Digital meets Culture

the images testify the drama of the climate emergency, trying to raise awareness and awaken consciences on the theme of global warming and climate crisis

Accelerazione Pericolosa, photographic exhibition about climate change

After the first display at the Museo Piaggio in Pontedera in early 2022, the exhibition by photographer Fabrizio Sbrana entitled +2° Accelerazione Pericolosa (Dangerous Acceleration) was rearranged with a new format at the Museum of Natural History of the Mediterranean in Livorno, between 8 November 2022 and 8 January 2023.

Accelerazione Pericolosa is an exhibition dedicated to the theme of climate change. The exhibition is composed by 30 large photographic panels complemented by a video that shows over 300 more pictures. It represents the reinterpretation of Sbrana’s reportage photographs shot during many travels around the world, from the 1980s to the present day: from Zambia to Italy, from Brazil to Spain, from Ethiopia to Iceland passing through Tunisia and Namibia, the images testify the drama of the climate emergency, trying to raise awareness and awaken consciences, to “educate, empower, involve, mobilize and keep the light on the very urgent issue of global warming”.

[Show as slideshow]

The dangerous acceleration of climate changes means the increasingly worrying speed with which they occur: two degrees Celsius higher in temperature – compared to that at the beginning of the industrial era – is the limit that must not be reached, as it would produce devastating effects on the Earth, the oceans, the atmosphere and ecosystems. And Sbrana shows the crumbling glaciers and the lakes which have become crusts of salt, the poors in a desperate search for water to survive, and other effects of the climate crisis witnessed by landslides, floods, coastal erosion, floods, drought.

image Fabrizio Sbrana

In facts, the Nobel prize for chemistry Paul Jozef Crutzen and the biologist Eugene Filmore Stoermer proposed the term Anthropocene (article here, p. 17) to indicate our geological era dominated by the humans who imprinted territorial, structural and climatic changes. To govern such man-induced stress, global and sustainable and environmental management is needed in a worldwide dimension; however, each one of us can make an important contribution to achieving this goal, with small daily gestures and also promoting the development of a collective ecological awareness.

This exhibition is an opportunity to contribute to reflections around a theme of the climate change that is dramatically in focus nowadays, so to participate in the collective awareness-raising process that must accompany the concrete actions of governments, institutions and businesses.

Press Release (Italian language; PDF, 400 Kb)

Download the exhibition catalogue (PDF, 9 Mb)

the new project, started in January 2023, complements efforts in creating a common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage

EUreka3D: supporting the digital transformation of the cultural heritage sector

image CC-BY-SA Europeana/drawing Jeroen Meijer

The EUreka3D project, co-funded by the Digital Europe Programme of the European Union, addresses the growing need of enabling the digital transformation of the Cultural Heritage (CH) sector, in line with and complementing the scopes of the common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage. The digital transformation comes from a decades-long process of basing museum (and also in general Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums-GLAM) operations on solid information-sharing infrastructures, forcing an overall rethinking of the underlying work processes and business models. However, not all institutions have achieved the same level of maturity towards the new digital environment they need to embrace, and despite the covid19 crisis which acted as an accelerator of the process for nearly everyone in the sector, much work still needs to be done especially for smaller Cultural Heritage Institutions (CHIs).

image from European Commission website

The vision of a European Data Space for Cultural Heritage as a participatory playfield for all the actors involved (cultural institutions, technology partners, multidisciplinary experts, creative industry, scientific researchers, end-users) moves in the direction of modernizing workflows and digitization capacity of the cultural heritage sector at large, and requires CHIs of any size to enter the challenge of advanced digitization (especially 3D digitization in high-quality), holistic representation of CH information and re-use approaches. The existing services of the Europeana.eu platform is a good starting point to support sharing and re-use, but an integration with more advanced, powerful and safe services is needed to answer to the demand of small institutions, as well as modern workflows and increased digital capacity are requested on the side of CHIs.

In this light, EUreka3D project focuses on improving the digital capacity of the cultural sector by offering a knowledge centre and a service and resource hub, based on a smart technical infrastructure whose services are registered on the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). CHIs can access a virtual space of knowledge, can use storage and computing resources to manage their 2D and also 3D assets. Following the Recommendation 1970/2021 issued to Member States by EC, CHIs are in facts also called to improve efforts in meaningful 3D digitization, which they may not be fully acquanted with yet. A cloud-based and safely-authenticated environment as developed by EUreka3D will make it easier and more accessible for CHIs to create, manage, archive, preserve and share digitised objects, with a particular focus on 3D digitization and knowledge modelling for the semantically enriched 3D records.

