Digital meets Culture

the EC published about IPR Policy Brief, policy seminar and Berlin Charter

In the EC website of Research and Innovation, at the section of Social Science and Humanities, the latest outcomes of Riches project were just published:

http://ec.europa.eu/research/social-sciences/index.cfm

The European Commission announces today new initiatives Towards a modern, more European copyright framework. EU-funded social sciences and humanities research proposes a right-based approach concerning digitalisation of European cultural heritage to policy makers and heritage institutions.

Research projects also launched the Berlin Charter supporting citizens’ engagement in cultural heritage and humanities research in the digital age.

RICHES policy brief (PDF, 671 KB)
Berlin charter
Policy Seminar: New Horizons For Cultural Heritage

Tallinn (Estonia), 10-11 December 2015

Creative reuse of cultural heritage and contemporary practices: challenges and opportunities in the digital world: E-Space II conference

Represented by the gracious cornflower, the national symbol of Estonia, the II Europeana Space International Conference took place in Tallinn on 10-11 December 2015.

This event, organized by the Estonian Ministry of Culture, 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 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. Among other artworks, it hosts the exceptional Altarpiece by Herman Rode, one of the masterpieces in Estonian cultural heritage.

After the official opening by Estonian institutions and the welcome speech by the Project Coordinator Sarah Whatley, keynote speaker of day 1 was Mark Coniglio of Troika Ranch, internationally recognized as a pioneering force as an artist, technologist and as a teacher, with an inspiring speech on how creativity and collaborative practice in the artistic field (but not only there) fuels invention and offers the possibility to radically transform appropriated materials into something genuinely new. After that, Milena Popova (Europeana Foundation) and then project’s and Pilot’s representatives discussed on how to boost re-use of digital cultural heritage, in a round table chaired by Antonella Fresa (E-Space technical coordinator).

A networking session and a jazz concert happily concluded the day.

On the second day, heritage and creativity were the keywords. Speeches from international experts explored different aspects of the same topic: Monika Hagedorn-Saupe (SPK) discussed on digitization and its potential to encourage creativity and new cultural experiences in museums, Fred Truyen (KU Leuven) tackled the educational side of Europeana Space, presenting the upcoming MOOC Modular Open Online Course, and eventually Nasos Drosopoulos (NTUA) showcased E-Space interoperable platform for creative reuse of digital cultural heritage.

A final session chaired by Luigi Perissich (Confindustria Servizi Innovativi e Tecnologici – Italian technology Platform Future of Internet) was focused on creativity as an opportunity of growth in the cultural sector, including a speech on the digital single market strategy by Silver Tammik (Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications) and a final round table of experts, fostering interaction with the audience.

Details of the programme, the programme commitee, the complete list of speakers with biography and (coming soon) the slides they presented is available at http://tallinnconference2015.europeana-space.eu

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

Berlin Charter – the project’s legacy

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.

Several European organisations and individuals have already agreed to sign the Charter and to advocate its principles in their own operations.

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

Should you wish to adopt the Berlin Charter, please contact:

Mauro Fazio (the Project Coordinator, mauro.fazio@mise.gov.it)
or
Antonella Fresa (the Project Technical Coordinator, fresa@promoter.it)

DOWNLOAD THE BERLIN CHARTER here: http://www.civic-epistemologies.eu/berlin-charter/

in the image above, Neil Forbes, the RICHES Project Coordinator, and Mauro Fazio, the CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES Project Coordinator, confirmed the adoption of the Berlin Charter with a handshake.

sharing knowledge and best practices in order to provide some answers to the pressing questions related to DCH and technologies

CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES @ Panel session at DISH 2015 Conference

The CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES project is continuing to be disseminated worldwide also after the end of the funding period.

DISH2015 conference is a perfect place for discussing the many challenges faced by cultural institutions, and the needs they have to make strategic decisions about their activities and services. The key aims of the conference were inspiration, knowledge, skills, innovation and networking.

Fred Truyen (from KU Leuven) and Neil Forbes (from Coventry University) continuing dissemination of CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES main results.

So, following the good feedback recently received in similar gatherings, once again Europeana Space, RICHES, Photoconsortium and Civic Epistemologies joined forces to progress on the analysis on the impact that the impressive amount of digitized cultural heritage (DCH) in Europe has, by making cultural heritage more accessible and by generating benefits to the content owners.

