Digital meets Culture

Europeana Photography final step is a conference in Heverlee/Leuven and a Belgian edition of the exhibition of ealy photography masterpieces.

All Our Yesterdays goes Belgian!

by Sofie Taes, KU Leuven

The second instance of All Our Yesterdays will take place from February 1 to March 15, 2015, in Campus Library Arenberg – Heverlee and Tweebronnen Library – Leuven (BE). While, for the greater part, this exhibition will re-produce the first run of All Our Yesterdays, its Belgian flavor will be enhanced by including photographs from the Leuven City Archives. At the Heverlee site, traces of local citizens’ “Yesterdays” will figure side by side to those of their international counterparts, as a new but integrated part of the original All Our Yesterdays-setup.

In Leuven’s city center, the public library will host an additional exhibition chapter, dedicated to Trading Spaces / Changing Places: how have the city and its rural surroundings interacted throughout the years and what remains of this? Which century-old street views are bound to draw up a stir when compared to today’s cityscape? And in how far or by what means have people tried to adapt their living environment to something more comfortable or more agreeable to the eye…?

From lost landscapes to stunning portraits and fascinating shots-in-action, Trading Spaces / Changing Places seizes the most compelling images from Leuven’s past, to make for a powerful injection into the present-day city dynamics.

The Slaughter Street, along with surrounding streets and lots were completely demolished after 1914. The plans had already been recorded around the turn of the century, but were brought by the war devastation to faster execution. (SAL, Photo Library)

The opening of the Leuven exhibition coincides with the ultimate days of Europeana Photography’s project term. Small wonder that a project plenary meeting and a scientific conference have been aligned with the official vernissage.

After a day (28 January) of dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, reviewing the results of the consortium’s endeavors, and discussing its future plans as the association PHOTOCONSORTIUM, the conference on 29 and 30 January will be devoted to The Impact of Digitization on Photographic Heritage: Memories Reframed. Hosted by CS Digital (KU Leuven) and the Lieven Gevaert Centre for Photography in Campus Library Arenberg, this event aims at assembling scholars from the field of photography and professionals from photo-archives, in order to develop an understanding of responsible archival practices towards photographic heritage in the context of the promotion of public access through digital portals.

Topics to be tackled: archival practices for photographic heritage, digitization and preservation, Europeana, public exposure and the archival mission. Confirmed key note speakers at present are Elizabeth Edwards (De Montfort University, Leicester – UK) and Simon Tanner (King’s College, London – UK). Next to their contributions, the program includes collection pitches by all content providers involved in EuropeanaPhotography, presentations from ‘befriended’ Europeana-projects including Europeana Space, and a roundtable on IPR chaired by Charlotte Waelde (University of Exeter – UK).

About the exhibition: www.earlyphotography.eu

Final conference: http://www.arts.kuleuven.be/cs/onderzoek/digital-culture-1/epconf

highlights from an interesting article appeared on The Guardian

Creative Industries and the Arts

Recently, it was published a very interesting article in the Guardian, about creative industries and creative people in the UK. The article reports the opinion of 3 relevant professionals, who are also speakers at Remix Summit 2014, on why supporting artists and evolving the curriculum is key for the long-term sustainability of the sector and to encourage innovation.

Highlights from the article:

Alex Poots, director, Manchester International Festival

“The really obvious answer is that we need to support and empower the people who are best placed to advance artforms and challenge received ideas – and that’s artists. We have to start with the art”

Ian Livingstone CBE, co-founder of Games Workshop and creative industries champion for BIS

“We must not underestimate the contribution that art, music, drama and design make in promoting diverse thinking, self-expression and self-determination – the raw materials of the creative industries.”

Ruth Mackenzie, interim CEO and creative director, The Space

“Of course, every new work is not going to be innovative, change the artform and become a hit with audiences – and for artists, producers, funders and partners, creating something that is only recognised as amazing after your death may not sound like the most fulfilling career path. But exploring and inventing, experimenting and sharing is sometimes thrilling, often fun or exciting, occasionally provocative or even life changing.”

Read the whole article on theguardian.com

London (UK), 18 December 2014

Image Processing, Pattern Recognition, Artistic Use and a celebration of the British Library 1 Million images collection

Image Processing, Pattern Recognition, Artisitic Use and a celebration of the British Library 1 Million images collection.

The first phase of the British Library Labs project ends with an event that coincides with the one year anniversary of the release of the British Library’s million images onto Flickr Commons. The conference focuses importantly on what reseachers and artists have been doing with these and other images and what our plans are for the next phase of the project. We have gathered a set of international researchers and artists together to speak about and share interesting ideas, techniques, methods and insights they have been applying to various image collections, including those of the British Library.

