Digital meets Culture

Manchester, 25-28 February 2015

This year, FutureEverything celebrated its 20^th anniversary. For the last two decades the festival has brought people together to imagine, shape and question the vision of a truly participatory society. A belief in the emancipatory and creative potential of new technologies runs throughout digital culture. It is found both in the open source community and in the rhetoric of Silicon Valley start-ups.

In recent years, the contradictions in this vision have come to the surface. The digital age has brought a collision of positives and negatives. Today we live with the consequences of the digital turn and these are not all benevolent. Centralisation, inequality, electronic waste and loss of privacy at an unprecedented scale have challenged our assumptions about the universally positive effects of digital innovation. We see how disruptors like Uber and Airbnb create huge opportunity for a few, while protesting taxi drivers on the streets of our cities give an image to a side-lined majority.

These disruptions were foretold: Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron’s denunciation of “the Californian Ideology” was published the same year that FutureEverything celebrated its first festival. Their essay gave voice to a critical current in digital culture that has run through FutureEverything down the years. But only in the last eighteen months have the commonplace and simplistically positive narratives surrounding the digital age in wider technology culture at last run out of hot air.

That made this year an ideal opportunity for FutureEverything to hit pause on its headlong rush into the future, to reflect on the consequences of the past decades and the prospects for the decades to come. Today FutureEverything can question some of the most heartfelt values and narratives in digital culture. Should these be revised? Or abandoned? Or should we champion their foundational premises more than ever to counterbalance the corrosive forces inherent in the digital economy?

Is a bottom up localism the answer to economic inequality, centralisation, stacks, silos and moats? Are distributed architectures the answer to government surveillance and advertising intrusion? Are smart citizens the answer to smart cities? Is DIWO (Doing It With Others) the sharp edge of devolution or its undoing?

FutureEverything is an award-winning innovation lab for digital culture and annual festival, established in Manchester in 1995. For almost 20 years FutureEverything has been exploring the meeting point of technology, society and culture which lies at the heart of the digital debate. Through a community network and regular events it makes connections between thinkers, developers, coders, artists, designers, urbanists and policy makers, inspiring them to experiment and to collaborate in new ways.

The FutureEverything festival brings people together to discover, share and experience new ideas for the future. Pioneering the practice of city-wide ‘festival as laboratory’, it combines a large scale cultural event (encompassing art, music and discussion) with new technology, novel research methods and playful social experiments. It has been named by The Guardian as one of the top ten ideas festivals in the world.

Year round, FutureEverything champions the role of grassroots innovation in the digital creative economy. It creates opportunities for artists, programmers and coders though regular commissions, hackdays and innovation challenges. Through its research it identifies and explores areas in which technological, creative and societal innovation could facilitate change. Through policy work and thought leadership it advocates for the creative use of open data to improve government and empower citizens and communities.

As a world-leader in the digital art sector, FutureEverything commissions artists to illustrate new ideas through creative prototypes, interactive design and participative experiences. It is seen by Arts Council England as “one of the key touch-point organisations” connecting creative communities with academic research, the business sector and policy makers.

For further information visit www.futureeverything.org

by Benjamin Sutton

Angered Archaeologists allow thousands to enter the Louvre for free

On the 5^th of February 2015 the lobby of the Louvre in Paris was took over by about 100 peeved archaeologists, blocking the ticket booths for nearly five hours and allowing visitors to enter the museum without paying admission.

The protesters were members of CGT-Sud-FSU-CNT, a coalition of unions representing cultural workers. They were all preventative archaeologists, who are brought in to investigate construction sites to ensure that any remaining artifacts are safely unearthed and cared for, and that no vestiges are destroyed.

A sign on a Louvre ticket booth put up by protesting archaeologists (photo courtesy CGT-Sud-FSU-CNT, via cgt-culture.fr)

Public sector workers, since the passage of a law in 2003 they have been forced to compete for job sites with private enterprises, a situation they say has greatly affected the quality of the archaeological work being done. Initial diagnostics at construction sites must still be done by workers from the National Institute for Preventative Archaeological Research, but the actual digs can now be carried out by private companies.

“Their arrival has created an imbalance in research – Thomas Bouquin, a member of the union, told France TV Info – they don’t share their findings and have no obligation to serve the public.”