Neil Forbes from Coventry University and Fred Truyen from KU Leuven represented the CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES Consortium at the Conference. Neil introduced also the principles of the Berlin Declaration, as a main legacy of the project after the end of the funding period. The slides of the presentations are available for download (PDF, 3.2 Mb).

Neil Forbes, from Coventry University, presented CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES @ DISH2015, Rotterdam 7 December 2015

More information about the Panel session are available here: http://www.digitalmeetsculture.net/article/panel-at-dish-2015/

sharing knowledge and best practices in order to provide some answers to the pressing questions related to DCH and technologies

Panel session at DISH 2015 on Digital Cultural Heritage and its impact

It is of the utmost importance that the context of change generated by the advent of digitization and digital technologies, and its implication on the society at large, are discussed in as many occasions as possible. DISH2015 conference is a perfect place for discussing the many challenges faced by cultural institutions, and the needs they have to make strategic decisions about their activities and services. The key aims of the conference were inspiration, knowledge, skills, innovation and networking.

It’s important to assess the sociological impact and the context of change brought in by digitization and digital technologies: how DCH participate in the community-building processes and social cohesion of the “new” European society? How can DCH help cultural institutions to renew and be closer to the society and the education sector? And how can DCH be re-used to unlock its business potential fostering economic growth? Crucially, generating new employment and economic rewards by leveraging on DCH needs the development of strategic alliances between sectors and actors which are not used to work together.

[Show as slideshow]

Further, digitization has been so far a matter mainly for archives and memory institutions, but cultural heritage is also in the hands of private citizens (e.g. early photography). It is needed a more participative approach so that smaller archives, individuals, collectors have the possibility to access digitization facilities, training and services. This can pave the way for EU citizens to play a co-creative role and participate in the research on cultural heritage and digital humanities. Next to that, we see examples of how the accelerating pace of IT developments and its usage by ordinary people is going far beyond society’s ability to make sense (and make sensible decisions) of what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’ within the context of existing legal and moral codes.

Neil Forbes from Coventry University, Fred Truyen from KU Leuven, Lizzy Komen from Sound & Vision and Bart Bonnevalle from Noterik were warmly welcomed in a full room and discussed about these topics fostering interaction and networking with the audience. The slides of the presentations are available for download (PDF, 3.2 Mb).

More information about DISH: www.dish2015.nl

Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm, 7 April 2016

PREFORMA Open Source Preservation Workshop – Serving the Cultural Heritage

Open Source Preservation Workshop – Serving the Cultural Heritage is the first in a series of international events planned by PREFORMA.

The event will feature keynote presentations by representatives from the PREFORMA project and the open source community, live demonstrations of the three conformance checkers for electronic documents, images and AV files by the suppliers working in the project (veraPDF, Easy Innova, MediaArea) and an informal networking event where all the attendees can share experiences, meet the PREFORMA developers and learn about the tools.

The workshop will take place in Stockholm on April 7, 2016, and will be hosted at the National Library of Sweden.

This event is aimed at anyone interested in digital preservation and cultural heritage: developers who want to contribute code to the PREFORMA tools; memory institutions or other cultural heritage organisations involved in (or planning) digital preservation initiatives; standardisation bodies maintaining the technical specifications of preservation file formats; any other person interested in cooperating with us in defining open digital preservation standards.

REGISTER HERE BEFORE 31 MARCH 2016

Participation in the event is free of charge.

EVENT WEBSITE

http://opensourceworkshop.preforma-project.eu

FURTHER INFORMATION

The event will be held in English.

If you have any questions or need additional information, please contact Claudio Prandoni (prandoni@promoter.it).

Leuven, 27 November 2015: voyage in time through photography

Photographic Memories Workshop in Leuven

On Friday, November 27th the E-Space Photography Pilot in collaboration with the Leuven City Archive hosted the “Photographic Memories Workshop”. Seniors, students, citizens of Leuven and surrounding areas were invited to join for a voyage in time, through the stories hidden in our photographic heritage and a Wet Collodion demonstration, and back to the present with the most modern digitization techniques.

Welcomed by the introduction of the Photography Pilot leader Fred Truyen, participants had the possibility to have their family photos digitized in high quality by digitization specialist Bruno Vandermeulen, to know better the City Archive and its photographic collections, and to enjoy a demonstration of the traditional Wet Collodion technique by photographer Frederik Van den Broeck. Throughout the day more than 210 photographs were collected and digitized under the licenses CC-BY-NC, CC-BY or Public Domain. Support about licencing was provided by colleague Barbara Dierickx of Packed.

