Digital meets Culture

The European Grid Infrastructure is supporting the expanding array of digital cultural resources

How EGI is supporting digital cultural heritage

by Steve Brewer, EGI

EGI.eu, the not-for-profit organization that manages the European Grid Infrastructure is participating in EuroMed 2012 in Limassol, Cyprus in order to bolster its involvement in the Cultural Heritage research community as well as glean further insight into future directions in this dynamic and fast expanding field. The rapidly growing collections of digital cultural resources and the associated research have rapidly transformed this field into a data-based science. It is therefore appropriate that an e-Infrastructure explores what offerings there are that meet the requirements of cultural heritage researchers. In order to make progress with this objective, EGI must work with the key players from the Ministries of Culture and cultural institutions such as museums, libraries and archives to learn more of their needs whilst at the same time understanding the big picture for ICT in Cultural Heritage research including the broader European Union perspective.

photo from EGI Technical Forum 2012

The EuroMed 2012 conference is a large event that brings together a wide range of experts from across the field of DCH coving both interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary research on both tangible and intangible Cultural Heritage. Of particular interest is the use of cutting edge technologies for the protection, preservation, conservation, large-scale digitalisation as well as the visualization and presentation of the Cultural Heritage content. The scope of the event covers both practitioners and policy makers which should contribute to the awareness-raising aspect of the event as well as the future direction of activity.

The rapid shift in working practices within DCH has occurred as a result of many independent initiatives. EGI.eu is committed to reaching out the DCH community by promoting the benefits of the Infrastructure as well as helping to tailor services to this community’s particular needs. The European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) is a federation of computing resource providers set up to support collaborative and innovative research projects from all fields of science. EGI supports over 20,000 researchers from 15 different disciplines in their intensive data analysis. Expanding the user base, in both absolute numbers and diversity is a key priority for the sustainable future of the e-Infrastructure. EGI is therefore keen to engage with researchers working in the humanities, a community that is currently under-represented in the EGI ecosystem.

photo from EGI Technical Forum 2012

In addition to coordinating access to the computing resources and data storage provided by the EGI community through open source software solutions, international scientific communities can draw many benefits from a strong partnership with EGI. Benefits that include an open process to improve its user community oriented services, workshops and forums to collect and refine community input, help and support on resolving specific technical issues, as well as involvement in the evolution of EGI’s production infrastructure.

The prime scope of this collaboration with the Humanities in general and DCH in particular is to research, construct and operate services for the arts and humanities. Key areas of collaboration include: long-term data storage and availability, the curation of datasets, hosting and monitoring of middleware services, and authentication and authorisation services. In addition to on-going interaction with the DARIAH, CLARIN, DASISH projects, EGI is a partner in the DCH-RP project which will deliver a Roadmap for Preservation for the DCH community. EGI.eu is leading the running of Proofs of Concept tests which will demonstrate the progress and opportunities in this area and will bring together resources from the NRENs and the commercial sector as well as EGI and the traditional DCH sector. Work to date in the Cultural Heritage sector by EGI has included the ASTRA project led by DANTE using EGI resources which has been able to recreate the sound and feel of old musical instruments, such as the barbiton, or the epigonion last heard in Ancient Greece. The research is multidisciplinary and uses archeological remnants and document analysis as a base to reconstruct the sounds of the instruments via physical modelling techniques. The method is very useful to resurrect old acoustics, but it is also computing intensive since the complex models of the musical instruments are solved by integrating differential equations numerically. By using grid computing, the ASTRA team was able to run digital signal processing algorithms in reduced times.

photo from EGI Technical Forum 2012

EGI is tracking trends in the field of Cultural Heritage research as far as possible in order to identify opportunities where integration and support for the infrastructure that supports researchers in this field can be addressed. Many of these e-Heritage initiatives cover the Asia-Pacific region including China and Australia. Google, too, has made an impact with its bold move to digitise many of the world’s texts under the Google Books Library Project.

EGI provides significant added value to multi-disciplinary, collaborative research in Europe through its e-Infrastructure and services. This ensures that researchers have access to uniform and reliable computing resources, enabling faster scientific results and avenues of multi-disciplinary research otherwise not possible and guarantees an integrated, reliable and uniform service provided across organisational and national boundaries thanks to the monitoring and operational services.