Protesters are demanding that preventative archaeology no longer be subject to 2003’s law. They chose the sunken Louvre lobby beneath I.M. Pei’s glass pyramid and the Cour Napoléon because it was the site of a major preventative archaeology project when the museum expanded in the 1980s.

A statement posted on the website of the SGPA-CGT-Culture explained:

«This February 5, more than 100 archaeologists of the preventative archaeological public service occupied the Louvre museum and conducted a free admission operation for nearly five hours. The archaeologists chose this site because it is emblematic in the history of French preventative archaeology (the excavation of the Cour Napoléon, the Cour Carrée, and the Jardins du Carrousel from 1983 to 1990 that forged the development of this profession) to denounce the catastrophic situation into which their discipline has been plunged.»

The museum’s initial response to the protest was to block the entrances, but it eventually decided to allow visitors to enter free. Ordinarily, admission to the Louvre costs €12 for the permanent collection and €16 for all temporary and permanent exhibitions. The institution offers free admission to its permanent collection on the first Sunday of every month between October and March.

View Benjamin Sutton’s post

Paris, 10 February 2015

Seminar on Museology, Museography and new forms of address to the Public

On 10 February 2015, at the Salle Triangle of Centre Pompidou, in Paris, is being held the seminar “Social Hermeneutic Networks”, centred on the topic “museology, museography and new forms of address to the public”; Alain Garnier, Yuk Hui and Henry Story are intervening in the event.

How to establish new forms of dialogue between researchers and critics, between the museums and their public, between teachers and learners? If the digital revolution brought substantial changes to the didactic, scientific and educational sectors of knowledge transfer, we are compelled to think a new model of social network, improving value and significance of the contribution of its users.

In the light of the social network theory developed by Yuk Hui and Harry Halpin on the basis of Gilbert Simondon’s philosophical theses and Bernard Stiegler’s philosophical research, the seminar will show how the social network can become matter of study and subject of a dissertation or a course, as well as tool for the student, the researcher or the non-professional user. The new social network shall not feature the individualism of Facebook and shall not be a showcase of oneself but a true mean for the sharing among members of knowledge, ideas, experiences. Such sharing and exchange shall contribute to the development and improvement of the social network itself.

For more information visit www.iri.centrepompidou.fr and http://polemictweet.com/

Abuja, Nigeria, 12-13 March 2015

WACREN 2015 Conference

WACREN is organizing its 2^nd Annual Conference on 12-13 March 2015 in Abuja, hosted by the Nigerian Research and Education Network (NgREN).

The main theme of the conference is: “Enabling Virtual Research and Education Communities”, with the following sub-themes:

Authentication and Authorization Infrastructure (AAI) and Mobility
NREN Business and Governance Models
Innovation in R&E Networks
Network Design and Operation
Online Teaching and Learning
Shared Experiences, Best Practices and Collaboration

For more information visit the conference website.

About WACREN

WACREN is the West and Central African Research and Education Network which has been established to build and operate a world class network infrastructure, develop state of the art services, promote collaboration among national, regional, international research and education communities and build the capacity of the REN community.

The objectives of WACREN is the promotion and establishment of interconnections between national research and education networks in West and Central Africa to form a regional research and education network, the interconnection of this network with other regional and continental networks, and the provision of services aiming at fostering collaboration between research and education institutions in the region as well as between them and peer institutions at continental and international levels.

Coventry (UK), 13 February 2015

Digital Echoes Symposium 2015: Intangible and Performance-based Cultural Heritage

Coventry University Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE, http://c-dare.co.uk/) held the 5th edition of the Digital Echoes Symposium.

Digital Echoes Symposium 2015: Intangible and Performance-based Cultural Heritage

13 February 2015, Institute for Creative Enterprise, Coventry University

Convenors: Sarah Whatley, Rosamaria Cisneros, Amalia Sabiescu

Digital Echoes 2015 brought together artists, researchers and practitioners interested in exploring how digital environments intervene in the creation, documentation, circulation and reception of culture. The focus of this year’s event was on the potential and limits of digital technology for affording new ways to engage with traditional forms of cultural heritage as audience, user, artist, author, researcher and co-creator.

