Digital meets Culture

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.

Brussels, 11 December 2014

European High Level Conference on “Education in the Digital Era”

The Digital Era is changing the ways we interact between us, the ways we work… and for sure, the educational world. Traditional ways of teaching and learning are being transformed, and key challenges should be addressed to exploit the technologies potential on learning as well as to ensure that the young generations have the required digital skills and competences.

The European High Level Conference on “Education in the Digital Era” brought together interested stakeholders to discuss the opportunities and challenges of adapting education to a fast changing, digital society and economy, whilst shaping education’s place and priority in the EU’s sustainable growth agenda.

The event was organised around 3 main key themes:

Increasing the quality and relevance of learning. How can we make learning more interactive and connected through digital means, responding to learners’ individual needs and goals? (materials around this topic here)
Increasing the impact of educators. How to unlock the potential for a more personal and effective interaction with students? (materials around this topic here)
Addressing inequalities through better access and lower cost. How to ensure digital access to the best content, resources and teachers (materials around this topic here)

The discussion around these topics was intensified through an online debate. The main positions and inputs of the different participants in the panels were available to the audience ahead of the event through the event website, allowing to start the discussion and engage with the addressed issues ahead of the conference itself. At the same time, the debate can be followed on Twitter through @OpenEduEU and the hashtag #EdDigEra.

As stated at The NMC Horizon Report Europe: 2014 Schools Edition, European schools are facing key challenges linked to the impact and use of new technologies:

Alongside the debate, participants were also be able to visit and experience a replica of European Schoolnet’s Future Classroom Lab, a glimpse at some of the most recent developments in learning technologies. During the lunch break, the award ceremony of the Open Education Challenge took place. The winners showed the potential of entrepreneurship and innovation in education.

Limassol, 3 November 2014

CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES presented at EUROMED 2014

The Project Coordinator, Mauro Fazio and the Technical Coordinator, Antonella Fresa recently kicked-off the Civic Epistemologies project.

Mauro Fazio from the Italian Ministry of Economic Development, Civic Epistemologies Project Coordinator, presented the project at the workshop “The Digitization Age: Mass Culture is Quality Culture. Challenges for Cultural Heritage and Society“, organised by Promoter Srl in the framework of the EUROMED 2014 Conference in Limassol, Cyprus.

The presentation started on the project’s objectives and expected outcomes, focusing in particular on the benefits that the project can bring to the economic development. The project develop and validate a Roadmap for the use of the e-Infrastructures to support the partecipation of European citizens in research on Cultural Heritage and Digital Humanities.

The paper submitted presents CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES as one of the most important projects currently active in the DCHH domains.

Download here the presentation of CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES.

For more information on the workshop please visit this article.

Limassol, 3 November 2014

PREFORMA presented at EUROMED 2014

Peter Pharow from Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT, PREFORMA Design Phase Leader, presented the project at the workshop “The Digitization Age: Mass Culture is Quality Culture. Challenges for Cultural Heritage and Society“, organised by Promoter Srl in the framework of the EUROMED 2014 Conference in Limassol, Cyprus.

The presentation focused on providing the audience with a general overview of the project’s aims and objectives and of the PREFORMA Challenge, highlighting in particular the lessons learnt from the preparation of the procurement and the main challenges for the design phase which has just started.

Download here the paper that has been published on the Conference Proceedings “Digital Heritage. Progress in Cultural Heritage: Documentation, Preservation, and Protection”.

Download here the presentation of PREFORMA.

For more information on the workshop please visit this article.

The association born as a spin-off of Europeana Photography project is now officially open

Celebrating PHOTOCONSORTIUM

The great experience of the Europeana Photography project is near to its end: the project is finishing on 31st January 2015 with a big closing event in Leuven. But the end of the project is nothing else than what it is: the end of the EU-funded project. The group of partners of Europeana Photography consortium strongly intends to stay together also beyond the EU-funding period, to build upon the results of the project and sail away for new opportunities related to the cultural value of photographic heritage.

For this reason, in Bratislava on 6th November 2014, just before the opening ceremony of the photographic exhibition Teatralny Svet, realized by the slovak partner Divadelny Ustav with a selection of photos digitized for the Europeana Photography project, the group celebrated officially the opening of PHOTOCONSORTIUM International Consortium for Photographic Heritage. The new body, in the form of an association, has the purpose of promotion and enhancement of the culture of photography and the photographic heritage.

