule/event/mediaconch/

Past and future events

In case you missed it, MediaConch was represented at the Association of Moving Image Archivists in Portland (20 November) and Fédération Internationale des Archives de Télévision / The International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT/IFTA) World Conference in Vienna (8 October). If you weren’t able to make it, we covered the events on our blog.

AMIA: https://mediaarea.net/MediaConch/2015/12/02/MediaArea-presents-at-AMIA/

FIAT/IFTA: https://mediaarea.net/MediaConch/2015/12/02/MediaArea-presents-at-AMIA/

MediaConch will be holding a webinar in January or February. More details to come soon.

Team member Ashley Blewer will be speaking at Code4lib (7-10 March, Philadelphia, PA, USA) about community-driven audiovisual archiving microservices, including MediaConch development. Project lead Dave Rice will also be attending.

MediaConch will be presenting at the PREFORMA Open Source Preservation Workshop in Stockholm on 7 April, 2016 at the National Library of Sweden. Registration is free and open until 31 March: http://www.digitalmeetsculture.net/article/preforma-open-source-preservation-workshop/

In July, MediaConch will be attending the IETF conference held in Berlin (17-22 July) and plans to hold an open source workshop for MediaConch users at that time.

Feedback

MediaArea is eager to build a community of collaborators and testers to participate in and use the results of the project. You can contact us here for more information.

Best,

The MediaConch Team

Europeana Space 2nd International Conference in Estonia

The new Roadmap poster @ “Creative reuse of cultural heritage and contemporary practices: challenges and opportunities in the digital world” International Conference, Tallinn 10-11 December 2015

This event, organized by the Estonian Ministry of Culture, in the framework of the EC funded Europeana Space project, intended to generate new perspectives for the wider re-use of cultural heritage and contemporary practices within a framework of creative experimentation and novel dialogue between multidisciplinary sectors. Next to interesting keynote speakers and round tables, the conference focused on the lessons learnt in the development of the project’s outputs and on moving towards sustainable results.

The CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES project, represented by the Technical Coordinator, Antonella Fresa, had presented the new Roadmap’s poster, that the Consortium has developed to continue the dissemination of the project also after the end of the funded life.

The conference was hosted at the astonishing location of the Niguliste Church in the Old Town of Tallinn. The Church was turned in a museum and also used for conferences and as a concert hall.

The Dance Pilot tools, DanceSpaces and DancePro, were introduced to the participants to inspire new ideas concerning digital media and dance.

Dance Hackathon, from Prague to London

by Hetty Blades, Coventry University

The EuropeanaSpace Dance Hackathon took place in Prague on the 21^st and 22^nd November. Organised by CIANT, in collaboration with Coventry University and the Dance Pilot team, the event brought together dancers, choreographers, hackers, coders, scientists and artists to explore the creative reuse of Europeana and dance content.

The Dance Pilot tools, DanceSpaces and DancePro, were introduced to the participants to inspire new ideas and show the potentials of digital media in the transmission, analysis and remixing of dance. Participants were invited to develop new tools and ideas, competing to advance to the next round of the competition and attend – a business development workshop with Remix in London.

Eighteen participants worked in five teams, over an intense two-day period to develop a wide range of unique and exciting projects. Each group pitched regularly and received feedback from Simon Cronshaw, as well as the other hackathon ambassadors and participants. All of the groups responded well to the feedback and the ideas developed very quickly. The atmosphere was highly creative and focussed, with some participants working throughout the night!

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The three winning teams proposed a range of ideas, involving measuring brain waves, the construction of virtual realities, and the use of interactive performance technologies. Each of these projects responded creatively to content on Europeana, highlighting the potential for creative reuse, and showed great scope for further development in the commercial and cultural sectors. We are all very excited to see what happens when the ideas are further developed in the new year!

Overall, this was a stimulating two days, which demonstrated the creative interactions that can arise from cross-disciplinary collaboration, and the exciting potentials of fusing dancing bodies, cultural content and digital media.

We are pleased to announce the latest release of veraPDF

veraPDF 0.8 now available

We are pleased to announce the latest release of veraPDF. Version 0.8 features a re-designed command line interface (CLI) for validation and feature extraction.

Highlights of this release are:

Refactored plug-in architecture;
Re-designed CLI for PDF/A validation and feature reporting;
Supporting install scripts;
Updated validation profile syntax;
Simplified machine-readable report format;
Synchronization with PDFBox 2.0 RC1 library.

The most important bugs fixed in this release are:

Comparison of Info dictionary and XMP metadata (PDF/A-1);
Support for missing resources and resource inheritance mechanism (PDF/A-1); and
Parsing TrueType fonts with zero-length tables.

Download veraPDF 0.8 at: http://www.preforma-project.eu/pdfa-conformance-checker.html

Release notes are published at: https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/blob/release-0.8/RELEASENOTES.md

veraPDF will deliver the definitive PDF/A validator. Please download and test the software. If you encounter problems, or wish to make suggestions, please add them to the project’s GitHub issue tracker. Your feedback is important, it will contribute to improving the software.

About

Led by the Open Preservation Foundation and the PDF Association, the veraPDF consortium is developing the definitive open source, file-format validator for all parts and conformance levels of ISO 19005 (PDF/A). The software is designed to meet the needs of memory institutions responsible for preserving digital content for the long term.

The veraPDF consortium is funded by the PREFORMA project. PREFORMA (PREservation FORMAts for culture information/e-archives) is a Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) project co-funded by the European Commission under its FP7-ICT Programme.

