Digital meets Culture

Geneva, 19-21 April 2015

MuseumNext 2015

The 2015 edition of MuseumNext will take place at the Le Bâtiment des Forces Motrices (Geneva), a former factory in the heart of the city which has been converted into an impressive cultural space. Mobile technology and audience engagement were chosen as key themes this year. MuseumNext Geneva 2015 will serve as a platform to discuss what’s next for all aspects of the museum, including technology, architecture, exhibitions, skills, collections, conservation, purpose and leadership.

International experts can participate to the event in different ways: proposing presentations, workshops or panel discussions on the subject of ‘What’s next for museums?’ Organisers are seeking excellent examples of today which shine a light on the museum of tomorrow. As explained by Jim Richardson, MuseumNext founder, all presentations should deliver thought provoking insight, showcase innovative ideas, reveal ‘how to’ or even share stories of what not to do. Check the call for papers details at http://www.museumnext.com/museum-conference-call-papers/. Please note that all presentations and proposals should be made in English. The deadline for submitting a proposal is 31st October 2014.

MuseumNext is a reference point to discuss how new media can be used to reach audiences. If you’re interested in “Digital engagement in culture, heritage and the arts”, don’t miss the latest publication by Jasper Visser and Jim Richardson, free to download at the following link: http://www.digitalengagementframework.com/

Digital Engagement in Culture Heritage and the Arts from MuseumNext

The book offers a Digital Engagement Framework, with practical guidelines on how cultural organisations should approach digital media, enriched with case studies from museums and galleries around the world. The Digital Engagement Framework is a tool to develop digital and online engagement strategies for organisations and projects. It’s a structured set of questions that provide the building blocks for a successful engagement strategy.

For a global overview, you can check more details about the results of the past MuseumNext editions (2009-2014) at the website (2014 edition) as well as read about the event evolvement and digital content experiences in museums at the following interview to Jim Richardson, MuseumNext founder.

Updates and latest news about the 2015 event at Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin.

Early booking already available at: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/museumnext-geneva-tickets-12542530045

The interactive performance was a success of assistance and experimentation

ULTRAORBISM brings performing arts a step forward

Last April 9, telecommunications engineers from the Audiovisual Unit at i2CAT Foundation (RICHES partner) and internationally renowed creatives within the performing arts such as Marcel·lí Antúnez and a group of actors and dancers from University of Falmouth, presented his latest creation, an interactive and distributed performance between two remote scenarios, the Centre Arts Santa Monica in Barcelona and a study in the campus of the University in the United Kingdom.
Under the name of ULTRAORBISM, the performance became a live demonstration of how advanced conference systems, streaming media, networked and distributed environments can support creativity in the fields of scenic arts, especially theatre, dance and performance. The performance, which reached great impact, was seen live by more than 150 spectators distributed in the two venues separated by miles away, and also offered the possibility to see it around the world through an online streaming service. The i2CAT Foundation, RICHES partner and technology provider of the show, experimented and test key aspects of relevant importance in distributed environments such as latency or real-time interaction between remote scenarios, synchronization and the use of advanced technologies.

Ultimately, ULTRAORBISM opens new doors for experimental and creative formats using advanced visual environments in the field of telematics and distributed events. The potential utilities of the results are very rich from a technical point of view and also from an artistic perspective, and the excellent results of this experience present a very optimistic future in the development of co-creation environments in Europe and the use of ICT in the fields of culture and the arts.

At the end of the show, a networked collective symposium was held between participants, artists and the audiences in both scenarios. The RICHES Project, which one of its main research goals is to investigate how the advent of digital technologies is changing the ways in which we understand, preserve and disseminate the European cultural heritage, was present throughout the show, analysing this real case scenario and collecting the opinions from the spectators using post and after event questionnaires, both in Barcelona and Falmouth. Furthermore, RICHES Project’s representatives from Coventry University, Project Coordinator, participated to a focus group after the event. Between 8 to 10 people took part in the discussion after the show, where reflections and opinions about the event were shared. The inputs collected will be analysed in order to measure the short-term and long-term impacts, on an individual level, of being in the audience in a distributed performance arts event. The study, which is currently being undertaken, was specifically designed to explore individual’s pre-performance anticipation and expectations as well as to collect spectator’s self-assessment in terms of their own experiences, reactions and satisfaction with the performance. The results of this study and a video showcasing the event and the collaborative co-creation process undertaken thanks to the ULTRAORBISM show will be presented at the RICHES Final International Conference which will be celebrated around March next year in Coventry.