3D model of Asinou church, courtesy of Cyprus University of Technology

The project will engage a variety of CHIs in a piloting action that will set-up and test dedicated cloud-based services for the management and preservation of cultural contents in a safe and IP-mindful environment. The pilot will also generate high-quality 3D digitization of selected items and their related para-/metadata ready to be harvested into Europeana, and perform their aggregation and publication online, also to provide exemplification of few cases for use and re-use in unique areas such as Education.

On top of that, the project will focus on the capacity building of the human resources of the museums and CHIs and develop unique training materials for the 3D digitisation, processing, preserving on the cloud and harvesting in Europeana, as part of a network effort, and by offering dedicated consultancy, webinars and training. Impact assessment and mindful sustainability planning will complement the effort of the project in enabling a long-lasting contribution to the digital transformation of the sector.

The main purpose is to learn from peers and acknowledge the best practices, their progress and their challenges in cultural tourism and beyond.

Be.CULTOUR webinar series in 2023 – first event on 24/2/2023

The Be.CULTOUR project, focused on enhancing enhancing cultural heritage and landscape values for sustainable cultural tourism, is launching a new series of webinars to boost peer learning among its Community of Interest and other followers. Various experts and on-field stakeholders will be invited to present and discuss their innovative ideas, their progress and their challenges concerning cultural tourism and beyond. The main purpose is to learn from peers and acknowledge the best practices from the field: where the challenges lay and how to face them.

The innovative and comprehensive approach to the cultural tourism sector, combined with the replicability of practices and co-creation methodology, is the added value of Be.CULTOUR webinars. The webinars are not only intended for the scientific community and policy-makers, but also for civil society and all other interested followers.

Given that recently Be.CULTOUR and INCULTUM established a cooperation agreement for cross-dissemination and knowledge exchange, the webinar series will be promoted also via the INCULTUM Training Portal and in the INCULTUM network.

The first event of the series is entitled “Circular cultural tourism: the role of Heritage Innovation Networks for co-creation and communities’ empowerment”, and is organized on 24 February 2023. The webinar will explain how to bring together expert and local knowledge to let “hidden” cultural resources emerge and be recognized and fully exploited as a driver of local development, community empowerment and innovative entrepreneurship through circular cultural tourism.

Registration is accessible from https://becultour.eu/becultour-webinars

The list of all other topics addressed includes:

Understanding the European value of cultural heritage: Power of networks – 24 March 2023
Innovative solutions for circular cultural tourism – 21 April 2023
Values-based innovative marketing for less-known cultural tourism destinations – May 2023
Community-led and innovative entrepreneurship for circular cultural tourism – June 2023
Creative tourism and the role of arts, interpretation and storytelling – September 2023
Circular economy implementation in the tourism sector – October 2023
Innovative finance for circular cultural tourism – November 2023
Smart data management for circular cultural tourism assessment and monitoring – December 2023

Relevant information will be published in due time on the website of the project here.

Be.CULTOUR stands for “Beyond CULtural TOURism: heritage innovation networks as drivers of Europeanisation towards a human-centred and circular tourism economy”. It expresses the goal to move beyond tourism through a longer-term human-centred development perspective, enhancing cultural heritage and landscape values.

Read more about the project in the official website: https://becultour.eu/

Pisa (Italy), 23-24 January 2023

EUreka3D project opening event

Europeana.eu awareness raising and training

EUreka3D is a project funded by the Digital Europe Programme of the European Union, to support the digital transformation of the cultural heritage sector, by offering capacity building and training, and new services, to Cultural Heritage Institutions facing the challenge of advancing in the digitization effort, especially in 3D digitization, access, storage, sharing.

The kick-off meeting was organized by the project coordinator PHOTOCONSORTIUM in Pisa on 23-34 January 2023, hosted at the Museo della Grafica. On the first day, the kick-off meeting served to partners to review the workplan and align tasks and activities. The Project Officer Mrs. Kyriaki Tragouda (HaDEA) also participated with an introductory talk.

On the second day, two additional events were organized in hybrid form, including a awareness raising and training session about Europeana, with nearly 80 participants either on site and online; and a networking event with the sister projects currently funded by the EC with a focus on 3D, AI and Europeana.

Kick-off meeting of EUreka3D partners

Monday 23rd January – Kick-off meeting (partners only)

Tuesday 24th January – Training Workshop and Networking (hybrid)

9.30 – 11.00: Europeana.eu, sharing digital cultural collections and fostering reuse: awareness and training session – in collaboration with Europeana Foundation – the slides presented by the speakers are available HERE.