The day included the exhibition “All Our Yesterdays” that was again set up, featuring some of the images that had been digitized during the EuropeanaPhotography project and shown to the public only once before and for a very limited time (February-March 2015).

This event is part of the activities to prepare the Photography Hackathon taking place in Leuven in February 2016.

Unanimously, the elephant in the room for Europeana Space was acclaimed to be IPR.

Also, the project and the TV pilot were presented in detail during a panel workshop including other EU projects and initiatives. The objective of the Panel, entitled From Digitisation to Preservation, Creative Re-use of Cultural Content and Citizen Participation, was to discuss the effects of the impressive amount of digitized cultural heritage (DCH) now available in Europe, in terms of:

making cultural heritage more accessible and generating benefits to the content owners and to the citizens, in a more participative approach to cultural heritage and research

assessing the sociological impact and the context of change brought in by digitization and digital technologies, and the changing role of cultural institutions

determining solutions for re-using digital cultural content to unlock its business potential fostering economic growth

Crucially, generating new employment and economic rewards by leveraging on DCH needs the development of strategic alliances between sectors and actors which are not used to work together. Next to that, we see examples of how the accelerating pace of IT developments and its usage by ordinary people is going far beyond society’s ability to make sense (and make sensible decisions) of what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’ within the context of existing legal and moral codes. For Europeana Space, Lizzy Komen of NISV and Bart Bonnevalle of Noterik presented the overall framework of the project and then went in details about the TV pilot. The slides of the panel workshop are available here. The panel was set on the first day of the conference 7th December in the Track 1 Lose your Modesty! http://www.dish2015.nl/programme/workshops/lose-your-modesty/

The evaluation phase is very valuable for finding and fixing bugs and further improvements to the tool.

SPK testing Blinkster App for E-Space Museums pilot

by Sarah Wassermann, SPK

The Blinkster app offers additional information about selected objects in the permanent exhibition of the Museum of European Cultures (MEK) and the Ethnological Museum (EM), content providers of SPK. For now, not all exhibition objects are part of the app. The Institute for Museum Research – Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (SPK) therefore had to plan the visual implementation of the app within the exhibitions. The question was: How to point to the Blinkster objects for the testing? After consultations with the graphic designer and museum director, it was agreed to create Blinkster spots and put them on the museum floor or showcases to point to the objects that are part of the app. An informational text was written and installed in front of the exhibitions to inform visitors about the evaluation phase.

A questionnaire was designed by the museum pilot partners as a basis for an overarching evaluation of all three participating content partners (SPK, LAM and EVK). First user testings were conducted with participants from the working group “Multimedia” during the “Berliner Herbsttreffen zur Museumsdokumentation” (Annual Berlin Autumn meeting – museums documentation, 12-14/10/15). and with MEK and IFM staff (curators, museologists, conservators, researchers) on 18/11/15.

The participants were very interested in the technology and gave productive input. Most users agreed that the information accessed via the app made their knowledge of the exhibition more complete. But of course there is still work to be done. We gained insights about the user’s expectances of the app’s performance, e.g. concerning the display of results and the image recognition. The evaluation phase is very valuable for finding and fixing bugs and further improvements.

[Show as slideshow]

Additional testings in Berlin are planned for December 2015 and the beginning of 2016 with museum professionals and young researchers from the museum and cultural heritage field. The next possibility to test Blinkster in general will be at the conference “Creative reuse of cultural heritage and contemporary practices: challenges and opportunities in the digital world“ on 11/12/2015 in Tallinn.

a social media campaign to raise awareness about the destruction of heritage by extremist groups.

#faces4heritage

Launched by USI Università della Svizzera italiana (a Swiss cantonal university based in Lugano, Canton Ticino, Switzerland), this initiative is endorsed by UNESCO and intends to promote peace through heritage preservation. USI recognizes together with UNESCO that “Heritage is our legacy from the past, what we live with today, and what we pass on to future generations”, and strongly believes that to build peace it needs to preserve and value Heritage. This is something that violent extremist groups know well. In fact, heritage sites are often in their sights and become targets of destruction. To sensitize society about the importance of preserving and defending heritage as a means for promoting culture and enhancing mutual understanding, a social media campaign was launched to spread knowledge about World Heritage Sites endangered by violentextremist groups, and call for an individual standing up against such violent actions, because: who destroys the past, has no future!

Get involved with your Facebook profile! More information, and the app, is available here: www.faces4heritage.org