Digital meets Culture

an upcoming LabDay of the WEAVE Capacity Building series will be dedicated to dance research together with project coordinator prof. Monica Dantas from Brazil

The Eva Schul Archive: Constructing Dance Memories in the Southern Brazil

text by Mônica Fagundes Dantas, UFRGS and Rosa Cisneros, C-DARE Coventry University.

Carne Digital: Arquivo Eva Schul (Digital Flesh: The Eva Schul Archive) is a digital dance archive about the life and work of choreographer and teacher Eva Schul, consisting of texts, documents, photographs, and videos provided at Lume – Digital Repository of Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. The archive also contains a Library of Digital Movements, developed through the digitalisation of movements from Eva Schul technique, using motion capture. The Eva Schul Archive is part of the Research Project “Digital Archives in Performing Arts: building memories and technological innovation” and has been developed at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), at Porto Alegre, Brazil. Eva Schul Archive won the “Açorianos” Dance Award 2021 in the category memory. The prize is given from the City of Porto Alegre/Municipal Department of Culture.

The digital archive is organized in sections whose titles refer to Eva Schul’s choreographies. In the corner of time/Biography; How to catch an instant/Choreographies; Metamorphosis/Teachings and Creation Process. It also presents the history of the Ânima Companhia de Dança and the Library of Digital Movements.

In an upcoming Capacity Building WEAVE LabDay, the general coordinator of the archive Professor Mônica Fagundes Dantas will join us to explore some open questions around dance and archives. We will look at themes such as:

How do we give visibility to the works/archives outside of Europe/North America; the questions related to language (English as lingua franca)
How do we recognise the social and the personal in the archive? How much can we access the lived experience of social subjects through archival material when the subject might be untraceable or deceased and what is the role of archives in this?

The Eva Schul Archive will be central to this LabDay.

In the current phase, there are three choreographies available, representing different moments in the choreographer’s career: Um Berro Gaúcho (1977) created to the Grupo Mudança; Catch ou como segurar um instante (2002), and Acuados (2016), both created with Ânima Companhia de Dança. By the end of 2022, the cataloging of ten more choreographies is planned.

In 2021 Eva Schul completed 73 years of age and 58 years of dance life, from which stands out the pioneering in contemporary dance teaching, the creation of more than 100 choreographies, the dissemination of creation procedures based on improvisation and collective actions, the training of artists of national and international projection, pioneering the teaching of dance at university, working in management roles and setting up environments for the practice of dance and the arts, and the foundation and maintenance of Ânima Cia. De Dança that carries nearly 30 years of existence.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Eva Schul continues to teach her dance classes in virtual mode. Unafraid of the body limitations in front of a computer, Eva Schul demonstrates some sequences that she creates for her students in Brazil, and for those who are isolated abroad. In 2021 she also developed a project entirely online, that brought together three dance companies and independent artists in a cast of more than 20 dancers, who were challenged to dance and create choreographies from their own homes.

The elaboration of digital archives in dance must consider the contexts of globalization and the needs of products fabrication that meet the social and cultural demands of Brazil. In this sense, the development of the Eva Schul Archive should be an example of how Brazilian dance practitioners can appropriate technologies for their own benefits, contributing to the construction of memories of the Brazilian scene and expanding the understanding of the cultural role played by the performing arts in Brazil.

The project has been developed with a small budget from CAPES Foundation/Ministry of Education/Brazil, that permits to engage undergraduate and PhD students to work on the archive. The Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul provides access to the Lume – Digital Repertory and hosts the archive on their web system. The Library of Digital Movements is being developed in partnership with Locomotion – Laboratory of Biodynamics/School from Physical Education, Physiotherapy and Dance School/UFRGS.

Team

General coordination: Professor Mônica Fagundes Dantas, PhD

Assistant coordination: Professor Suzane Weber da Silva, PhD

Consultancy: Eva Schul

Digital organization and cataloging: MS Verônica Prokopp

Conception and website creation: Pedro Rocha

Librarian/Reviewer: Ana Griebler

Library of Digital Movements

Assistant coordination: Professor Aline Haas, PhD

Assistant researchers: MS Fellipe Santos Resende, MS Daniel Silva Aires

The European TexTOUR project

How can cultural heritage, tourism activities and local communities be integrated in a sustainable way to improve deprived areas in Europe?