Official website: www.egi.eu

In Poland there is a museum, entirely dedicated to photography, to be discovered.

Museum of History of Photography in Krakow MHF

by Hubert Francuz and Marta Miskowie , Museum of History of Photography in Krakow

Founded in 1986, the Museum of History of Photography is the only museum in Poland entirely dedicated to photography. It is located a 15 minutes’ walk from Krakow’s main square in a historic villa built at the beginning of the 20th century. The museum runs a number of departments and holds a variety of different events. The main scope of the museum’s activities at present is exhibitions, education and digitization. In each of these fields we are planning and implementing actions in accordance with the MHF mission which emphasizes improving the availability of its collection through a variety of media.

Exhibitions next year will be entirely dedicated to the idea of “opening”. We will be organizing three complex events presenting never-shown-before parts of our collection. Two of them will concern photography and one will be dedicated to old cinematographic equipment. The exhibition program for 2013 has been designed not only to show the diversity and richness of our collection, but also to be a strong statement, understandable and approachable for visitors.

Photo from Limanowa village, Poland, Klementyna Zubrzycka-Bączkowska.

As mentioned, MHF is particularly interested in implementing and developing high profile digitalization processes. Since 1997 the museum runs its own website and constantly adds more records to its digital catalogue. Since 2010 we have been sharing our collection via an online catalogue. The Internet catalogue built for MHP was one of the first of its kind in Poland. Right now more than 40,000 records with the metadata are available, of which 14,000 are images.

Musill family and Kosiński family in Zakopane, Poland, author unknown, 1927.

An important step in achieving such good results and taking digitalization to the next level was the participation of a program founded and supported by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Since 2010 the MHP Department of Digitization has been offering a more and more professional approach to issues related with reproducing vintage photographs.

Although digitization is a very important part of our work, the real treasure is our collection. It includes a large number of portrait-atelier pictures from the 19th century, photographs documenting the civil engineering projects in the Eastern Europe, and social and historical events. The museum also owns an interesting collection of amateur photography taken by unknown authors. This amateur photography, as one the most fascinating phenomena in western culture, has a unique place in our collection.

Construction of the Vistula-Danube canal, Poland, author unknown, ca. 1912.

As a partner of the “Europeana Photography” project, the Museum of History of Photography will make 3,000 images available via the “Europeana” portal. An important part of our contribution will be our collection of autochromes, which is the oldest colour photography technique. Such valuable slides are extremely rare in Polish collections. The Museum houses a collection of 193 autochromes taken by Tadeusz Rząca, photographer and entrepreneur. Images show historic sites in Krakow and Tarnow, street scenes, foothills and the Tatra Mountains. In “Europeana” we will also be showing small groups of different object, which give almost complete picture of our whole collection.

We are very happy to work with international partners. Europeana Photography is a great chance for our collection to be noticed by a wide audience all over the world.

Museum website: http://www.mhf.krakow.pl/

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Siracusa, 21-26 October 2012

Scanning of Siracusa Theater Reflects Italy’s ATHENA Week

from Dr. Marwan Asmar (Chief Project Editor of Ancient Theatres Enhancement for New Actualities-ATHENA Project)

The 3D laser scanning of Sicily’s Siracusa Theater taking place between 21-26 October 2012, is a major event within the ATHENA Project of the Ancient Theaters Enhancement for New Actualities.

“The Siracusa digital surveying is part-and-parcel of the scanning being carried out in all the ATHENA sites, and is in parallel to the scanning currently going on of the Cherchell and Tipaeza by a Jordan team of surveyors from the Department of Antiquities,” says ATHENA Project Manager Nizar Al Adarbeh. “This will lead to the collection of raw data to be used for the protection and long-term sustainability of ancient theaters in the Euromed region,” adds Al Adarbeh.

The Siracusa scanning is the result of networking between ATHENA Project Amman and the Dipartimento di Storia dell’Architettura, Restauro e Conservazione dei Beni Architettonici e stato of the Sapienza Universita di Roma (Department of History of Architecture, Restoration and Conservation of Heritage, Sapienza University of Rome).

A full team from the Dipartimento di Storia in Rome is hence performing the scanning that is part of a “ATHENA Week” aimed at improving the general knowledge and creating awareness of ancient theaters in the Euromed region.