11.00 – 12.30: Networking session of DEP projects involved with 3D digitization, capacity building and tools

Funded in the Digital Europe Programme, the project helps big and small institutions to build capacity on digital transformation

EUreka3D project starting 1st January 2023

3D digital creating, by Situ Xiaochun

The project will offer a capacity building and knowledge programme, next to services and resources developed in a piloting action based on smart technical infrastructures and tools, also registered on the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). This virtual space will allow cultural heritage institutions to use storage and computing resources to manage their 3D assets, which will give smaller institutions an affordable and simpler way to digitise, model, manage and share 3D records.

Additionally, the project will aggregate and publish a variety of high-quality 2D and 3D digital records in Europeana.eu website as well as offer clear examples for the use and reuse of the cultural content in neighbouring areas such as tourism and education. Finally, it will support institutions by developing training material for 3D digitisation, data processing and publication on Europeana.eu as well as organising training activities to support cultural heritage institutions with the use of the virtual space. The project will perform an impact assessment to enable the sustainability of the virtual space.

The kick-off meeting is organized by the project coordinator PHOTOCONSORTIUM in Pisa on 23-34 January 2023.

EUreka3D factsheet:

Project’s name: European Union’s REKonstructed content in 3D
Grant Agreement nr: 101100685
Start date: 01/01/2023
EU Grant: 999.754,50 Eur

The project runs for 24 months and is led by PHOTOCONSORTIUM, International Consortium For Photographic Heritage (Italy).

The other members of the consortium are:

Cyprus University Of Technology (CUT), Cyprus
Centre for Image Research and Diffusion (CRDI) Girona, Spain
Bibracte, France
Museo Della Carta Di Pescia, Italy
Europeana Foundation, The Netherlands
EGI Foundation, The Netherlands
- Academic Computer Center CYFRONET AGH, Poland

In preparation for 2024, a special issue of Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism attempts to advancing understanding on spatiotemporal behavior in tourism

Locating Consumption: Spatiotemporal Methods Advancing Tourism Behavior Research

Upcoming in mid-2024, a special issue is organized in the Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, in line with the scope of INCULTUM project and as part of the Swedish Pilot team and our collaboration network “MBT- Mapping the Beaten Track” activities, from the respectable publishing group Taylor and Francis.

The journal takes an interdisciplinary approach including, but not limited to geography, psychology, sociology, history, anthropology, and economics. SJHT encourages research based on a variety of methods, including both qualitative and quantitative approaches.

The journal covers all types of articles relevant to the Nordic region, as well as the North Atlantic, North Sea and Baltic regions, but reviews and conceptual articles with a broader geographical scope are accepted, that clearly enhance the theoretical development of the hospitality and tourism field. Published articles are the result of anonymous reviews by at least two referees chosen by the editors for their specialist knowledge.

Locating Consumption: Spatiotemporal Methods Advancing Tourism Behavior Research

Understanding the scope and consequences of tourism flows is a key challenge for researchers, planners and place marketers alike. In order to mitigate harmful effects of tourism and the uneven distribution of visitors, we need to advance our views on how, why, when and where individuals move in a certain destination. Since the rise of mass tourism, scholars and practitioners have attempted to develop models to assess visitors’ real-time mobility and spatiotemporal consumption in popular tourism places, but scientific progress mostly concerned conceptual approaches (Lew & McKercher, 2006).

In the past decade, an increasing number of scholars adopted new technologies (GPS-tracking, crowdsensing devices, GIS, mobile phone data, electrodermal activity sensors, etc.) to map, visualize and nudge tourist consumption in real time (among others, Shoval & Ahas, 2016; De Cantis et al., 2016; Domènech et al., 2020; McKercher et al., 2019; Hardy et al., 2020; Toger et al., 2021; Sciortino et al., 2022; Altin et al. 2022; Waleghwa & Heldt, 2022). However groundbreaking, the majority of these studies are based on small samples and focus on urban settings. There is still a lack of theoretical corroboration and systematical (longitudinal or cross-sectional) comparisons to better harness the innovative potential of geolocational methods. Furthermore, the majority of these studies are targeting day visitors and certain segments (e.g. cruise tourists or recreational shopping), while only few studies are conducted in rural and wilderness contexts (for a notable exception, see Hardy & Aryal, 2020).