The EU-funded project TexTOUR, Social Innovation and TEchnologies for sustainable growth through participative cultural TOURism, aims to co-design sustainable cultural tourism strategies and policies with the goal of producing social and economic benefits in deprived areas in Europe and beyond while preserving tangible and intangible cultural heritage.

To achieve its goals, the project sets up Cultural Tourism Labs at eight pilots located within and outside Europe. The selected pilots have different and complementary characteristics, they face multiple social, economic and environmental challenges. These enable the project’s experts to develop a wide range of scenarios: inland and coastal areas, rural and urban, deprived remote or peripheral areas.

The pilots:

CRESPI D’ADDA, Italy . The best-preserved company town in Southern Europe
NARVA, Estonia, Russia. A post-industrial district on the border between Estonia and Russia
UMGEBINDELAND, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic. Home to half-timbered houses
VIA REGIA, Ukraine, Belorus, Poland, Germany, France, Spain. A symbol for European unification
TREBINJE, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia. Embracing the potential of Balkan diversity
TARNOWSKIE GÓRY, Poland. Historic silver and lead post-mining facilities
VALE DO CÔA – SIEGA VERDE, Portugal, Spain. The most remarkable open-air ensemble of Palaeolithic art in Europe
ANFEH – FIKARDOU, Lebanon, Cyprus. Two heritage jewels placed between sea and sky

In order to integrate cultural heritage, tourism activities and local communities in a sustainable way, the project has several socio-economic, scientific and technical objectives. Among these:

identify the challenges linked to the promotion of cultural heritage
demonstrate that cooperation between regions and countries can encourage cultural tourism development and socio-economic growth
set out sustainable cultural tourism strategies
create a platform in which to gather the generated knowledge to support policy makers and practitioners in assessing cultural tourism strategies and services and test it in the selected pilots
create an adaptable inclusive and modular investment strategy
understand how cultural tourism can promote local socio-economic development
create an overarching, inclusive and modern European identity based on a network of local identities

The main impacts to which it aims:

propose new policies and strategies on cultural tourism as well as sustainable business models with public-private-people partnerships
preserve Europe’s cultural identity, including minority cultures.

To learn more about the project: the leaftlet and TExTOUR website

a cooperation agreement for synergies and stakeholders outreach between projects in the area of sustainable cultural tourism

INCULTUM and TExTOUR join forces

Cultural tourism is about managing cultural heritage and tourism in an integrated way. It’s about working with local communities to create benefits for everyone involved, and this helps preserve tangible and intangible cultural heritage while developing tourism.

It is a common goal that INCULTUM and TExTOUR projects have peculiar ways to address, and for this reason a collaboration agreement was recenty established between them.

TExTOUR is an EU-funded project which co-designs pioneering and sustainable cultural tourism strategies to improve deprived areas in Europe and beyond. It also includes a variety of pilots with diverse and complementary characteristics, which enables the project’s experts to develop a wide range of scenarios for inland and coastal areas, rural and urban, deprived remote or peripheral areas, facing multiple social, economic and environmental challenges.

More about this project: https://textour-project.eu/

The collaboration between the two projects is expected to generate mutual exchanges and benefits and to boost outreach to stakeholder communities in Europe and beyond.

discussing the WEAVE LabDays' engagement with communities in the series dedicated to research methodologies and methods in dance practice

WEAVE mentioned in the ResDance Podcast series

text by Rosa Cisneros, C-DARE Coventry University.

ResDance Podcast series, curated by Dr. Gemma Harman, Senior Lecturer in Dance and Dance Science, Dance Department at the University of Chichester, is a podcast dedicated to research methodologies and methods in dance practice, intended for educators, students, practitioners and performers and interdisciplinary researchers curious to learn more about dance research in action.