As with other scanning made in the theaters of Merida (Spain), Petra and Jarash (Jordan), and Carthage (Tunisia) the profiling and documentation activity is accompanied by the training of local professionals officials and students on the latest digital technologies to improve and protect the state of ancient theaters in that region of Italy.

“This is the fourth ATHENA Week after the full activities made in Spain, Jordan and Tunisia, and we are following suit to strengthen the links between the theater, its history, functions and use” says Italian Project Leader Dr Carlo Bianchini.

The six-day activity, which ends in a final conference for dissemination and discussion, is made in cooperation with the Department of Antiquities/ATHENA Project, Jordan, Parco Archeologico di Siracusa (Archaelogical Park of Siracusa, Sicily), Dirección Regional para el Patrimonio Cultural (Regional Direction for Cultural Heritage) and the Centro Regionale per il Restauro (Regional Center for Restoration).

view all articles related to Athena Project

A unique museum in Denmark to witness the Danish welfare society

The Workers’ Museum: Home to History

The Workers’ Museum and The Labour Movement Library and Archives were merged in 2004, and the institution today consists of both a museum, an archive and a library open to the public.

Arbejdermuseet, The Workers’ Museum

The Workers’ Museum, which opened in 1982, shows exhibitions on everyday life of the workers’ and the labour movement’s history primarily in Denmark, but with an international perspective. The museum has both topical and historical exhibitions as well as exhibitions on art history.

: The coal storage of the Workers’ Federation’s Fuel Firm at the Copenhagen docks, 1930s

The Workers Museum collaborates with other museums in several European exhibition projects, as well as Nordic and Danish exhibition projects. The Workers’ Museum is both an art museum and a cultural history museum. From the early days in 1982 when the collections did not contain a single exhibit and until today, the Workers’ Museum has generated holdings of 63,000 museum exhibits and 12,000 works of art.

Among the exhibitions, the museum features a brand new interactive installation “Under Our Own Roof – The Workers’ First Assembly Hall 1879-1983”, to bring alive the story of the workers’ first assembly hall in Denmark. Through touchscreens visitors can interact with 18 short films that tell the story of the building and the many activities that have taken place here through more than 100 years.

: Working-class children in the backyard of Fredericiagade 59, Copenhagen, 1905

The Sørensen-family exhibition covers the period from 1885 to 1990, and follows the journey of a working-class family from life in rural Denmark to Copenhagen at the time of the turn of the 19th century. The point of departure for this exhibition is an original 1915 flat, and it shows how the family lived its life – in everyday circumstances and when something special was afoot.

The flat is a two-roomed flat in which the living room faces the street and the bedroom and a narrow kitchen face the backyard. Virtually no alterations had been made to the flat and its appearance since 1915 when the family originally moved in. The proprietors, particularly Mrs. Yrsa Sørensen, always took great care to ensure that nothing was changed. The original varnished pinewood floors are still there, and moving any of the furniture it is evident that everything has always been in the same places, as the floors are totally untreated in the places where the furniture has always stood – the floors have simply been varnished around the furniture. Yrsa’s heirs then donated the flat and everything in it to the Workers’ Museum and it can now be exhibited as an example of a general worker’s home in the early years of the 20th century.

: Åge Fredslund Andersen. Fitter at the face lathe, Sabroe Machine Works, Århus, Denmark, 1934

The Workers Museum’s exhibition about the 1950s depicts the living conditions of a working-class family in the years following the Second World War. Despite shortages and rationing this period heralded a new time to come: families had more money to spend and the consumer culture, heavily influenced by American ideals, gained ground.

The Labour Movement Library and Archives

The Arbejderbevægelsens Bibliotek og Arkiv (The Labour Movement Library and Archives) was founded in 1908 and has for more than 100 years collected documentation on the Danish labour movement in all its branches. The Original photo collection counts approximately 3 Million photos. The largest collections are the press collections from the social democratic newspaper Socialdemokraten (later: Aktuelt) and the communist newspaper Land og Folk. In addition, there are large photo collections from the trade unions and private persons. The collection contains many portraits mostly of prominent Danes, but also internationally famous people, and photos of almost every aspect of life among ordinary people.