Registration here

Background to the event

On Thursday 12th of December 2013, British Library Labs and The Digital Research Team in the Digital Scholarship department at the British Library put 1 million images on to Flickr Commons. On the first day, the images received over 5 million views and over the next few weeks they received lots of positive comments from news and media outlets around the world and several uses of the images began to emerge. In October 2014, we reached over 200 million image views, with every image being viewed at least 20 times.

We will tell the story of how some of these images began to be released through our Mechanical Curator on the 7th October, 2013 and why we decided to put all the images online through Flickr commons. There will reports and presentations on the amazing stories that have emerged from skateboards, colouring books, soundscapes, videos, art therapy, georeferencing maps and sounds inspired by the collection, just to mention a few.

A discussion will be facilitated on how disciplinary domains, using similar and different techniques with images, may learn from each other.

To foster access, preservation and usability in the long term of digital cultural and scientific information to support research, culture and society.

New MoU signed between PREFORMA and NCDD

A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed between PREFORMA and the Netherlands Coalition on Digital Preservation (NCDD) for the promotion and presentation of the respective results and for the organisation of joint events and other activities, aimed to foster access, preservation and usability in the long term of digital cultural and scientific information to support research, culture and society.

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

The NCDD is a national coalition designed to promote the preservation and the usability of digital materials comprising the cultural and scientific heritage of The Netherlands in the long term. The Mission of the NCDD is to establish a stable organizational and technical infrastructure to guarantee long term access to digital information in The Netherlands to support research, culture and society. Its vision is to make ‘our digital memory available tomorrow’.

2nd and 3rd December 2014 Shaping Europe event marked the centenary commemoration of WW1 and the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain

“Shaping Europe”: Europeana 1914-1918 and Europeana 1989

Europeana and the European Parliament joined forces to mark the events that shaped Europe.

WW1 and the fall of the Iron Curtain, two events that shaped the Europe we know today were commemorated at the European Parliament in unique style. A family history roadshow, digitising personal memorabilia of MEPs for these two seminal periods of European history, is taking place in the Parliament.

On December 2^nd and 3^rd, Shaping Europe marked the centenary commemoration of WW1 and the 25^th anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain. Members of the European Parliament and Parliament staff were invited to bring along their personal and family memorabilia to be digitised and to share the stories behind them through Europeana’s two major thematic websites Europeana 1914-1918.eu and Europeana 1989.eu.

For the past three years, Europeana 1914-18 and Europeana 1989 have worked with citizens and our cultural institutions across Europe to create online archives that provide a unique perspective on these two seminal events, which can be shared worldwide. The two collection days at the Parliament, add to 150 held across Europe over the last 4 years and directly connect citizens to their cultural heritage.

Read the full press release here

During the event, a Twitter campaign highlighted some of the most interesting stories from Europeana 1914-1918 and Europeana 1989 using the hashtag #ShapingEurope. Another EU project with a huge historical impact, Europeana Photography (1839-1939), also participated in the Twitter campaign by sharing and tweeting interesting photographs witnessing life in Europe before WW2.

Europeana 1914-1918:

The Europeana 1914-1918 project is the most important online resource of original WW1 source material. Building on an idea from and with the support of Oxford University, it was launched in Germany in 2011 to collect memorabilia and family stories from the front line and the home front. Since then, family history roadshows have been held in 18 countries across Europe, in the lead up to the WW1 centenary commemoration and so far have recorded more than 100,000 digital images. The site now also includes more than 400,000 items digitised by national libraries across Europe and 660 hours of film digitised by EFG14. Throughout 2014, the year of the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, the project continues to collect memorabilia in digital form, and aims to save people’s family memories and make them accessible to the world. Apart from the roadshows that take place across Europe, everyone can also contribute their digitised images and information to the website www.europeana1914-1918.eu.

Europeana 1989:

Europeana 1989 is a pan-European project concerning the political and social changes in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989. It creates a vivid and complete picture of the revolutionary events in Europe with stories, photos, videos and sound recordings from every country affected. Personal stories, memories and experiences can help others to better understand what it was like and to see events from a different perspective. By collecting personal memorabilia and stories from this period, and combining it with institutional collections, we aim to create an engaging user experience. So far 11,000 items are shared online at www.europeana1989.eu. This work has been further supported by 89voices.eu where we are on a mission to record and preserve 89 fascinating first-hand accounts from individuals who experienced the fall of communism and the reunification of Europe.

Europeana Photography:

It is a digitization project focused on early photography belonging to the period 1839-1939; the pioneers of this new art and medium (the photography, which was born in 1839) captured faces, places, habits and life how they were in a period of great change. The images digitized and shared by Europeana Photography have the highest historical, artistic and cultural value, to help understanding the societal changes that happened in Europe between 19th and 20th centuries. About 430.000 photographs selected by major archives and press agencies in Europe are provided by this project in Europeana’portal, accessible for education purposes, research and personal interest.