All episodes can be heard at the following link. Please feel free to use the link as you wish and in your own work/resources:

ResDance Podcast: https://anchor.fm/gemma-harman

ResDance Series episodes brought together a number of leading thinkers and researchers in the field of dance. A full list can be found below. WEAVE’s partner Rosa Cisneros was a guest on the series and in her episode discusses the WEAVE LabDay methodology and her research with communities. You can listen here: https://anchor.fm/gemma-harman/episodes/ResDance-Episode-9-Collaborative-ways-of-working-e1ci5n5

Enjoy the other episodes all freely available on the ResDance Podcast channels:

Episode 1: Researching Site Dance with Vicky Hunter
Episode 2: Choreographing and Performing with outdoor site with Virginia Farman
Episode 3: Evolving methods in dance research with Imogen Aujla
Episode 4: Dance Health Research with Bethany Whiteside
Episode 5: Dance Health Research: A person-centred approach with Ashley McGill
Episode 6: Reflections on interdisciplinary methodologies with Clare Parfitt
Episode 7: Documentation and digital tools in dance research with Rebecca Stancliffe
Episode 8: Dancing across Screen and in Popular Performance with Sherril Dodds
Episode 9: Collaborative ways of working with Rosa Cisenros
Episode 10: Embodied Inquiry with Nicole Brown & Jennifer Leigh
Episode 11: The intersections between practice and philosophy with Erin Manning

the WEAVE toolkit will be integrated in the Europeana platform to support digital heritage content aggregation, visualization and reuse

Europeana integration of the WEAVE tools, work ongoing

WEAVE project is currently developing a set of tools to support cultural heritage institutions for the activities of digital content aggregation and access. The toolkit consists of several open and reusable tools and technologies employing a mix of AI techniques, machine learning, natural language processing, big data analysis and innovative interface engineering. The tools allow professionals to more effectively store, manage and access 3D assets that have been digitised, and to annotate videos more efficiently. Additionally users can curate easily virtual galleries and virtual exhibitions that can contain a diverse mix of content (including 3D), and can in this way showcase the connection between tangible and intangible heritage. The curated galleries and virtual exhibitions can be accessed by end-users on different devices in more immersive and interactive ways.

These tools will be integrated in the Europeana platform to allow for offering better services both to content providers and to Europeana users. Discussions started since the beginning of the project about this task, and on 28th January 2022 more concrete plans were started during a dedicated online meeting that gathered together all the WEAVE technical colleagues.

The challenge at this phase of development is to find the easiest and more seamless way to integrate the various technical components to grant full compliance with the Europeana core service platform.

Discover the WEAVE toolkit: https://weave-culture.eu/weavetoolkit/

webinar by CARARE project, 17th February h. 12 CET

3D reconstructions for storytelling and understanding

This webinar explored some of the ways that 3D reconstructions are being used for story telling and to aid understanding. Two speakers gave short presentations:

Catherine Anne Cassidy, Open Virtual Worlds team, University of St Andrews, ‘Dissemination methods for 3D Historical Virtual Environments’
Daniel Pletinckx, Visual Dimension bvba, ‘Interactive Story Telling in Virtual Worlds’

The video recording on CARARE’s Vimeo channel: https://vimeo.com/678728267

The slides on CARARE’s Slideshare channel: https://www.slideshare.net/CARARE/3d-reconstructions-for-story-telling-and-understanding

Abstracts

Dissemination Methods for 3D Historical Virtual Environments – Virtual reconstructions are valuable assets for academic research, heritage visualisation and immersive learning. With continual growth of digital literacies and capacities of personal technologies, methods of engagement are as diverse as the scenarios for deployment. Restrictions to heritage have expedited creative responses for continual interaction, extending the potential of virtual reconstructions as part of museum dissemination. Catherine will discuss methods of informal learning through use cases of virtual reconstructions within remote, museum-based and at home scenarios.