In 2007 the photo archive began a digitization and registration of the photos in a database. Registration takes place in an adapted format of the library registration program which is also used in registration of archives. All materials can be searched by simultaneous searches in the system. There are now digitized and registered 40.000 photos in the database. The photos are enriched with metadata and keywords to speed retrieval of images. The photo collection delivers photos partly for our own exhibitions and publications, but is also used widely by publishers, museums and film and television stations. The photos are also used for research and teaching. The photo archive works closely together with photo collections in other archives, museums and libraries.

: Åge Fredslund Andersen. Home killing, Denmark, 1930s

EuropeanaPhotography project

The Workers’ Museum and Library is one of the partners in the EuropeanaPhotography project, planning to provide about 25.000 images from the 1870s until 1939 taken by many different photographers (among others Mogens Voltelen, who documented important cultural events in the thirties, such as Berthold Brecht’s exile in Denmark, and Åge Fredslund Andersen, whose photos show the transition from agrarian to industrial society).

EuropeanaPhotography will then enriched with contributions about important persons and events in the Danish labour movement, recurrent activities of the labour movement, such as demonstrations on May Day and on the Constitution Day, important events in the international labour movement history, such as the congress of the Second International in Copenhagen in 1910, life in factories and workshops, leisure activities, changes in urban life, housing and living conditions.

Official website: www.arbejdermuseet.dk

Download the leaflet: PDF, 314 Kb

Address: 22 Rømersgade, 1362 Copenhagen K, Denmark, Tel: +45 33 93 25

Opening hours: All days 10.00 – 16.00

Ancient Greek and Roman epigraphs going digital. A BPN that is going to start in early 2013

EAGLE, Europeana network of Ancient Greek and Latin Epigraphy

As Greek and Latin are the origin of European Culture, EAGLE is the Best Practice Network that brings together some of the most prominent European institutions and archives in the field of ancient epigraphy, to provide Europeana with the critical mass of quality-oriented content.

Classical Greek and Latin culture is the very foundation of the identity of modern Europe. A variety of modern subjects and disciplines as practiced today have their roots in the classical world: from philosophy to architecture, from geometry to law.

Epigraphy is characterized by 3 peculiarities, that EAGLE aims at touching:

The first one is that, as a field of study, classic epigraphy has evolved into three strictly separate disciplines, i.e. Greek, Latin and Christian epigraphy, characterized by separate collections and corpuses used for reference, separate publications, separate populations of scholars and researchers.

The second one is that inscriptions have traditionally been featured in geographically-separated archives, with the result that various inscribed documents that should be collated because of thematic or historic commonalities are often scattered across multiple collections. All these factors have so far seriously hindered research.

The third one is that, given the nature of the archives, their disjointedness and the lack of available translations, ancient inscriptions have for the most part remained the preserve of the specialist, and their enjoyment by the general public has been impossible. This is true for schools as well, whose history syllabi would benefit from the possibility of accessing inscriptions online.

EAGLE will improve the study of epigraphs in several ways:

aggregating the major epigraphic collections in Europe in a large, integrated online repository of ancient inscriptions, as part of Europeana;
mapping metadata from the various partner archives into a common intermediate format, which will enable customized EAGLE-specific services, as well as ease the job of mapping into the proper formats as requested by Europeana;
providing an easy-to-use content management system for epigraphic archives and institutions;
providing tools for automated metadata extraction harvesting and enrichment; the rich metadata will also enable cross-linking by specialists;
providing and curating a comprehensive set of metadata which include translations of the most important texts, so as to make epigraphic texts available for the first time in large quantity to the general public;
providing an infrastructure for extending the scope of translations, in the form of a wiki, which will enable specialists to add translations in other European languages even after the project expires;
providing a multilingual and not OS related “Flagship Mobile Application” for users of Smartphones to enable them to get information about one visible inscription by taking a photo and sending it to the EAGLE portal for recognition and for accessing the associated information in EAGLE;
providing a “Flagship Storytelling Application” to enrich, contextualise and link the epigraphs to one another and with other related information available in Europeana’s Linked Open Data cloud, thus contributing to reconstruct the thematic and historic commonalities between different inscriptions that are scattered across multiple collections;
establishing a Best Practice Network for the upkeep of the above common global resource, committed to its further expansion by attracting both new institutions and experts, and thus effecting the collaboration and interdisciplinary approach which have so far been lacking in epigraphy;

The EAGLE BPN represents a community of research institutions documenting the most recent progress in the study of Classical Epigraphy.