The association has democratic structure, political independence and unlimited duration. It is a not for profit association, which intends to promote and organizes conferences, exhibitions, awards, training courses, publishing activities; to carry on and encourage research and studies; to promote initiatives in the interests of its members, collect data and provide consultancy.

The 18 members who joined the association in Bratislava are honored with the status of Founding Members, and constituted the first General Assembly of the association.

By acclamation, were nominated Fred Truyen as President and Antonella Fresa as Vice-president.

Photoconsortium already has a web address: www.photoconsortium.com, to be enriched shortly with full information of the association and its initiatives.

Two papers, a presentation and two technical workshops

Europeana Photography at ICA Girona 2014

ICA congress 2014 was a major event organized by Europeana Photography partner CRDI / Ajuntament de Girona. That was a perfect occasion for project’s dissemination towards an international and very valuable audience, and several partners attended it.

Two papers were submitted about the project, by Antonella Fresa and Valentina Bachi (Promoter) and by Frederik Truyen and Sofie Taes (KU Leuven).

The project was presented during a session dedicated to early photography, chaired by Fina Solà and including as speeches:

Fascismo, Guerra y Fotografía: la mirada de la nueva España, by Juan Alonso Fernández, Aleix Purcet Gregori (ES)
Creating a global online archive of Photography – the challenges, by Julia de Mowbray (EN)
Europeana Photography: photography as a privileged witness of our shared past 1839-1939, by Frederik Truyen (EN)
Adecuación de la descripción archivística de documentos fotográficos a los estándares internacionales by Darcinele Sena Rezende; André Porto Ancona López (ES)

The Conference papers are published in the Girona Municipality website http://www.girona.cat/web/ica2014/eng/comunicacions.php#top

The articles related to Europeana Photography can also be downloaded here:

Digitising, discovering and valuing European photographic heritage – A. Fresa, V. Bachi (Promoter) – PDF, 393 Kb

“All Our Yesterdays”: Europeana and the Phenomenology of Photographic Experience through the Framing of Digitization – F. Truyen, S. Taes (KU Leuven) – PDF, 572 Kb

Moreover, a dedicated workshop held by Nacha Van Steen (KMKG) was aimed to explain the skosified vocabulary created in the framework of the Europeana Photography project. the workshop was delivered in two sessions, one in English and one in French and in total there were 37 people registered.

Programme of the workshop (English): PDF, 317 Kb

Photos: Jordi S. Carrera, Ajuntament de Girona

Barcelona Theatre Institute, 10-11 November 2014

Workshop on co-creation, distributed performances and alternative content for the big screen

This workshop, co-organised by the Foundation i2CAT, the Government of Catalonia and the Theatre Institute of Barcelona, examined the gradual adoption of technological environments in the performing arts and how the expanding of bandwidth have given rise to new forms of creative expression and space for experimentation and new business models for performing arts, reaching other spaces such as movie screens and cultural institutions with the distribution of high-definition content.

During two days, international and local representatives, experts and creatives presented the technological tools and shared their experiences, focusing on the evolution of distributed environments, creative hubs and cultural broadcasting. The programme was developed considering the artists and technicians interested in co-creation. Representatives from different cultural and academic institutions in Europe (England, Italy, the Netherlands and Catalonia among others) met to share experiences, establish synergies and explore future collaborations.

Among the speakers who participated, the workshop included Robert Delamere, co-founder and creative director of Digital Theatre; Giovanni Cozzi, President at Rising Alternatives; Andy Lavender, University of Surrey; artist and performer Marcel·lí Antúnez and Sarah Whatley, dance professor and director of the Centre for Dance Research (C-Dare) at Coventry University in representation of the European project RICHES.

The RICHES project explores a looming tension derived from a lack of custodianship based on the traditional methods of archiving. There is the risk that digital CH may be mislaid or lost, yet at the same time more people assume the role of archivists and work with their own collections of cultural content, thus having a stake in how cultural content is made available; immediate access, re-use and reproducibility are more important to them than sustaining access to the more static/stable records of the past. Also the ease of transmission and reproduction brings increasing opportunities for content providers including cultural institutions to create new market opportunities. This new political economy in relation to digital records of CH is an important part of the Riches research project.