Interactive storytelling in virtual worlds – The current state of the technology allows us to create fully interactive virtual recreations of the past and walk through them and interact with those environments in a very natural way. These worlds can be used by educators and guides to create virtual guided tours through these 3D environments and tell the stories of these historical sites for groups of people such as school groups or tourists, in the context of a museum or site. As the guide or educator is free to walk the virtual environment and adapt their story at will, the storytelling can fit with the interests or background of the audience. For individual visitors or families, an alternative approach can be provided through interactive objects that tell parts of the global story when touched or picked up.

Bios

Catherine Anne Cassidy is a PhD candidate in the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. She brings an interdisciplinary approach to the research group Open Virtual Worlds, which employs emergent technologies to create engaging interactive experiences for cultural and natural heritage organisations. Her doctoral research includes developing approaches to 3D digitisation that allows the value of digital heritage to be recognised while strengthening connections between heritage, its community and the museum through emergent technologies and their democratisation.

Daniel Pletinckx was trained as a civil engineer, with specialisation in information technology. He gained extensive experience in system design, quality assurance, digital image processing and synthesis, 3D and virtual reality through a career of 14 years in private industry, and has 25 years of international experience in 3D digital heritage. Currently, Daniel Pletinckx is the director of Visual Dimension bvba, an SME dealing with ICT based innovation in cultural heritage, education and tourism. Visual Dimension specialises in new, efficient ways for the creation of and interaction with 3D digital heritage assets. The company works for a wide range of European heritage organisations and is active in several European projects. Visual Dimension is a senior partner in 4CH, the new European Competence Centre for Digital Heritage, leading the VR Storytelling activities.

Craft-Hub: the EU project to investigate and document craft skills and processes

Craft in the context of cultural heritage

Craft Hub – the craft library, is a 3 years European project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme.

The project focuses on craft in the context of cultural heritage and its continuing relevance in contemporary practice.

The project activities involve investigation and documentation of craft skills and processes, and their different application in creative practice across Europe.

The goals of the project are:

create a digital repository in the form of a material library and multi-media content
address heritage concerns by exploring and documenting at risk and lost/ recovered craft skills and processes
identify cultural/transnational attitudinal differences to craft and to test the emerging repository

The program will be carried on through 42 transnational maker residencies, 305 days of outreach work, 1 festival, 7 exhibitions and 2 conferences.

The maker exchange residencies are a central part of the project. Between March and July 2022 Craft Hub will run a series of 5 day maker exchange residencies hosted by the project partners:

Carlow County Council – Ireland
UWTSD – Wales
Design School Kolding – Denmark
Universidade Nova de Lisboa – Portugal
Glasmalerei Peters – Germany
Materahub – Italy

Each residency will have a different theme inspired by the local cultural context, craft practices, expertise and techniques.

In order to explore the value of craft as a European cultural and artistic heritage and to underline the importance and the need to preserve skills at risk, the project has also developed the ‘talking about craft’ podcast series .
Here, podcasts on these topics will be progressively published; episode 1 is currently available where Craft Hub is presented.

Read more about the project at https://www.crafthub.eu/

registrations are open for this exclusive series of online events dedicated to cultural managers and heritage institutions

Europeana WEAVE events focusing on diversity and inclusion

A calendar of WEAVE events programmed for February-March 2022 has focus on capacity building. The effort is devoted to cultural heritage institutions and to cultural managers, professionals, students, researchers, and communities.

A series of Europeana WEAVE events is specifically focused to support a more diverse and inclusive cultural heritage sector. These are four exclusive capacity building events on the topics of diversity and inclusion, to get a better understanding and inspire each other on how cultural institutions can play their part in a more diverse and inclusive sector.

The four short events will be carefully planned and moderated by WEAVE partners with the support of Europeana Foundation. Dates are: 11, 18, 25 February and 10 March, h. 13 CET. The events are supported by a workbook that attendees can use for the entire series. The events series is an iterative process and, ideally, participants join all the events.