This special issue attempts to fill this gap by curating conceptual, empirical, experimental, and comparative case research advancing our understanding on spatiotemporal behavior. We welcome contributions from different disciplinary perspectives, including, but not limited to: mobility studies, consumer behaviour, behavioural geography, behavioural economics, destination governance and sustainable tourism management). Relevant papers will focus on:

New, empirically grounded research informing the conceptual models of spatially mobile consumption, representing diverse geographical, social and ethnic contexts
Longitudinal and/or comparative studies across and beyond the Nordic countries (also including periurban, rural and peripheral contexts)
Methodological innovations, progressing spatiotemporal research design and multimodal data collection (GIS, eyetracking, EDA and sensory metrics, participatory and smart data)
Methodological innovations combining of data of different modalitites and new analytical approaches (e.g. stop analysis, rhythm analysis, visualizing densities and intensities, etc.)
Mapping of mobility conflicts among different groups and practices (commuting, recreational, residential and tourist mobility)
Affective dimensions of mobile consumption (e.g. street rage, anxiety and thrill), incl. place-specific moods and sensory modalities
Health risks and contagion mitigation in postpandemic tourism mobility
Interventions, crowd management and nudging experiments to alter tourism flows

Open call for artists, deadline 15th March 2023; Festival to take place in October-November 2023

International Festival Of Art, Theatre And New Technologies “The Wonders Of Possible” 2023

Between October and November 2023, Kyber Theatre organises in Cagliari (Italy) the 10th Edition of the International Theatre, Art and New Technologies Festival called “The Wonders of Possible”.

LMDP Festival is the first of this kind in the whole Italy. Its aim is to promote the interrelation between artistic and technological languages.

Kyber Teatro – spin off of L’ Aquilone di Viviana (theatre and new technologies company, LMDP Festival creator and manager), addresses to Italian and International artists, emerging and not emerging companies and/or artists, an Open Call to submit their projects about “Interaction between theatre and new technologies”.

Who can attend

We encourage applications from artists at all stages of their careers.

The participation is open to:

Artists and Companies of every nationality
emerging companies and under 35 artists
not emerging companies and artists of every age
to who works individually or in a group of maximum 3

Eligible projects

Theatre and new technologies plays
Art and new technologies performances

Application : deadline the 15^th of MARCH 2023

The theme of LMDP Festival is the interrelation between theatre, arts and new technology.

The application must contain:

Artist’s CV;
Detailed description of the project (in PDF);
Technical rider;
Selection of max 5 photos;
Link audio / video material (Vimeo or Youtube).

Application materials must be sent by the 15^th of MARCH 2023, to the mail: info@kyberteatro.it

The result is going to be notified only to selected projects by the 1^st of MAY 2023.

Economic conditions

The winners of the Open Call will have guaranteed the full coverage of the costs for mobility (flight travels, board and accommodation in Cagliari) and an “attendance fee” for the presentation of their performance for 2 evenings. If possible, we will cover also any material required for the presentation of the performance / show / play (it will be subject to agreements with our technical director).

Publication

Applying for the call, the artists must provide a short biography and an abstract of the project and they agree that the material related to the project could be published on the Festival website and/or presented to the press for promotional purposes.

Archiving process

Artists authorise Kyber Teatro – L’aquilone di Viviana to present their work, to store the material and make it accessible through the Festival’s website. All rights to the artwork and images will remain to the artist. The Organization is also entitled to document the event in all its phases through audio recordings, video or images.

Website: https://www.kyberteatro.it/en/festival/

calling all artists experimenting with hybrid artistic practices at the boundaries of the performing and digital arts

Open Call for Artists: Little Islands Festival 2023

The Festival that connects the Aegean landscape and nature with Audiovisual Arts, Little Islands Festival (LIF) is addressing an open call towards all artistic communities experimenting with hybrid artistic practices at the boundaries of the performing and digital arts.

Can a small island be a source of inspiration for modern thought?

The 5th Little Islands Festival invites artists from the field of new media to submit proposals that engage with ecology, anthropology, and science in the enduring dialogue about the relationship between humanity and nature. The island frontier, which like life itself emerges from the liquid element, becomes the principal space for exploring modern contradictions of human geography through art.

In the Cyclades, Nature’s symbols and archetypal patterns -from habitation and cultivation to the need for connection with the sacred, indicated the human imprint on space. Natural constraints imposed by climate and geomorphology led human creativity to capture the “unpretentious”, the “primary” and the “essential” as a claim to the ”necessary”, composing a landscape that mirrors the islanders’ culture, history and values.

In this traditional rural landscape, which seems like it has remained unchanged, contemporary socio-cultural and economic transformations are reflected today. Hyper Tourism, climate change and globalization, as imprinted on space, emphasize the interdependencies between rural-urban and local-global. Yet, at the same time that they tend to erase legacies of the past, they contribute to their re-emergence.