By aggregating digital content from unique and authoritative collections in its domain, the BPN brings together a significant quantity of information about ancient writings on ancient artifacts to the wide Europeana audience, thereby enhancing the quality of the historical experience and stimulating discovery in primary source materials never disclosed before to users on such a large scale.

In terms of broader goals, the aims of EAGLE are:

to enrich Europeana with a new type of content which is totally missing now and which can provide additional insight and knowledge about the roots and the development of the European culture;
to attract tourists and mobile users to Europeana, who will be able to access quickly info and translations pertaining to inscriptions of interest; thus, to establish a new community of mobile users revolving around access to inscriptions;
to provide specialists and Classical Greek and Latin culture enthusiasts (epigraphists, curators, researchers, students, etc..) a new unified resource and with rich metadata sets available as Linked Open Data in order to make the most of it;
to support the above community services through a dedicated ICT infrastructure.

Visit the Eagle website for more information on the project.

Pisa was invaded by hundreds of people. Sold out for the workshops.

The Internet Festival just closed: numbers from a success.

Over 65.000 people connected to the official channels for 2012 edition of the Internet Festival: Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, direct streaming and Internet site.

During this international event, that was held in Pisa from Thursday 4 to Sunday, October 7, about 30.000 unique visitors reached the website www.internetfestival.it and 11.770 people became fans of the Facebook page (which exposed the festival to a potential pool of more than 4 million people!). The festival was one of the top 5 most twitted events in Italy. During the festival 11.000 new users have registered to the city wifi network (Wifi Pisa and Serra)

These are the numbers for the Pisa event, which hosted 400 speakers, involved in over 150 events – including 107 meetings, 40 workshops, four exhibitions – in 22 locations (12 of which were connected live streaming on intoscana.it) .

Pisa was invaded by hundreds of people, and registered most of the events sold out; over 3.000 babies and families enjoyed the morning labs while over 2.500 people were present at the evening events “Impossible Interviews”.

The Festival confirmed to be an international event with a strong foreign presence in high technology conferences and meetings from Galileo to Jobs, and with very valuable speakers from all over the world, from China to Brazil, from Canada to France, from England to the United States.

In four days, the festival reminded Steve Jobs, paid tribute to Alan Turing – the scientist who invented artificial intelligence – talked about music and downloads with Italian pop singer Daniele Silvestri, and about open data on the Internet with the expert Salvatore Iaconesi.

Moreover, the Festival talked about the Internet and politics, economic crisis, public administration and information, daily life of new applications for smartphones. Sold out for the workshops, even the morning ones for children, where children had fun with the game conference – including the “Gates vs. Jobs. The War of the bit. ”

The festival presented over 10 start-up projects of young people under 30, gave visibility to the success of the webseries, discussed the limits of democracy on the web, on the future of books, the Arab revolutions and privacy at the time of the smartphone. And Wikipedia, Treccani and Encyclomedia themselves had to discuss about the future of the encyclopedia.

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DCH-RP will drive the dialogue among DCH institutions, e-Infrastructures, research and private organizations, to integrated their efforts into a common work

A new project for e-infrastructures dedicated to digital cultural heritage in Europe

Digital Cultural Heritage – Roadmap for Preservation

Digital Cultural Heritage Roadmap for Preservation is a Coordination Action supported by EC FP7 e-Infrastructures Programme, which will be adding more concrete results in the specific area of the digital preservation of cultural heritage.

It includes 13 partners:

5 National Authorities in the cultural heritage sector;
3 European Associations;
4 E-infrastructure providers;
1 SME.

The main objectives of DCH-RP are:

to harmonize data storage and preservation policies in the DCH sector at European and international level
to progress with the dialogue among DCH institutions, e-Infrastructures, research and private organizations
to establish the conditions for these sectors to integrated their efforts into a common work
to identify the most suitable models for the governance, maintenance and sustainability of such integrated infrastructure for digital preservation of cultural content.

The main outcome will be a Roadmap for the implementation of a preservation e-infrastructure for DCH, supplemented by practical tools for decision makers and validated through a range of proof of concepts, where cultural institutions and e-infrastructure providers will work together on concrete experiments.