More information, details and registration available here: https://weave-culture.eu/capacity-building/

a WebGIS-based platform for the discovery and promotion of the cultural heritage in Emilia Romagna

Tourer.it expands with new itineraries about the city of Bologna

image sourced from tourer.it

Tourer.it is based on an interactive map of the Emilia-Romagna region, which localizes precisely architectural heritage and landscapes in the area, offering significant information on the sites that have been searched and pinpointed on the map. Thanks to the collaboration with CAI (the Italian Alpine Club), Regione Emilia Romagna (the Emilia Romagna Region), APT (the Office for Touristic Promotion) and the Atlante Nazionale dei Cammini (Atlas of Paths through Italy) it is possible to visualize the network of pathways throughout the region and discover which heritage sites can be found along a pathway or close by. There is also a selection of itineraries developed in collaboration with several associations active in Emilia-Romagna, such as the FIAB (Italian Federation of the Environment and Bicycle) and the TCI (Italian Touring Club).

The network of itineraries is constantly expanded with new proposals and pathways, such as the very recent itineraries named “Bologna Porticata” that promote a discovery on foot and by bike at the heart of Bologna city centre, and especially under the Portici, recognized as world cultural heritage by UNESCO in 2021.

image sourced from tourer.it

Tourer.it is an open system, a tool which aims at promoting cultural heritage by providing data that is constantly updated and can be enriched also by users who upload their comments, communications and photographs. In the very near future, travelers will be able to create their own itineraries based on their interests and favorite ways of travel (train, bicycle, on foot…). The platform has evolved from the Web based Geographic System (WebGIS) that was developed on occasion of the earthquake that shook Emilia Romagna in 2012 and has become instrumental for the day to day management of preservation of cultural heritage sites in the region.

Tourer.it has been developed by the Segretariato regionale del Ministero della cutlura per l’Emilia-Romagna (Regional Secretariat of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Activities and Tourism for Emilia-Romagna) and has been made possible by the “Ducato Estense” project, a project financed by the Ministry’s Culture and Tourism plan (“Piano Cultura e Turismo”).

Discover: https://www.tourer.it/?lang=en

Agreement between Pompeii contemporary art platform and Serpentine Galleries in London

Back to Earth: interconnected research, interventions and activities

text by Caterina Sbrana.

I proposed months ago to DIGITALMEETSCULTURE readers an article referring to a series of artistic initiatives at the Serpentine Galleries in London in which technology meets art, entitled “Arts Technologies at Serpentine Galleries“.

In Spring 2020, Serpentine and the Archaeological Park of Pompeii’s contemporary art platform, Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters launched a collaboration inviting three artists involved in the Serpentine’s Back to Earth project to share insights from their ongoing research which intersects with questions connected to archaeology, archaeobotany and archaeozoology.

To understand the importance of this collaboration it is first necessary to describe the Back to Earth project.

This is a screenshot of the Back to Earth Project, in the What’s on section of Serpentine home page: https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/

As we read in the presentation of the project: “Back to Earth is a new multi-year project that invites over sixty leading artists, architects, poets, filmmakers, scientists, thinkers and designers, to devise artist-led campaigns, protocols and initiatives responding to the environmental crisis, with the support of partner organisations and networks”. https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/back-to-earth/).

We can consider Back to Earth at the same time a program about change and a catalyst for change. Through art, exhibitions, discussions not only on climate change but to what is happening to the environment of which man is an inseparable part, Back to Earth becomes a complex web of interconnected research, interventions and activities.

Even if faraway in terms of physical-geographical space, Back to Earth and Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters are close to each other in their aims.

Within the virtual space of its platform, Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters does not physically introduce us to Pompeii, but aims to go beyond, uniting archaeology and modernity through finds that reveal the succession of civilizations with a common origin and the same destiny. What most interests me is the invitation for each individual to take an attitude not only of awareness through knowledge, but of constant commitment to the defense of cultural heritage “not only as a legacy of the past but also as a responsibility in the present”. (https://pompeiicommitment.org/en/portal/)

With this premise of intent we can immediately understand the sense of the agreement between Serpentine and Pompeii Commitment around the project Back to Earth.