Antonella Fresa, Promoter’s Director, delivered a presentation on Citizen science in the research on cultural heritage and humanities (PDF, 1 Mb) during the afternoon panel. She talked about the experience of the Civic Epistemologies project. She is the project’s technical coordinator.

Keynotes

Charlotte Waelde, Chair in Intellectual Property Law, University of Exeter

Matthew Causey, Associate Professor in Drama and Director of the Arts Technology Research Laboratory, Trinity College Dublin

Read more about the events themes and background: http://c-dare.co.uk/events/digital-echoes-2015/

Download the full programme of the Symposium here

Registration for the event will cost £20 concession/£30 full price.

Organising committee: Sarah Whatley, Rosamaria Cisneros, Lily Hayward-Smith, Emma Meehan, Amalia Sabiescu

For more information please write to researchadmin.ad@coventry.ac.uk

Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA, 2-6 November 2015

International Conference on Digital Preservation (iPRES) 2015

iPRES is the premier international conference on the preservation and long term management of digital materials. The iPRES 2015 will be held on November 2-6, 2015 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Contributions are currently being sought that present research and innovative practice in digital preservation.

The iPRES 2015 conference is seeking contributions from research and innovative practice in digital preservation.

The conference site is:
http://ipres2015.org

This call is available at:
http://ipres2015.web.unc.edu/call-for-contributions/

Author information and guidelines are at:
http://ipres2015.web.unc.edu/author-info-guidelines/

Contribution topics

iPRES 2015 welcome contributions that address at least one of the following topics:

1. Institutional opportunities and challenges

local, regional and national approaches
legislative context and requirements
institutional contexts for preservation
collaboration and alignment
collection content profiling
research data management
personal archiving
documenting authenticity and integrity
demonstrating benefits and incentives
providing and documenting added value
evaluating options: products, tools, registries, services, service providers
exploring the potential of bartering

2. Infrastructure (organizational and technological) opportunities and challenges

intelligent and secure storage
scalability
complex formats
large web data sets
software and hardware dependencies
system architectures and requirements
distributed and cloud-based implementations
digital forensics
standards-based practice

3. Frameworks for digital preservation

models
standards and practice
core concepts
business models
sustainability and economic viability

4. Preservation strategies and workflows

preservation strategies (e.g., migration, emulation, normalization)
preservation metadata management
preservation planning and action
archival storage and archival packages
acquisition, ingest, and submission packages
long-term access management and dissemination packages
measuring and mediating risks
content-specific approaches (e.g., GIS, digital art, audiovisual, research data, web-based content, models)

5. Innovative practice

implementations
repositories
issues and wins
lessons learned
the future of digital preservation

6. Training and education

educational needs
evaluating curricula and impacts
innovative offerings
support for lifelong learning
career management

Program strands

iPRES 2015 is being structured around two key strands – research and innovative practice. Papers are invited for both strands.

The purpose of this distinction is to promote work from both a research and innovative practice perspective and work that is clearly rooted in the actual experience of institutions undertaking digital preservation. We expect that there will be work that manages to encapsulate both of these strands, and that is welcomed.

All papers for iPRES 2015 should:

be leading edge
be innovative
help inform debate around what digital preservation is.

San Diego, US, 9-11 March 2015

Connecting the Data Dots: the Research Data Alliance (RDA) 5th Plenar

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/connecting-data-dots-research-alliance-rda-5th-plenar-hilary-hanahoe

It’s all about Adoption at the RDA Fifth Plenary Meeting, San Diego, US 9-11 March 2015

“The so called data revolution this isn’t just about the volume of scientific data; rather, it reflects a fundamental change in the way science is conducted, who does it, who pays for it and who benefits from it. And most importantly, the rising capacity to share all this data – electronically, efficiently, across borders and disciplines – magnifies the impact.” The Data Harvest: How sharing research data can yield knowledge, jobs and growth (http://europe.rd-alliance.org/documents/publications-reports/data-harvest-how-sharing-research-data-can-yield-knowledge-jobs-and)

The Research Data Alliance (RDA – www.rd-alliance.org) rises to this challenge providing concrete solutions to address some of today’s many, many data challenges. In less than 2 years since its launch RDA has already published tangible outputs all aiming to achieve seamless interoperability, trust and ultimately to provide growth & employment opportunities:

Data Foundation & Terminology with a simple unifying data model facilitating interoperability
Data Type Registry with a registry of data types to facilitate their usage
PID Information Types with a generic interface for PID service providers and users and a harmonized category set
Practical Policies with best practices for a wide number of automatized data management and processing policies

The RDA Fifth Plenary is taking place in San Diego, US from 9th – 11th March 2015 and is open to RDA members and the public, particularly individuals that share the core values of creating the building blocks of common data infrastructures that can bridge disciplinary activities under a community-driven and non-profit model. Data experts, scientists, researchers and other professionals are encouraged to attend, as well as students and early career professionals in industries related to the fields of research data sharing and exchange. https://rd-alliance.org/plenary-meetings/fifth-plenary/programme.html

Adoption Day on 8th March will focus on the current RDA outputs and will see practical examples of European & US adoption. From the European grouping, European Collaborative Data Infrastructure (EUDAT – http://www.eudat.eu), Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure (CLARIN – http://www.clarin.eu/) and the German Climate Computing Center (Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum – DKRZ – https://www.dkrz.de/) are all implementing RDA outputs.

The Large-scale data projects session immediately after Adoption Day (8th March) will address how to advance the goals of RDA Output take up by following up with the tool developers and the researchers in the larger context of large data facilities and projects and identify additional uptake and dissemination possibilities from the side of the data projects with invited speakers from large impact projects in around the world. Interested parties are invited to submit a paper by February 8th https://rd-alliance.org/large-scale-data-projects-meet-rda-rda-5th-plenary-session.html

Leuven, 20 February 2015

Civic Epistemologies Workshop on the ROADMAP for Citizen Science

Developing a Roadmap for broadening e-Infrastructure deployment to support citizen researchers in digital culture is the main objective for the Civic Epistemologies, a project that has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration.

Aim of this Workshop in Leuven was to present the projects results to date, in order to obtain feedback from the partners and from external experts, before finalizing the Roadmap. The Workshop was held in the beautiful city of Leuven, hosted by the Catholic University (Katholieke Universiteit) in the Museumzaal of the Erasmushuis (premises of the Faculty of Arts). The Katholieke Universiteit is a project partner in Belgium.

Partners and relevant stakeholder were invited e.g. the wider cultural heritage community, researchers, Citizens associations, creative enterprises and e-Infrastructure communities beyond the consortium.

More information and the programme of the event are available here.

'The Impact of Digitization on Photographic Heritage: Memories Reframed'. Chronicles from KU Leuven

Europeana Photography Final Conference

by Fred Truyen, KU Leuven (Europeana Photography Project Coordinator)

The EuropeanaPhotography project ended 31st of January 2015. To mark the occasion, we organized a two-day conference in Leuven on Thursday 29 and Friday 30th of January, under the theme “The Impact of Digitization on Photographic Heritage: Memories Reframed“. The conference opened with a keynote by Elizabeth Edwards on “Shifting Assemblages: Scale, Scope and Intensity in the Practice of History“. Elizabeth took mass digitization to task with a plea for “close reading” inspired by Moretti. Using examples of colonial photography, she showed the importance of a careful, historical look at the different meaning layers in photos. The lecture kicked off a series of lectures that all seemed to revolve around the issues addressed in the keynote, as an unfolding, spiralling dialogue that kept everyone glued to his seat until the end of the first day.

A nothing short of brilliant overview of early photography by John Balean of TopFoto was followed by Fred Truyen’s explanation of the choices made in EuropeanaPhotography, where the possibilities of digitization to “reframe” and rediscover the early photos were discussed. Indeed, the enlarged, crystal clear reprints in the exhibition, with blistering dynamic range and razor sharp detail, obtained by directly processing the information from the glassplate have little to do with the nostalgic, somewhat yellowish appearance of original prints.

[Show as slideshow]

After an overview of the project by Antonella Fresa from Promoter srl, the afternoon was a mix of lectures and “collection pitches”, in which partners displayed their contributions to the total of 430.000 images that EuropeanaPhotography contributed to Europeana. Prof. Jan Baetens caught attention with his provocative lecture “Against Crowdsourcing”, in which he highlighted some serious issues in the quest to gather crowdsourced input, as is now hyping in many digitization projects.