With the power of art and technology, Little Islands Festival explores these interdependencies to rethink life, work, and cohabitation. The cycle of nature becomes the field of understanding and emergence of an imaginary that connects sense, mind, and knowledge and articulates what seems to be missing: an ecology as a common practice and under common control, multicultural, diverse and transcendent of the “human” world we live in.

Indicative fields of research

Site specific projects that explore cultural heritage in relation to the natural environment of Sikinos and the Cyclades in general: windmills, threshing floors, rural dwellings, dry stone walls, terraces, sacred and archaeological sites.
Works inspired by traditions, rituals, myths, customs in conversation with nature.
Works that explore movements and directions such as: Environmental Sociology, Eco-anarchism, Ecofeminism, Eco-communalism, Deep Ecology.
Artistic practices with an emphasis on participation.
Artistic workshops for children and adults on environmental awareness.

Included in the open call is the LIF Residency and Research Program 2023 where participants will be hosted in Sikinos island to create works inspired by the natural and cultural landscape of the island.

Proposal Categories

AudioVisual Performance – Silent Film & Live Soundscapes – Sound Art – music – Installation – Virtual Reality – Augmented Reality – 3D Projection Mapping -Site Specific Art – Workshops, Residency.

For more information and the application form: https://littleislandsfest.com/open-call-2023/

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#ecology #nature #environment #NewMediaArt #ART #digitalart #immersive #artist # sustainability # festival #cosmos #local #cyclades #sikinos #LIF # HumanGeographies

The book tells a path of participation and human-urban regeneration activated by the Municipality as part of Volterra 2022 Tuscan City of Culture

“L’Altra Volterra” presented at Palazzo dei Priori: a territorial exploration

Volterra, studied by UNCHARTED as a main case of WP5 experimental and demonstrations, returns to be talked about as a place where culture and participation meet, this time in the trace of urban regeneration.

The occasion was the presentation of the book “L’Altra Volterra: un’esplorazione territoriale tra attesa e rigenerazione” hold on on the 9th of December 2022. The volume tells the participatory process promoted by the Municipal Administration of the city of Volterra in 2021, with the support of the Tuscany Region, in continuity with the Human Regeneration project conceived for the candidacy of Volterra as Italian Capital of Culture. The process aimed at creating the context conditions favorable to the activation of a process of territorial regeneration through the rediscovery and reactivation of the underused or abandoned material heritage present in the municipal territory and the construction of possible strategies for its re-appropriation by the local communities.

The book, written by the professionals of Avventura Urbana srl, company that took care of the participatory process, according to the Mayor and the Councilor “represents a reference for the reconstruction of the collective history of Volterra and its territory” thanks to the restitution “analysis, lived stories, collective memory, suggestions, emotions and possible projects of human-urban regeneration: giving meaning to Volterra visible through the invisible Volterra”.

The presentation was attended by the authors of the book, Maddalena Rossi and Giulia Fiorentini, the Councillor for Participation of the Tuscany Region, Stefano Ciuoffo, and the Councillor for Cultures of the Municipality of Volterra Dario Danti.

To learn more see the news in Italian language of Il Tirreno – Pisa.

The analysis involves the use of quantitative and qualitative data from official statistics, as well as novel data collected through innovative data collection processes.

Sharing the intermediate findings of INCULTUM Data Analysis

It is now available in the project’s website the recently released D3.2 Intermediate findings presentation for Data Analysis, an extensive document which provides apreliminary results of data analysis focused on the 10 Pilot cases study areas in INCULTUM project. We focus on three key areas that help us to establish a pre-pilot baseline: pre-pilot data collection by the pilot partners, pre-pilot trends in urban and regional development and tourism, and identification of proposed control regions.

This deliverable was curated by Data Analysis WP leader SDU and presented findings from before the pilot phases for destinations where innovative approaches are introduced and for the proposed control regions. In particular, we discussed the data collection processes being implemented on the pilot level, we illustrated the urban and regional development and tourism activity of the pilot regions, and we presented the proposed control regions that will be used as a counterfactual to shed light on the short- to medium-term effects of the pilot actions.

We also outlined a number of challenges faced during the completion of the deliverable. We identified a number of issues related to data availability, as well as the impact of COVID. We also outlined a number of challenges that we may face as we progress with the remainder of the working package tasks. Where possible, we have discussed solutions
to these challenges and ways that we may turn these challenges into opportunities.

The full deliverable can be consulted from this page along with all the other public deliverables produced in the project.

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