In the portal pompeiicommitment.org it’s declared the purpose of the twelve months programs : “The proposed method of work connects the testimonies of catastrophes which have already occurred with contemporary scenarios of risk and regeneration, producing an episteme that practices the act of caring for cultural heritage not only as a “legacy” of the past but also as a “responsibility” in the present, and therefore as a “perspective” towards the future”.

Screenshot image from the Pompei Commitment that shows the sections; https://pompeiicommitment.org/collectio/

This new approach to archaeology, together with the opportunities offered by digitization and the internet can be a stimulus for the research of existing heritage and for the “creation of new possible and future scenarios, in a context which supports dialogues across generations, backgrounds and disciplines, and that is able to respond critically to the effects of a globalized and digitized society divided by lasting conflict, exposed to the multiple risks of self-destruction, and to the dynamics triggered by social inequality and discriminating access to both material and educational resources.” (https://pompeiicommitment.org/en/portal/)

Starting from these premises we can realize the topics around which Serpentine and Pompeii Commitment decided to collaborate, and among these it is possible to highlight the necessity to respond to the environmental crisis as well as to respond critically to the effects of a globalized society. To reflect on these important issues related to archaeology, archaeobotany and archeozoology, three artists have been involved: Tai Shani, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Tabita Rezaire. The projects of the first two artists were presented on 11 February and 18 February while the Rezaire project from 25 February to 3th March.

Screenshot image that opens the work of the artist Tai Shani titled “Untitled Hieroglyphs”; https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/tai-shani-untitled-hieroglyphs/

Tai Shani project’s first release, Untitled Hieroglyphs, is a film emerging from a conversation between the artist who lives and works in London and Serpentine Curator of General Ecology, Lucia Pietroiusti, developed on the occasion of a collaboration between Serpentine and the Archaeological Park of Pompeii’s contemporary art platform, Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters. So we have the opportunity to see the film in which the artist explains her research project into psychedelics, feminism and myth but also to read questions and answers of the interview by Pietroiusti. Tai explains her work: “The story is that in Alicudi there was a continuous outbreak of Ergot that lasted for four hundred and fifty years, because the only kind of source of grain available on the island during that time was an Ergot-infested rye which had been milled into bread, and that subsequently people were tripping for four hundred and fifty years. But the thing is of course that this would be impossible. The conditions for Ergot are quite specific, in order for the fungus to emerge – it’s not as common as one might think, so I really don’t think it can have lasted all that time. But those are exactly the kind of histories I’m interested in; ones that are a little bit contested, and that have this sense of flight or excessiveness within them. So I was immediately really drawn to that.”

The artist Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg examines our relationships with nature and technology. Her work explores many subjects such as artificial intelligence, conservation, evolution, synthetic biology, and investigates the human impulse to better the world.

Screenshot image that opens the as-yet-untitled project by the artist Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg; https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/alexandra-daisy-ginsberg/

Even in this case, due to the collaboration between Serpentine and the Archaeological Park of Pompeii’s contemporary art platform, Pompeii Commitment. Archaeological Matters, the artist Ginsberg and Rebecca Lewin, Serpentine’s Curator of Exhibition and Design, talk about a subject: the survey of biodiversity and the decline of pollinators. This artistic research of Ginsberg will end with a new outdoor installation commissioned by Eden Project in Cornwall.

Rezaire, the third artist involved in this project, explores spirituality together with space. His work Mamelles ancestrales, 2019 undertakes an exploration of knowledge about megaliths, ancient stone monuments, often in the shape of a circle, found all over the world.

Screenshot image that opens the project by the artist Tabita Rezaire, Mamelles ancestrales, 2019; https://pompeiicommitment.org/commitment/tabita-rezaire/

Thanks to the agreement between Serpentine and Pompeii Commitment, the works of the three artists were published in parallel on: www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/back-to-earth and on www.pompeiicommitment.org.

Once again, digital technology is able to facilitate the dissemination of information, the knowledge of art, of historical events and, while not replacing our experience of viewing modern works of art as well as archaeological finds, the digital access can certainly enrich our experience.