Lilongwe, Malawi, 5 - 8 May 2015

IST-Africa 2015 Conference

Hosted by the Government of Malawi through the National Commission for Science and Technology, Supported by the European Commission and African Union Commission, IST-Africa 2015 will take place in Lilongwe from 05 – 08 May 2015.

Part of the IST-Africa Initiative, which is supported by the European Commission under the ICT Theme of Framework Programme 7 (FP7), IST-Africa 2015 is the tenth in an Annual Conference Series which brings together senior representatives from leading commercial, government & research organisations across Africa and from Europe, to bridge the Digital Divide by sharing knowledge, experience, lessons learnt and good practice and discussing policy related issues.

The scientific programme for IST-Africa 2015 is based on an open Call for Papers.

IST-Africa 2015 is focused on applied ICT and the core thematic areas include:

Digital Libraries
eHealth, mHealth & Health Information Systems
eGovernment – Services to Citizens & Business
eInfrastructures, NRENs and IPv6
Future Internet: Cyber Security, Privacy and Trust, Connected Enterprise
ICT for Agriculture and Environmental Sustainability
ICT4D (including Humanitarian Technologies)
ICT Skills and ICT for eInclusion and eAccessibility
ICT Regulatory Frameworks
Living Labs (Adaptation for Developing Countries)
Mobile Applications (including mServices, mEducation, Social Networking)
Next Generation Computing: Big Data, Cloud Computing, Data Localisation, Internet of Things (IoT)
Open Source Software – Applications
Technology-enhanced Learning
Transformation of Research Results into Local Innovation
Societal Implications of Technology

Interested presenters are encouraged to prepare an 8 page paper (4,000 – 5,000) words following the IST-Africa paper guidelines and paper template for submission online by 19 December. For more information, please visit http://www.ist-africa.org/Conference2015/default.asp?page=submission

All submissions will be double blind peer reviewed by the International Programme Committee and authors will receive feedback in late January. Accepted authors will then be invited to submit a final paper taking account of feedback provided for inclusion in the conference proceedings by 28 February.

this App is an open data oriented platform that will enable scalable services for cultural engagement

Towards “Cooltura”, the TAG CLOUD platform and app

The TAG CLOUD project was launched to investigate how to enable cultural engagement by using cloud-based technologies that leverage adaptability and personalisation of created Cultural Heritage content, aiming at supporting deeper engagement and learning over time. Following a User-Cantered Design (UCD) methodology, the TAG CLOUD project has placed the user at the centre of developments and follows an iterative design cycle which serves to feedback the design, development, improvement and optimisation of its COOLTURA Platform and App.

The COOLTURA Platform will be an open data oriented platform that will enable scalable services for cultural engagement; which will be tested, piloted and firstly exploited with the COOLTURA App at TAG CLOUD three pilot sites, which will simultaneously install the App to demonstrate that TAG CLOUD system enables the people engagement in wide different domains and contexts in the cultural heritage.

The COOLTURA platform has a data management layer that allows content curation and harvesting, as well as an intelligent layer has the ability to abstract complex data and cultural consumption processes, and transforms them into content and processes that aim to be more consumable and manageable by the cultural visitors. The COOLTURA platform processes the content to be sent to and seen in the COOLTURA App in a personalized and adaptive way.

The COOLTURA App access the cultural content processed in the COOLTURA platform. The COOLTURA app will allow visualizing the cultural content in mobile devices (such smartphones or tablets) through cultural itineraries, routes, allowing exploration of cultural objects through augmented reality, games or sharing your cultural experience through social networks!

The name “Cooltura” comes from the idea of experiencing culture in a cool way that will allow visitors to experience culture in a personalised, dynamic, interactive and exciting way through the integration of social media, augmented reality and storytelling technologies.

Jinan, China, 23-29 August 2015

The 22nd International Congress of Historical Sciences

The 22nd ICHS, which will be held in Jinan, Shandong, the birthplace of Confucius and Mencius, is the first time for the congress to be held in Asia.

After the successfully-held Beijing Olympics, it will again be an opportunity to show the long history and deep culture of China, and its recent economic and cultural booming to the world.

It is a stage to show the history and cultures from all over the world and for the communication and research of them.

IAn international coordination platform for historical research and a cyber-platform to show the history and culture of each country will be set up; and there will be a series of activities for the communication of history and different cultures, such as global historical and cultural weeks.

There will be 79 topics for the 22nd ICHS. During the term of the congress, participants will fully enjoy the fascination of the history as well as the culture of hospitable Shandong – a famous tourist destination blessed with splendid cultural heritage.

