Digital meets Culture

Open Source Meetup at IBC in Amsterdam

PREFORMA presented at IBC 2015

Erwin Verbruggen from the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision presented PREFORMA at the EBU Open Source Meetup at IBC 2015 in Amsterdam.

The presentation, which is available for download here, focused on the media conformance checking of AV files.

MediaConch, the conformance checker for AV files that is developed by MediaArea in the framework of PREFORMA, was also presented at the Conference. The presentation is available here.

Just like last year, the Open Source Meetup at IBC featured a series of 5 minutes lightning talks on open source projects and use cases from the broadcast domain, covering topics on production, contribution and distribution, such as: graphics and video play-out, audio & video encoding, transcoding in the cloud, DAB+ radio broadcasting, …. for further information visit the Conference website.

Pisa, 8-11 October 2015

#IF2015: Space for the Digital Revolution

Internet Festival 2015 took place on 8-11 October, as every year in Pisa. One of the most important European events dedicated to the digital world, IF is an unmissable date to understand what the technological innovation can represent for the future of Italy and the Italians.
The meeting provideed a programme packed with appointments and hundreds of guests. Space is the topic of this edition 2015: how it, and the perception of it, has changed in time.

The Web changes the space. Which becomes multidimensional due to cultural, economic, social and political dynamics, upset by digitisation and constantly mutating.
The web’s geographies help “designing/imagining the world” and “governing” the world’s complexity through innovation, which balances two different needs: understanding and planning.
If geography means “drawing the world”, then its coordinates are routes using new reference points to move within the digital ecosystem. Modern explorers follow routes that run along inclines and directions driving the development of the relations and information flow.

#IF2015 was held in friendship with the conference “Cloud Forward 2015 – From Distributed to Complete Computing“.

http://www.digitalmeetsculture.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/rch_flyer_foodculture_exe.pdf

RICHES Food and Cultural Heritage Flyer

another exciting hackathon from the Europeana Space series, in Prague on 20-21 November 2015

Hacking the [Dancing] Body

Hacking the [Dancing] Body is the great hack event of the Europeana Space Dance pilot, taking place in Prague on 20-21 November 2015 and preceded by the pre-event on 24th October.

The Europeana Space project is organising an exciting event about the use and re-use of cultural digital content, in particular dance. Participants will form teams and during two days of focused and intensive collaboration, with assistance from the hackathon ambassadors (experts in programming, BCI technologies, motion-tracking, and cultural heritage), explore new creative ideas, design and develop prototypes.

The Prague Dance Hackathon focuses on the re-use of cultural heritage materials in live performance, cross-media storytelling, motion tracking and transformation of data, brain/computer interfaces in performance. We encourage participants to combine different aspects of these elements to create something truly new and unique that will shake up the market!

Hackathon topics:

Dance (patterns in body movements)
State of mind (patterns in brain signals)
Cultural Heritage Content (patterns in history of art)
Light and sound (patterns and rhythms)
Interactive art, dance, body/mind, digital art

The participants can explore dance and choreography with a virtual notebook, the DancePro tool, and can write their own dance stories using the DanceSpaces tool.

Moreover they can transform data from motion capture device into visual; prepare multi-media project, as a presentation of their own stage-design or choreography; remix, implement, transpose digital data from Europeana cultural repositories to inspire and create new performances; transform the data from EEG of dancer during the performance into the visual design (brain-computer interface application).

An international jury will reward the three best teams with a trip to London for an intensive a Business Model Workshop, where the team with the strongest concept and business model after the Workshop will win a 3-month intensive incubation package to deliver their ideas on the real market.

All the information and registration tool is available in the official miniwebsite of the event.

http://www.digitalmeetsculture.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/rch_flyer_econculture_exe.pdf

RICHES Economics of Culture Flyer

Oxford, 17-18 September 2015

Hidden Spire 2015: Before The Tempest

“Before the Tempest” imagines what life was like on the island for Miranda and Prospero as a prequel to Shakespeare’s classic tale of love, magic and bad weather.

The play is the result of this year’s Hidden Spire, which brings together a team of professional artists to make a show from scratch alongside people who are homeless. They have been writing, devising, designing and building over 14 months to create what promises to be an extraordinary moment of live theatre with a striking set. A work of art in itself.