Amersfoort (The Netherlands), 5 February 2016

Sharing local cultural heritage online with LoCloud services – LoCloud final conference

This conference organised by the LoCloud project provides an opportunity to share, discuss and demonstrate tools, services and content in the context of Europeana. With showcases from LoCloud content partners and interesting speeches, the conference will reflect on the results achieved by LoCloud and look to the future.

Also, during the conference, the LoCloud “My local heritage” competition will be presented and the winners will be celebrated and awarded.

Details on the programme and tickets are available here: http://www.locloud.eu/Events/LoCloud-Conference

A new agreement has been signed between the two projects

Cooperation between PREFORMA and BenchmarkDP

A new agreement has been signed between PREFORMA and BenchmarkDP, two projects working in the field of digital preservation.

Main objectives of this agreement are:

to explore how the methodologies and approaches of BenchmarkDP could be useful in PREFORMA in establishing an objective frame of reference for the evaluation of the conformance checkers, and how the practical challenges in PREFORMA can inform the work in BenchmarkDP over the next months;
to jointly develop and publish specifications for software benchmarks around the PREFORMA focus areas;
to evaluate the use of BenchmarkDP methods and systems to automatically generate synthetic benchmarking corpora for testing the digital preservation tools developed in PREFORMA, starting from PREFORMA ground truth model;
to evaluate possible approaches to ensure the sustainability of PREFORMA OS projects, starting from the work done in BenchmarkDP on Software Engineering;
to monitor the new H2020 calls to identify whether there is the possibility to develop a joint proposal focused on providing memory institutions with useful methodology and tools for benchmarking.

The cooperation between the two project started with the participation of PREFORMA representatives in the benchmarking workshop organised by BenchmarkDP in the framework of IPRES 2015 Conference.

BenchmarkDP (http://benchmark-dp.org/) is an interdisciplinary multi-year research project funded by the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF) to develop the first coherent, systematic approach to assess and compare digital preservation processes, systems, and organizational capabilities.

PREFORMA (www.preforma-project.eu) is a Pre-Commercial Procurement project co-funded by the European Commission within the framework of the FP7 ICT Programme with the aim to address the challenge of implementing good quality standardised file formats for preserving data content in the long term and to give memory institutions full control of the process of the conformity tests of files to be ingested into archives.

Athens, 22 January 2016

Best Practice for Education Workshop

This workshop is the first celebration of the work Europeana Space project is doing in the domain of Education. During this workshop, current best practices for environments/applications to facilitate re-use of digital cultural heritage content in an educational context were examined. ‘Education’ here refers not only to the general school system but also to educational services in museums or lifelong-learning programmes.

This workshop presented the E-Space Educational Demonstrators, and also served to gain more feedback and see how further implementation of the developed tools in an educational context could best fit. The Europeana Space MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) was also be presented. A Demo room was available and open to allow workshop participants to explore the Demonstrator prototypes.

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photos courtesy of Katerina Komninou and Fred Truyen

The presentation and discussions of demonstrators using digital cultural content innovatively should have a dual impact:

– students, teachers and other education professionals will acquire creative and technical skills through learning how to work with the tools/applications that are offered
– they will also become more aware of the vast and diverse repository of digital cultural heritage content available on line as a basis for teaching and learning materials that they can assemble or develop.

Onasis Cultural Centre in Athens, Greece

Programme is available HERE

This event was also part of the Hack the Book festival, the hackathon event of Open & Hybrid Publishing pilot, exploring the book as an evolving, visual and open medium: designers, artists, publishers, programmers, authors, poets, hackers and entrepreneurs are invited to a marathon on creative programming, design and entrepreneurial innovation which will redefine the book.

cover image: Rok Lipnik CC-BY 2.0

ITN-DCH project seeking for candidates - APPLICATIONS DEADLINE 15 JANUARY 2016

Full Time Early Stage Researcher (ESR) wanted in the field of of 2D/3D/4D Cultural assets.

Applications are invited from candidates who possess the necessary qualifications in order to fill one (1) full time Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher (ESR) Fellow Position in the Digital Heritage Research Lab of the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT) in the research fields of 2D/3D/4D Digitalization (automated methodologies for 2D and 3D data acquisition: photogrammetry, Laser Scanning, depth camera sensors, SfM etc.), Computer Vision (Image processing, geometric invariant visual features, data-preprocessing/filtering, Pattern recognition), Computer Graphics (modeling), Metadata enrichment for tangible and intangible Cultural Heritage, Big Data and Cloud Computing applications.

The selected Marie Curie ESR will work for 19 months within the ITN-Digital Cultural Heritage (ITN-DCH) Marie Curie ITN Programme which, is the only EU funded programme bringing together fourteen (14) leading European Institutions as full partners and nine (9) other as associated partners in a transnational network, aiming at implementing a multidisciplinary and intersectorial research and training programme between the academic and the industrial partners.

Download the full call (PDF, 454 Kb)

a set of shared principles for encouraging and supporting citizens’ engagement in cultural heritage and humanities research

RICHES and Civic Epistemologies present the Berlin Charter

During the International Conference “Digital Heritage and Innovation, Engagement and Identity”, held in Berlin on 12-13 November 2015, the partners of CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES (www.civic-epistemologies.eu) and RICHES (www.riches-project.eu) projects proposed the adoption of the Berlin Charter, a set of principles for encouraging and supporting citizens’ engagement in cultural heritage and humanities research in the digital age.

Neil Forbes (RICHES Project Coordinator) and Mauro Fazio (CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES Project Coordinator) confirmed the adoption of the Berlin Charter with a handshake.

The Charter is open to be adopted by all interested parties, namely private organisations, public institutions, artists, professionals, researchers and interested citizens.

Download here the Berlin Charter and learn how to adopt it.