More information and contacts

Official website: http://www.ichschina2015.org/

Registration: http://www.ichschina2015.org/cms/ljdh/925.jhtml

Please visit http://www.ichschina2015.org/cms/Reduction%20and%20Exemption/index.jhtml for relevant information.
If you have any question about the Congress, please contact the Secretariat of the Organizing Committee by telephone +86-0531-88363791 or email cish2015@sdu.edu.cn.
For reference to Association of Chinese Historians(ACH)，please contact Ms Yang Wanrong by telephone +86 010 65278696, or email yangwr@cass.org.cn.

On occasion of the Italian presidency of the Council of the European Union, the international consortium RICHES (Renewal, Innovation and Change: Heritage and European Society) chose Pisa as seat for the important conference Cultural Heritage: Recalibrating Relationships.

The event, held on 4-5 December at the Museum of Graphics of Palazzo Lanfranchi, was organised by RICHES Italian partner Promoter Srl with the support of: Italian Ministry of Economic Development, Tuscany Region, Municipality of Pisa, University of Pisa and Fondazione Sistema Toscana (“Tuscany System Foundation”).

RICHES is a research project funded by the European Commission within the 7^th Framework Programme in the domain of Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities. Its main objective – enclosed in the project’s slogan «Recalibrating Relationships: bringing cultural heritage and people together in a changing Europe and finding new ways of engaging with heritage in a digital world» – is to reduce the distance between people and culture, recalibrating the relationship between heritage professionals and heritage users in order to maximise cultural creativity and ensure that the whole European community can benefit from the social and economic potential of Cultural Heritage.

Well-known experts, European and extra-European, will intervened as keynote speakers:

Neil Forbes of Coventry University (UK), Historian
Xiao Chun Situ of Beijing Youth Daily (RC), Artist and Reporter
Bill Thompson of BBC (UK), Media and Technology Expert
Karol Borowiecki of University of Southern Denmark (DK), Economist

Representatives from the project’s consortium (Coventry University from UK, Coordinator, Promoter Srl from Italy, Hansestadt Rostock from Germany, Stichting Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde from The Netherlands, Waag Society from The Netherlands, the University of Exeter from UK, Fundació i2CAT from Spain, Syddansk Universitet from Denmark, Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz from Germany, Turkiye Cumhuriyeti Kultur ve Turizm Bakanligi from Turkey) intervened too, presenting the RICHES research’s initial outcomes and introducing further survey prospects.

The public was moreover involved in a pleasant socio-cultural activity: a visit to the exhibition devoted to Italian artist and draftsman Tullio Pericoli, organised in the same venue as the conference, concluding with a welcome cocktail. Welcome coffee and catering lunch were offered to all the attendees.

For further info visit the conference’s website!

RICHES on Twitter: #richesEU

RICHES on YouTube: www.youtube.com/richesEU

Valletta, 25-27 November 2014

CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES: Workshop on User Requirements

An interesting Workshop will be hosted by the LIAS Department of the University of Malta as a combination of representatives of the CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES project* with other representatives of the community mostly from the local cultural heritage scene.

The aim of the workshop will be to discuss requirements of the various stakeholders relevant to citizen science in cultural heritage institutions and suggest scenarios and use cases which will illustrate the methods of engagement with citizens, and the user interaction within the technological solutions used for the various research lifecycle stages.

The event is quite compact and aims to discuss the requirements to citizen science especially in the CH context; from this point of view sharing experiences by Cultural Heritage institution learned in the process on the requirements of specific stakeholders will be very useful and crucial.

The Workshop will host interventions by experts from relevant cultural heritage institutions. Experts that have confirmed their partecipation are: Fermín Serrano Sanz (University of Zaragoza, Spain), Catherine Thomas, Ghislain Sillaume (Centre Virtuel de la Connaissance de l’Europe – CVCE, Luxembourg), John Ashley Burgoyne (Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, The Netherlands), Lorna Hughes (National Library of Wales, UK).

The Workshop is organised by Prof. Milena Dobreva, head of the Library Information and Archive Sciences (LIAS) Department of the University of Malta.

More information and a full coverage of the event are available here

Download the Programme of the event here

* The CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES project is about the participation of citizens in research on cultural heritage and humanities. ICT are powerful drivers of creativity, but specific technical know-how is still generally lacking in the creative industries sectors. In addition, humanities scholarship is not yet taking full advantage of ICT to engage with wider audiences. New skills are needed to enable the cultural sector to grasp employment and commercial opportunities. The project aims to develop and validate a Roadmap for the use of e-Infrastructures to support the participation of European citizens in research on cultural heritage and digital humanities. Critically, the Roadmap will offer support for improved social cohesion arising from the sharing of knowledge and understanding of Europe’s citizens common and individual cultures. The project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration.

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