This trans-national action was organized by the i2CAT Foundation (RICHES Partner) and the Direcció General de Creació i Empreses Culturals of the Government of Catalonia in the framework of a cooperation between the RICHES and SPECIFI European Projects.

EBN innovation network welcomed ADDICT - Creative Industries Portugal in its membership

ADDICTed to creative and cultural industries!

Last month EBN welcomed ADDICT – Creative Industries Portugal, the Creative Industries Agency in Portugal.

ADDICT is a non-profit association created in 2008. It currently gathers around 100 members and is recognised by the Ministry for Economy as the coordinator of the Creative Industries Cluster in Portugal.

ADDICT’s mission is to foster a favourable environment for culture and creative economy to thrive, advocating the sector interests and acting as platform for knowledge and innovation.

Among its members, you can find a variety of organisations covering all Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) sub-sectors as well as several creative hubs (6 CCI Incubators, 4 Universities and other world-class research centres, as the Centre Competence for Future Cities or INESC Technology and Science).

Their competences include:

to engage and inform the creative community;
to promote new opportunities;
to promote and implement collective efficiency strategies;
to support the development of new businesses;
to promote national and international visibility for the sector;
to support the creative regeneration of territories.

Two success story:

UPTEC.PINC – University of Porto’s Incubator of Creative Industries, which was created within the Creative Industries Cluster governmental strategy. Nowadays this incubator, including more or less 30 companies is functioning at cruise speed, offering specific support to each one and implementing a great variety of activities. UPTEC.PINC also implements acceleration and pre-incubation programmes for new entrepreneurs.

Centre for Digital Creativity – Infrastructure created within the Creative Industries Cluster governmental strategy by the Catholic University, other ADDICT co-founder. It is nowadays a fully functional creative hub, providing support through experts and technological and multimedia equipment.

EBN is a network of 160+ quality-certified EU|BICs (business and innovation centres, incubators, accelerators and other support organisations) and 100 Associate Members that support the development and growth of innovative entrepreneurs, start-ups and SMEs.

It is a community of professionals whose day-to-day work guides these businesses to grow in the most effective and efficient way, delivering sustainable impact.

EU|BICs are quality-certified business support organisations, which dedicate their efforts and resources to help entrepreneurs with innovative ideas turn those ideas into viable, successful and sustainable businesses.

EU|BICs were invented almost 30 years ago by the European Commission and by various private and public stakeholders, with the aim to boost the economic development and the innovation potential of European regions. An EU|BIC’s core mission is to accelerate innovative entrepreneurship at the local level, through the customised delivery of a comprehensive range of professional support and incubation services (pre-incubation, incubation, post-incubation) targeted at innovative start-ups, spin-offs, entrepreneurs and SMEs.

For more information download ADDICT’s slide-presentation and visit http://addict.pt/ and http://ebn.eu/

Press release - 22 April 2015

PREFORMA Starts Prototyping Phase

Photo by Jens Gustavsson

The prototyping phase of the public pre-commercial procurement project PREFORMA started on April 14th 2015, with the announcement of the three winners. The aim of PREFORMA is to develop an open-source toolset for the conformance checking of digital files intended for long-term preservation in memory institutions.

After analysing the technical and functional specifications submitted by the six groups that completed the design phase in March 2015 , PREFORMA chose the three consortia awarded with contracts for the prototyping phase. This phase will last until December 2016.

The three awardees are the veraPDF Consortium (led by the Open Preservation Foundation and the PDF Association), who will work on the compliance checker for the PDF/A standard for documents; Easy Innova, who will work on the TIFF standard for digital still images; and MediaArea, who will work on a set of open source standards for moving images, namely: the Matroska wrapper, the FFv1 video codec and LPCM for audio streams.

Börje Justrell, coordinator of the PREFORMA project, said: “For archives and libraries it is imperative that they understand what’s in the digital objects they are preserving for generations. The open source PREFORMA toolset, which brings together the three solutions from the awardees, helps cover the currently existing knowledge gap. The openness of the solution will allow extension of the software with checkers for other file formats, should new requirements emerge.”

Antonella Fresa, technical coordinator of the project, said: “We are lucky to work with these strong organisations on the PREFORMA challenge – and would like to express our thanks to the three other consortia who also did valuable work during the design phase: Preservica, KU Leuven – Libis Library IT Services and Université Catholique de Louvain.”