DCH-RP Roadmap is intended as the first instance of the Open Science Infrastructure for DCH in 2020.

DCH-RP will establish a practical liaison among the participants to the project that can represent a model of cooperation also for the rest of the sector. It will start with its thirteen partners, will then move to the 20 ‘external partners’ from Europe, Taiwan, India, Malawi, USA and South America who have already expressed their intent to participate to the study with the aim, eventually, to become pan-European and global.

digitalmeetsculture.net project manager, Antonella Fresa, has been appointed as Technical Coordinator of the project. Technical coordination is provided for the achievement of general project objectives, to coordinate and facilitate the work of the project. Quality assurance and internal evaluation will be provided as well. Dissemination tasks of the DCH-RP project will be supported through digitalmeetsculture.net.

The kick-off meeting of the DCH-RP project took place in Rome on October 8th 2012, hosted by Coordinator ICCU Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico.

Related documentation:

DCH-RP: The EU Partners and contributors met for a full day meeting in order to plan and start the project activities (Rosa Caffo) (Roma, kick-off meeting, 08/10/2012)
Overview of the Workplan and Project Management (Antonella Fresa) (Roma, kick-off meeting, 08/10/2012)

ATHENA 3D Technology for ancient theaters

ATHENA 3D: digital training in Jordan for ancient theaters.

from Dr. Marwan Asmar (Chief Project Editor of Ancient Theatres Enhancement for New Actualities-ATHENA Project)

The use of digital technology has become important for the preservation of heritage and culture. In the ATHENA Project of Ancient Theaters Enhancement for New Actualities 3 D technologies have become part-and-parcel in the work actions to halt the progressive decay whilst inducing sustainability of these age-old ancient structures.

The acquisition of the latest laser scanner and total station by the Department of Antiquities (DoA) in Jordan as part of their leader role in the collective consortium of Italy, Tunisia, Algeria and Spain, is helping to conserve ancient theaters in the Euromed region by profiling and documenting them as well as providing the necessary training.
“The top-of-the-art scanning technologies have been essential as a way for more effective documentation and to halt the progressive decay of these ancient theaters because these are precision instruments that allow you to detect the minutest of cracks in different facades and profiles,” says ATHENA Project Manager Nizar Al Adarbeh.

As part of the ATHENA spirit of cooperation two DoA surveyors completed their training on the new technologies under the direction of an Italian team from the Dipartimento di Storia dell’ Architettura, Restauro e Conservazione dei Beni Architettonici e stato of La Sapienza University. Soon after they started to use the equipments to scan, document and analyze the collected data of the different archaeological sites in Jordan.
In addition to Petra and Jarash which they have trained on and collected enormous amount of data, surveyors Jamal Safi and Tawfiq Al Hunaiti scanned and documented the UNESCO World Heritage Site Qusair Amra, Umm Qais and Tell Emari as well as many others in the Kingdom.
“We have done much work in the digital scanning of very important sites in the Kingdom, and now these are documented and ready to be used for restoration purposes,” says Jamal Safi, who together with Al Hunaiti received the final part of their training in data analysis in Rome in March 2012.
As well as digital profiling, the two-man team under the direction of the ATHENA Project in the DoA also began holding training workshops as a means of spreading the knowledge and knowhow about these new technologies’ acquisitions to professionals involved in restoration works.

The first training was held at the Amman Odeon in the downtown area between 19-24 May, 2012 for 17 members of staff of the different sections of the Department of Antiquities to allow them to become familiar with the new technologies as these are very important tools in the process of documentation.