It’s about isolation and belonging, despair and forgiveness. It’s about wanting to fit in and being different. It’s about growing up. And it’s about birds.

There will be a Q & A after the performance on Thursday 17 Sept.

What is Hidden Spire?

A partnership between Arts at the Old Fire Station and Crisis Skylight Oxford, Hidden Spire brings professional artists and Crisis clients together to create a performance using music, dance, theatre, visual arts and more.

The two groups work together every step of the way: everything from set design, script-writing and front-of-house is done as a collaboration between the artists and Crisis clients. Hidden Spire isn’t just a production, it’s a process: it demonstrates the value and potential of having a public arts centre and resources for homeless people in the same building. Most importantly, it shows that excellent art and inclusive art can be the same thing.

Hidden Spire features as part of the Art In Crisis festival, a national programme of events and workshops aimed at foregrounding homelessness and the arts.

The arts are for everyone. Everyone has potential. Come and join Hidden Spire for “Before The Tempest” to see a truly unique and extraordinary moment of live theatre.

Hidden Spire was case study of EU project Civic Epistemologies, committed to examining how community groups of citizens engage with cultural heritage and participate in the generation and reuse of cultural heritage by using digital technologies. Homeless or vulnerably housed people tend not to identify as “citizens”, but the activities subject of Civic Epistemologies’ case study demonstrate the value of the work carried out by the Hidden Spire partners in transitioning the participants to citizenship, through gaining skills that enhance these people’s employability and contribution to society.

The Civic Epistemologies case study on “Hidden cultural heritage: inclusion, access, citizenship” was led by Coventry University.

Hidden Spire is supported by Highcroft PLC and Norbar.

For further info visit www.hiddenspire.co.uk

Pisa, 9 October 2015

E-Space creative marketing workshop. Innovation for Cultural Heritage

Digital Meets Culture, official media partner of the event, presents the E-Space creative marketing workshop “Digital Culture, Social Media and Innovation for the Cultural Heritage”

The cultural sector has always been facing the great challenge of building its audience, but the digital shift changed radically how cultural heritage is made, disseminated, distributed, accessed, consumed and monetised. One of the most important revolutions is that the visitors’ role changed dramatically, shifting from passive observers to active participants and contents producers.

This workshop, taking place in Pisa’s Scuola Normale Superiore on 9 October 2015, will explore different ways of communicating cultural contents with the use of new media and will show how a greater audience can be reached by combining the power of social media and storytelling.

Piazza dei Cavalieri, Pisa

The event, hosted by Fondazione Sistema Toscana in cooperation with Invasioni Digitali, is being held in the framework of the Internet Festival.

Participation is free of charge but subject to online registration. For registering click here.

Participants shall have at least one active social media profile. After the plenary presentations, they will be divided in groups. Each group will be assigned a tutor and a specific theme to develop. Groups will leave the building and collect materials (pictures, videos…) with their smartphones around the city. Groups will then have time to elaborate their contents before they present them to the audience.

B.Y.O.D.! – You’ll be using mainly your smartphones and computer (for post production). We’ll provide tables, chairs and plugs.

During the hands on and co-creation session there will be a free refreshment corner available for participants with coffee, drinks and sandwiches.

Download the workshop agenda

Deadline: 14 September 2015

DISH2015: only one week left to submit your proposal!

There’s only one week left to submit your idea for a workshop, ignite talk, chef’s table, poster or improvisation session for DISH2015.

DISH is the biennial conference about digital strategies for heritage. This year’s theme is Money and Power.

Call for Proposals
Are you an expert in user engagement with digital heritage? Do you care about the role of digital heritage in the public domain? Are you convinced that “open” means “more impact”? Do you have a cunning business plan with digital heritage? Then submit a proposal for a table session, a workshop, a poster session or an ignite talk!

You can read more about the Call for Proposals at http://www.dish2015.nl/call-for-proposals/. Proposals can be submitted until the 14th of September 2015.

More information

Read more about the theme Money and Power
Take a look at www.dish2015.nl.

New York, September 25 and 26, 2015

TECHFOCUS III: CARING FOR SOFTWARE-BASED ART

The Guggenheim Museum, the Foundation of the American Institute for the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (FAIC) and the Electronic Media Group of the American Institute for Conservation (AIC) are proud to announce the two-day symposium and workshop.