Suppliers and memory institutions interested in participating in and contributing to the prototyping phase are invited to follow the progress on the PREFORMA Open Source Portal and to join the PREFORMA community.

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About Preforma:

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. PREFORMA is open to cooperating with experts, organisations, institutions and other projects in order to find synergies and discuss opportunities for collaboration.

Press materials:

PREFORMA logo
PREFORMA Factsheet
Further reference materials: http://www.preforma-project.eu/download.html

Press Contact:

Communication Manager

Claudio Prandoni, Promoter Srl

Via Bocconi 2, 56037 Peccioli, Pisa, Italy

Skype contact: cprando

prandoni@promoter.it

Final report of the Horizon 2020 Expert Group in Cultural Heritage

Getting cultural heritage to work for Europe

Quoting from the report of the Expert Group on Cultural Heritage established under the Horizon 2020 Work Programme 2014 for the Societal Challenge “Climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials”:

«Cultural heritage is a significant force for XXI century Europe. Not only is it at the heart of what it means to be European, it is being discovered by both governments and citizens as a means of improving economic performance, people’s lives and living environments». «Evidence demonstrates that relatively modest investment in cultural heritage can pay substantial dividends. These can be taken economically but also in terms of improving environmental sustainability and social cohesion»

The expert group, chaired by Dr. Philippe Busquin, former Commissioner for Research, Science and Technology and former Member of the European Parliament, comprised nine renowned experts from the private and public sector, including Professor Simon Thurley, CEO of English Heritage, who acted as rapporteur. The group aimed to contribute to further investigating and providing input for fully developing the potential that cultural heritage holds for Europe.

The report Getting cultural heritage to work for Europe provides the rationale for setting a renewed European Research & Innovation policy agenda on cultural heritage. It outlines the general framework about cultural heritage in Europe and the contribution it can make towards smarter, more inclusive and more sustainable development. The report further delineates three priority objectives along the economic, social and environmental side and describes recommendable actions, drawing upon successful cases where cultural heritage has been a positive driver for sustainable development.

Download free the full report here!

Brussels, 26 March 2015: Preforma passed successfully its first review

Excellent evaluation for Preforma!

On 26 March 2015, in Brussels, project Preforma underwent its first review, obtaining an excellent evaluation.

Brussels, Grand Place

The EC reviewers gave the consortium useful recommendations for the project’s continuation, in particular to improve the networking activities and to start the preparation of the datasets to be used to test the prototypes that are being developed by the three suppliers that were selected as a result of the last evaluation:

VeraPDF Consortium (to work on PDF/A)
Easy Innova (to work on TIFF)
MediaArea (to work on MKV/FFV1/LPCM)

The 3 consortia mentioned above will start working from April 14, 2015 to develop an open-source toolset for conformance checking of digital files intended for long-term preservation in memory institutions.

Shortly the Preforma project will launch its Open Source portal, so STAY TUNED on www.preforma-project.eu!

On 9th April at WAAG premises in Amsterdam the adventure of the Europeana Space first hackathon, dedicated to interactive TV, has begun!

Meet the Team pre-event for the EuropeanaTV hackathon was a success

Hacking Culture Bootcamp, the first hackathon of Europeana Space project, took flight on the 9th April, with the pre-event where the hackathonees met the team and learnt practical information about technology, the toolkit and available content for experimenting with EuropeanaTV pilot.

photo by Kelly Mostert, Sound and Vision

The hackathon is challenging game developers, storytellers, interactive designers, and app developers to create new multi-screen experiences with a focus on digitized historical footage.

photo by James Morley (Europeana Foundation)

It is the chance for creatives, entrepreneurs, designers, and professionals to explore and make concrete innovative ideas, together with a team of creative thinkers, expert makers, and innovative developers.

During this Europeana Space Hacking Culture Bootcamp it is possible play and experiment with millions of items from heritage institutions all across Europe via Europeana.eu, Europe’s online cultural hub, that gives access to open data, audio files, photos, paintings, 3D images, historical stories and archival footage. Waag Society will facilitate design processes, provide equipment and technological support in collaboration with Proton Labs. All technology will be provided and supported by Noterik who developed the video application. Cultural heritage experts from RBB, Luce, and Sound and Vision will also be on hand to share their knowledge about the content and creative innovation within the cultural heritage heritage sector.

An interesting Hacking Culture Debate with experts and the public about media strategies and the potential of cross-media, interactive concepts for broadcasters and museum sector is also organized in the framework of the hackathon event, on the evening of May 8th, 2015.