The workshop was specially designed and focused on the changes occurring in performance-based CH as a result of novel possibilities made available by digital technologies and its main objective was to bring together researchers, professionals and practitioners to share their experiences and knowledge and experiment with low latency virtual and shared environments to conduct future remote performances. Thanks to the technology made available by i2CAT Foundation, participants in the workshop had the opportunity to reflect on how to distribute performance based cultural heritage content through ultra-fast wired networks and to evaluate what benefits could be brought for their dissemination and preservation. Thanks to dedicated training sessions on the usage of UHD technologies and advanced network infrastructures provided by partner i2CAT and afterwards, through the realisation of a set of experiments and co-creation sessions, these activities will bring higher level of knowledge and open a wider range of possibilities to accomplish with the main goals defined by RICHES project and also enhance cooperation with external entities in order to enrich and better spread the results obtained.

Check out the workshop’s program here.

This workshop was organised within the framework of the European project SPECIFI that promotes the creation of a European Ring Creative Cities and Regions smart with the participation of European projects also Visionair, RICHES and eIeC. SPECIFI is funded under the CIP, Competitiveness and Innovation framework programme, which aims to promote the use of Future Internet infrastructures for the promotion of culture and creativity in the Smart Cities with the objective to capitalize the cultural and creative richness and diversity that emanates from European cities.

For further info:

Foundation i2CAT; Government of Catalonia; Theatre Institute of Barcelona; SPECIFI;

Visionair; eIeC

Use the hashtag #richesEU to join the RICHES community on Twitter

Subscribe to the RICHES Project YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/richesEU

computer games are more and more aknowledged as an artistic and creative medium

A famous painting inspires a videogame: nice initiative of Victoria&Albert Museum

Strawberry Thief is one of UK artist William Morris’s most popular repeating designs for textiles and it is housed at Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Award-winning designer Sophia George behind new iPad app – photo source independent.co.uk

The game designer Sophia George was invited by the V&A to select a design classic from its collection to create a videogame. In this free iPad game, the Strawberry Thief fabric becomes the backdrop for a challenge which enables the user to sketch and colour the famous pattern by flying a bird – the strawberry thief itself – across their iPad screen.

Computer games are more and more aknowledged as an artistic and creative medium that blend elements of many traditional practices – including pure art, animation, character design, architectural design, music and much more. During 6 months residency of Sophia at the Museum, she also did a lot of public engagement, inviting a variety of audiences to experience and participate in the creative process of game design.

“This project at the V&A has opened my eyes up to the possibilities of what games design can show. I am keen to look at more work by other famous British artists and designers and see what kinds of games can arise!” says Sophia in the V&A blog.

In the game, you have to use the Strawberry Thief bird to collect strawberries which enable you to paint. First you start with a blank piece of paper where you sketch the pattern. Once the pattern is drawn out, you can start to add some basic colours to the piece. Finally, richer colours and texture are added to finish the design. To control the bird’s movement, you simply draw lines on the touchscreen and the bird will follow your path.

The game is available for free download from the app store.

Read more about this story:

http://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/artists-residence-va/the-strawberry-thief-ipad-game

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/vas-game-designer-in-residence-releases-game-based-on-william-morris-strawberry-thief-9814456.html

important dissemination action towards the NEM - New European Media community

E-Space at NEM Summit and General Assembly

The NEM Summit, organised every year since 2008 by the NEM Initiative in close cooperation with leading industrial and academic players worldwide, is the “not-to-be-missed” annual event for all those interested in Future Internet developments and in the fast paced evolution of the networked and electronic media industry.

The presentation of E-Space was during the “Expression of Interest” session during the NEM General Assembly. This session provides an opportunity to introduce to the entire NEM community relevant activities and collaboration opportunities. Prior registration is mandatory and a selection is made by the organisers.

The presentation given by partner IN2 introduced the Europeana Space project, giving some details on the Dance Pilot and stressing the various ways in which it is possible to collaborate with the best practice network. Finally an invitation to attend the first E-Space conference in Venice was made. Flyers about the conference were made available. The presentation followed the speech of James Morley from Europeana, complementing it nicely.

The event was attended by EC representatives (DG Connect), researchers, industry, broadcasters, SMEs and creative industry, SME cluster representatives, venture capital firms and business angels.

Presentation by Alex Stan (PDF, 2.6 Mb)

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