TECHFOCUS III: CARING FOR SOFTWARE-BASED ART
September 25 and 26, 2015

Day 1: Friday, September 25, 9:30 am–5:30 pm
Day 2: Saturday, September 26, 9:30 am–5:45 pm

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue at 89th Street
New York City

Join conservators, artists, computer scientists, curators, art historians, registrars and archivists to explore challenges and emerging practices in the collection and preservation of software-based art. Twelve lectures and four panels will focus on: the history of software–based art and its underlying technology; case studies from major art collections; methods of artwork analysis, description and documentation; strategies for preservation, display and long-term accessibility. Four guided practical exercises, conducted by participants on their own laptops, will introduce the audience to the concepts of coding and basic preservation tools, such as version control, disk imaging and emulation. See full programme and register on the symposium site.

Registration fee: $180 AIC members; $250 non-AIC members; students $80.
After August 20: $200 AIC members; $300 non-AIC members; students $100.

REGISTER

Granada, 1 October 2015: RICHES, Civic Epistemologies, E-Space, PREFORMA and Photoconsortium meet in a panel organised by Promoter SRL

From Digitisation to Preservation, Creative Re-use of Cultural Content and Citizen Participation

On 1st October 2015, in Granada, European projects RICHES, E-Space, Civic Epistemologies, PREFORMA and the international association Photoconsortium were invited in a panel organised by Promoter SRL under the title “From Digitisation to Preservation, Creative Re-use of Cultural Content and Citizen Participation”.

The panel was hosted by Digital Heritage 2015 (28 September-2 October 2015) as part of the conference programme.

Cogwheels – by www.elbpresse.de [CC BY-SA 4.0 through Wikimedia Commons]

If the amount of digitised cultural heritage in Europe is impressive (and holds a great potential of impact on society, since makes that heritage more accessible to citizens, students, researchers and generates benefits to the content owners), yet only a tiny percentage of the European cultural heritage is digitised and nowadays more and more attention is paid to those collections, hitherto unknown or not fully acknowledged, that are preserved in European States which relatively recently joined the Union. Furthermore, certain kinds of cultural heritage, such as early photography, are not preserved by memory institutions but are in the hands of private citizens, who should be invited to share their holdings with the whole community. It is therefore necessary that the digitisation activities go ahead in the coming years and acquire a more participatory approach.
Once data are in digital format, further challenge is to ensure their long-term preservation, through the accordance with standard file formats and the execution of conformance tests by memory institutions.
Subsequently, digitised cultural data needs to be re-used at best. This means unlocking their business potential in terms of fostering economic growth. Creative industry is certainly the key stakeholder to leverage on the digital cultural data for creating new tools and services to be placed in the real market, so generating new employment and economic rewards; to achieve this goal, a greater dialogue should be fostered between industry and the cultural sector, in the light of developing public-private partnerships for the benefit of both.
Next to this, it is also important to assess the sociological impact of digital cultural heritage and technologies: how do they participate in the community building and cohesion processes of the “new” European society, that is living now a moment of great change? How can digital cultural heritage help cultural institutions renew and re-invent their role in society? How can cultural heritage become closer to its audiences of innovators, skilled makers, curators, artists, economic actors? And finally how can the European citizens, individually or as part of a community, play a vital co-creative role and contribute to the research on cultural heritage and digital humanities?

Castillo del Mauror, también llamado Torres Bermejas, Granada

Experts from the partnerships of E-Space, RICHES, Civic Epistemologies, PREFORMA and Photoconsortium led the discussion panel trying to provide answers and solutions to the challenges issued by the digital heritage era. Relevant speakers, coming from key institutions in Europe which are involved in the scenario of digital cultural heritage,discussed to understand the path towards a more advanced society, that makes use of the full potential of digital technologies to foster cultural and societal progress.
The panel was an unmissable occasion for sharing knowledge and best practices: cultural managers, ICT experts, researchers, service providers and other European projects were invited to attend, for cross-dissemination and networking.