All the information and registration is accessible via the event website: http://www.europeana-space.eu/hackathons/europeana-tv-hackathon/

A cooperation agreement was recently signed between the 2 'creative industry- focused' projects

Europeana Space and CRe-AM

CRe-AM and Europeana Space are two projects which both aim to enhance the creative industry by leveraging on ICT and digital cultural content.

Europeana Space intends to do this by originating concrete scenarios, best practice and tools, and further by offering real business modeling and incubation actions towards innovative creative projects, selected via a series of thematic hackathons. CRe-AM is focused on engaging the stakeholders of the creative industry and ICT in a fruitful dialogue in order to develop new ways of using technologies and tools, new products, services and new business models.

It is no surprise that the two projects want to join forces to bringing together the respective communities and to providing each other with a new targeted audience able to add value to the roadmaps and best practices developed.

Europeana Space is also intending to cooperate to CRe-AM’s sustainability, in particular by developing synergies for the CRe-AM’s Community Space.

http://www.europeana-space.eu/network/cooperation-agreements/cre-am/

http://www.cre-am.eu/

http://communities.cre-am.eu/

A workshop held in Brussels for presenting the project’s Technical Space

E-Space develops a cutting-edge technical framework

The E-Space project’s technical workshop took place in Brussels, on the 23^rd of March 2015, at the iMinds – Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) offices; the event, aimed at presenting E-Space’s architecture and implementation choices for the development of its technical structure, was open to the public and attended by over 50 experts from all over Europe.

The workshop venue

The project’s Technical Space is a framework for storing, accessing and processing contents and metadata. The Technical Space is interoperable with complementary services emerging from the Europeana group of projects. Thanks to it and based upon IPR licensing, curators, scholars, professional users and third party developers will be able to search for and manage resources within a safe space, to use and re-use them for the evolution of knowledge and the development of applications.

The Technical Space’s system and implementation choices consist specifically in:

A Data Infrastructure that includes the retrieval and storage layers for content and metadata from available sources.
A Metadata Processing Unit that integrates available services for the management and manipulation of metadata resources.
Access APIs constituting a set of interfaces that will be made available for the delivery of resources and the creation of applications.

During the workshop, discussion and interaction with the invited stakeholders focused on validating and expanding the specification of functional and non-functional requirements of the Technical Space, in order to fulfil the needs of a wide user base. Representatives from the E-Space Consortium (the Technical Coordinator Promoter, the responsible for the development of the technical infrastructure NTUA and the pilot leaders) attended to collect feedbacks on the following topics:

Content – navigate, access, licensing
Metadata – models, serialisations, delivery protocols, cleaning and enrichment services
Datasets – management, analytics, indexing, transformations
Aggregations – combining your data with Europeana & DPLA, interfaces with open media repositories, preservation and sustainability
Semantic web technologies – linked data repository, reasoning, query answering
APIs – authentication, content, metadata, services
Interoperability – development approaches, polyglot storage, processing engines, integration.

The workshop started in the morning of the 23^rd of March.

After the registration and a nice welcome coffee, E-Space Technical Coordinator Antonella Fresa (Promoter SRL) opened the day with an introduction to the project [download Fresa’s presentation]; it was then the turn of James Morley (Europeana Foundation), who delivered a presentation of the Europeana Labs [download Morley’s presentation].

Nasos Drosopoulos (NTUA – National Technical University of Athens) intervened after the coffee break, concluding the morning with a presentation of the E-Space Technical Infrastructure and protected content space [download Drosopoulos’ presentation].

After the lunch, the second part of the day started, devoted to “Tutorial and practical experiments using the Europeana Labs” – session coordinated by Remy Gardien of the Europeana Foundation [download Gardien’s presentation] – and to “Tutorial and practical experiments using the E-Space Technical Infrastructure and its protected content space” – session coordinated by Nasos Drosopoulos. These last sessions helped in particular to show how the two platforms (Europeana Labs – E-Space Technical Infrastructure and protected content space) work from a technical point of view and which are the APIs and Interfaces that the services of the two platforms are based on.

The last part of the event was finally dedicated to conclusive discussions and remarks.

Thanks to this workshop, the E-Space Consortium was able to collect from the attendees a great many feedbacks and inputs, useful to complete the development of the E-Space’s Technical Space. Furthermore, the event gave evidence of the numerous and fruitful possibilities of integration between the services offered by the Europeana Labs and E-Space’s Technical Space.