While Stephen Brown and David Croft showed a smart algorithm to search for similar images in a collection, Alexander Supartono stunned the audience with his “Re-Visiting the Colonial Archive in the Era of Web 2.0“, where he showed how Indonesian artists re-appropriate colonial heritage in an unsettling way that undoubtedly must come as a shock to many archivalists: current Indonesian people are superimposed on colonial pictures, disclosing and disrupting the colonial setting. A better vindication of Elizabeth’s keynote was difficult to imagine. More so, it is a perfect example of the innovative “creative reuse” that Europeana wants to stimulate!

At the end of this long day Joanna Zylinska’s enthousiasm and rethorical talent gave the audience a much needed energy boost. Her Photomediations project is a very convincing example of Open publishing and how this unleashes new creativity.

During the day collections were presented by TopFoto, Lithuanian Art Museums, IMAGNO, CRDI, Parisienne de Photographie, Arbejdermuseet ,United Archives and Gencat.

The second day of the EuropeanaPhotography Final Conference was dedicated to Europeana and its family of projects. James Morley gave an interesting overview of new initiatives Europeana is engaged in, and highlighted the importance of a high quality online experience for the user. This will be enhanced by IIIF technology, now being implemented by some large collections.

The highlight of the day was the enthusing talk by Sofie Taes, curator of the Leuven localization of the All our Yesterdays exhibition. A parade of breath-taking images from Leuven’s City archive was displayed, unravelling the story of “Trading Spaces / Changing Places”, the concept behind the expo. The perfectly choreographed presentation was testimony of the enormous, meticulous work that went in the curation of this exhibition, developed in collaboration with the City archive Leuven and Erfgoedcel Leuven. It also revealed that the City archive does host a collection of images that can stand its ground in the face of the collections of the prestigious partners in Europeana Photography. Captivating moments of past city life stole the hearts of the audience.

[Show as slideshow]

This was followed by a collection pitch of both Leuven collections, the collection of the University and the one from the archive. The university collection is very unique, in the sense that it are all images taken with a didactic purpose, to define the canon of Art History. As such, it shows us what belonged to this canon before the second world war.

Four Europeana related project presentations rounded up the morning session, with presentations of Europeana Space, Europeana Fashion, Daguerreobase and RICHES.

In the second keynote of the conference, Simon Tanner from King’s college London talked about “The Impact of Digitization on Photographic Heritage“. The slides of his presentation are available on slideshare. It addressed many issues as to how museums and collection holders can cope with the digital revolution and adapt their business models to it.

This was followed by a much appreciated lecture by Bruno Vandermeulen, digitization expert of KU Leuven, on his photography for the archaeological Sagalassos project.

Charlotte Waelde concluded the lecture series with a talk about “Digitising photographs: thinking around originality“, where she addressed novel ideas about IPR, an issue of great concern in the EuropeanaPhotography project, to which we are seeking solutions in Europeana Space.

During the day further collection pitches were shown by Divadelni Ustav, SGI, ICIMSS, NALIS, Alinari, MHF and PolFoto.

Nicosia, 11-12 March 2015

EAGLE 2015 International Event

Use and Re-Use of Digital Cultural Heritage Assets – Interoperability, Repositories and Shared infrastructures was the fifth in a series of international events planned by EAGLE BPN. The workshop covered many aspects of digital technology applied to inscriptions, from content to management and networking, featuring presentations and hands-on workshops regarding themes of the EAGLE project, led by the project’s Working Groups.

By L.Sergius.Paulus (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The event, held in Nicosia, Cyprus, on 11-12 March 2015, was organised by EAGLE partner Cyprus Institute, in collaboration with Heidelberg University (Germany) and Sapienza, University of Rome (Italy).

The workshop brought together a wide audience, including people interested in epigraphy (digital or non-digital) as well as to the establishment and diffusion of general best current practices for digital cultural heritage.

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EAGLE – Europeana network of Ancient Greek and Latin Epigraphy, will be a new online archive for epigraphy in Europe, co-funded through the ICT – Policy Support Programme of the EuropeanCommission. The EAGLE Best Practice Network is part of Europeana, a multi-lingual online collection of millions of digitised items from European museums, libraries, archives and multi-media collections

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