Featuring (in alphabetical order):

Neil Forbes, Coventry University
Neil Forbes is Professor of International History at Coventry University and Co-ordinator of the FP7 RICHES project – Renewal, Innovation and Change: Heritage and European Society. His research interests and publications lie in the following fields: conflict heritage, contested landscapes and the memorialisation of war, creative archiving and cultural heritage, the processes of financial stabilisation in Europe after the First World War, Anglo-American relations and the rise of the Third Reich, the interaction of foreign policy formulation and diplomacy with the business practices of multinational enterprise during the interwar years. He has played a leading role in a number of European and UK research projects, including a £1m digitisation project in association with BT and The National Archives.

Antonella Fresa, Promoter SRL
Director at Promoter SRL, small engineering company in Pisa (Italy). Since 2002, Technical Coordinator and Communication Manager of numerous European projects in the domain of digital cultural heritage, digital preservation and digital humanities, smart cities, creative re-use of digital cultural content, citizen science, crowdsourcing and e-Infrastructures. Previously, Project Officer at the European Commission, multimedia development manager at Tower Tech SRL in Pisa, video controller development manager at Olivetti Advanced Technology Centre in Cupertino (CA) and engineer at Olivetti Pisa and Ivrea.

Börje Justrell, Riksarkivet
Dr Börje Justrell is Director and Head of Operational Support at the National Archives of Sweden and coordinator of the PREFORMA project. Since 1989, he has been responsible for technical matters at the National Archives.
Justrell has been teaching archival science at the University of Stockholm for many years and also been a member of international committees within the archivists’ professional association, ICA. He has been representing Sweden in expert groups on digitisation and digital preservation within the European Commission and working in a number of European projects like Minerva, MinervaPlus, Linked Heritage, DC-NET and DCH-RP. He was coordinator of the European project PROTAGE for digital preservation in the seventh framework programme and between 2003-2009 he was responsible for an advanced international training programme for developing countries, conducted by the Swedish National Archives and sponsored by the SIDA, the Swedish International Development Cooperation.

Sy Holsinger, EGI

Sy Holsinger is currently a Senior Policy and Strategy Officer at EGI.eu, working on sustainability planning, business model development, market analysis and IT service management implementation. He studied Business Communications and Management in the U.S., focusing on project and financial management, business development, marketing and communication messaging. He has been involved in several EU-funded projects covering both management and support roles such as leading the commercial activities in the series of EGEE projects. His previous experiences include the U.S. Air Force and Teaching.

Frederik Truyen, KU Leuven
Frederik Truyen is programme director for the MA in Cultural Studies at the Faculty of Arts of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He publishes on E-Learning, ICT Education, Digitisation and Epistemology. He is in charge of CS Digital, the mediaLab of the Institute for Cultural Studies, and is involved in many projects on Open Educational Resources (such as Net-CU, OCW EU and LACE) and in the digitisation of Cultural Heritage, such as RICHES, Europeana Photography and E- Space. Prof. Truyen is President of the Photoconsortium association.

Sarah Whatley, Coventry University
Sarah Whatley is Professor of Dance and Director of the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE) at Coventry University. Her research interests include dance and new technologies, dance analysis, somatic dance practice and pedagogy and inclusive dance practices. Her current AHRC-funded project is “InVisible Difference: Dance, Disability and Law”. She is also coordinator of the EU-funded project E-Space, which is exploring the creative reuse of digital cultural content, and is researching the impact of digital technologies on dance and performance-based cultural heritage in the EU-funded RICHES project. Working with leading cognitive psychologists, she is also researching dancer imagery as part of a Leverhulme Trust funded project. She led the AHRC-funded Siobhan Davies digital archive project, RePlay, and collaborated with the University of Surrey to create the Digital Dance Archives portal. She has published widely on archival practices in dance and performance. She is Academic Advisor: Digital Environment for The Routledge Digital Performance Archive. She is also Editor of the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices and sits on the Editorial Boards of several other Journals.

Target audience
This panel session is addressing professionals, projects and initiatives in the domain of Digital Cultural Heritage, digitisation, digital arts, digital performances, digital humanities and digital preservation. Aim is to highlight the latest progress in the research on digital cultural heritage, trying to understand what happens to cultural heritage after it is digitised and what to do with this mass of digital cultural data. Being the theme so important, inter-disciplinary and multi-faceted, fostering reciprocal awareness and cooperation is the key to cope with the common challenges: cultural managers and researchers are warmly invited to attend.

View the post published by the European Commission to announce this panel

View the article we published to announce the Digital Heritage 2015 conference