The morning of the 24^th of March was reserved to an internal meeting among the E-Space pilots’ representatives, who discussed and exchanged ideas about the use of the services illustrated during the previous day and the planning of the next steps.

For further info visit www.europeana-space.eu

Barcelona & Falmouth, 9 April 2015

ULTRAORBISM by Marcel•lí Antúnez Roca

Performance art is at the heart of my work – Marcel·lí Antúnez Roca writes – Ultraorbism is an interactive distributed action between two networked connected spaces in two cities: Barcelona and Falmouth.

Both spaces are open-plan, with a backdrop of a large main screen in the centre and a subsidiary screen: the main screen acts as the central area for the story and it is there where the consequences of the various interactive processes engaged in by those acting in both venues are shown; the small screen shows the details of these interactions. This is explained to the audience as the interactivity takes place.

A journey is recounted with the overlapping of various levels of images, some of which are produced dynamically during the performance and others come from the image bank: taken together, they make up the iconographic narrative. The music and lighting are also interactive and coincide with the story of the image. The story is a linear interpretation of the first of the two books of True Histories by Lucian of Samosata (a Syrian writer who lived in the second century AD): it is an impossible journey on which everything is invented, with references to the mythology and literature of the era.

#ultraorbism_The sea war

Ultraorbism is a project directed by Marcel·lí Antúnez Roca, based on True Histories by Lucian of Samosata. It is part of the European project SPECIFI and case study of the RICHES European project’s research area. Support is from the Ministry of Culture of the Government of Catalonia, the i2CAT Foundation and live participation by actors and the audience at the University of Falmouth, Cornwall (Great Britain).

Free entrance. All kind of audience.

Concept, drawings and performance: Marcel·lí Antúnez Roca

Live music and performance: Andrea Valle

Text: Julià de Jòdar

Choreography and dancers: Cheap Date Dance Company

Actor: Ciaran Clarke

Video: Joint Effort Studios

Technical direction: Oriol Ibàñez

Programming: Sergi Lario

Animation: David Tangarife, Jesús González and Claudio Marzà

Drawing curtains: Yansy Soler and Wahab Zeghlache

Costumes: Paloma Bomé

Photography: Carles Rodríguez

Researcher: Begoña Egurbide

Sound mix: Paolo Armao and Andrea Valle

Coordination and production in Falmouth: Ian Biscoe and Erik Geelhoed

General coordination and production: Josep Font Sentias and Margherita Bergamo

Assistant: Cristina Llorca

STREAMING

Coordinating technical production, i2CAT Foundation: Sergi Fernández

Technical manager, i2CAT Foundation: Gerard Castillo

Coordinator sociological study, i2CAT Foundation: Marc Aguilar

Documentation and research, i2CAT Foundation: Pau Adelantado

Produced by: Ministry of Culture of the Government of Catalonia and Panspèrmia SL

Organized by: Ministry of Culture of the Government of Catalonia and i2CAT Foundation

With the collaboration of: Falmouth University, Cheap Date Dance Company, Joint Effort Studios, Arts Santa Mònica – Departament de Cultura

Sponsored by: Ministry of Culture of the Government of Catalonia, i2CAT Foundation, SPECIFI Project, RICHES project, European Commission, CIP 2007-2013

SPECIFI is a European project under the CIP program for competitiveness and innovation, that promotes the use of the Internet infrastructures in order to highlight the cultural and creative heritage of the Smart Cities.

RICHES (Renewal, innovation & Change: Heritage and European Society) is a research project about change: about the decentring of culture and cultural heritage away from institutional structures towards the individual and about the questions which the advent of digital technologies is posing in relation to how we understand, collect and make available Europe’s cultural heritage (CH).

The RICHES project has selected ULTRAORBISM as a case study: the two audiences will be given a questionnaire to complete and a discussion will take place between them, to examine how a distributed performance is appreciated and received in the case of this kind of real experience.

Marcel·lí Antúnez Roca is an artist internationally renowned for his mechatronic performances and interactive installations. Since the eighties, his work is concerned about the human condition.

Marcel·lí is a founding member of La Fura dels Baus; he was artistic coordinator until 1990. Since then his solo work is based on technology and it has been shown in more than forty countries. He received the Barcelona City Award for Visual Arts in 2014 for the exhibition Systematurgy, shown in Arts Santa Mònica.

Download the press release on ULTRAORBISM in Catalan language

Visit the Ultraorbism Facebook page

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