The second training session was held in Amman Roman Theater between 2-4 September, 2012, for 16 staff from the different DoA directorates in Jordan, coming from as far as Karak in the south of the country, mid-Jordan Valley, Amman and from the north including the Irbid, Ramtha, Ajloun and Al Qoura areas.
These training workshops were made in two parts. The “theoretical” side was carried out in the DoA auditorium were trainers Al Safi and Hunaiti talked about the equipments and importance for documentations and archaeological preservation. At this stage the trainers demonstrated the different functions and uses of the laser scanner and total station and allowed participants to examine them.
The practical side of the workshop training was in the field. “This was the case in both the Odeon and Roman Theaters training in Amman where participants took part in actual scanning and surveying of different facades and structures,” says Tawfiq Al Hunaiti, adding they began by actual sketching of the facades, photography and then the actual scanning on the machines.
“We wanted to hold these workshops because the ATHENA Project believes the staff and employees will benefit from knowing about the new technologies in the DoA to be used for restoration and cultural heritage,” says Al Adarbeh.
Although the participants were small in number, they include managers and administrators, curators, archaeological inspectors and lab technicians, carefully chosen across the board from these archaeological directorates some of whom cover many sites in their particular region which means they can tell the other managers and officers working in the field about these high-level equipments that can be used for conservation purposes.
“As professionals working in archaeological conservation and heritage, we need to know about new technologies to help us in our work,” said Khaled Al Zyout, conservation inspector in the Ajloun Archaeological Directorate which covers 220 sites in the north of the country and who attended the Amman Roman Theater training.
The Curator of the Saraya Museum in Irbid Alia Khasawneh is on-board as well. “From what I heard and practiced, these equipments seem to be very effective for conservation, and I am already wondering about the possibility of them being used to scan our museum since it is a very important Ottoman building,” she said.

The new laser technologies are already being practiced within the ATHENA collective. Al Safi and Al Hunaiti and Italians Luca Senatore and Chiara Capocefalo from Sapienza University completed the scanning of Carthage Theater and its amphitheater in late June/early July 2012 and the Jordanian team will be scanning the Cherchall and Tipaza Theaters in Algeria in mid-October.
The new technologies are part of the EU-funded ATHENA Project and is under the Euromed Heritage Program 4.

These new technologies provide for very effective ways for the preservation of heritage and culture in the Euromed region and goes to sustain these ancient theaters for many generations to come.

More information:

Athena Project Official Site

See Digitalmeetsculture related article on Athena Project

Pisa, 6 October 2012

Meet the Media Guru in Pisa: Beth Coleman

During the Internet Festival in Pisa (4-7 October 2012), a special edition of Meet the Media Guru event will take place at Cinema Teatro Lux, Saturday 6th October 6 pm – 8 pm, free entrance. Meet the Media Guru is an initiative born in 2005: a programme of meetings with international leaders in digital culture and innovation, aimed at both the professionals and the generale public.

Special guest of the Pisa event is Beth Coleman, one of the most prominent voices in new media culture. Professor Beth Coleman researches and creates media design on virtual worlds, x-reality, geofilms, machinima animation, and race as technology. She is teaching in the fall on transmedia storytelling/ARG design, geolocative media, and the history of media and technology.

Her most recent book, Hello Avatar, provides a comprehensive look at contemporary uses of virtual world and augmented reality platforms. It addresses the recent (2004-2008) public interest in virtual worlds— three-dimensional interactive online platforms— that has moved the subject beyond research lab and niche-user communities.

Hello Avatar walks the reader through several virtual world platforms, giving the book’s audience a first-hand experience of this new medium.

The event will be live streaming on www.intoscana.it, and www.meetthemediaguru.org.

Further information:

Beth Coleman’s officiale website: http://cms.mit.edu/people/bcoleman/index.html

Meet the Media Guru official website: http://www.meetthemediaguru.org/ (italian language)

Internet Festival official website: www.internetfestival.it

See Digitalmeetsculture article for the event

An interesting 3D digital exhibition in Singapore.

3D exhibition: the mysterious Liao Dynasty of Inner Mongolia

For the first time in Singapore, China’s archaeological findings unveil the mysterious tomb of the Liao Dynasty in the Tu Er Ji Mountains. This significant discovery represents the Khitans’ influence and prominence in Inner Mongolia.

Embark on an exciting journey through a 3D digital exhibition of cultural relis back to the past and discover the wonderful culture and history of one of the most important lost dynasties in Chinese History: the Liao Dynasty.

3D digital Relics Exhibition

12-21 October 2012, Jurong Regional Library, Singapore

The exhibition closed on October 21 and hosted a special talk about the Herotage of the Khitans.

The talk was performed by Mr. Tala, Director of Inner Mongolia Museum, Vice-Chairman of China and Inner Mongolia Archaeology association, Professor cum Lecturer at various universities and expert in the studies of the Khitan tribe.

More information here.

Download the Exhibition Poster (JPG, 1 Mb)