Digital meets Culture

a documentary series exploring online communities and games that are no more in use

Preserving Worlds is a documentary travelogue through aging but beloved virtual worlds. Join us as we explore dated chat environments, appreciate player-created art, and meet people working against obsolescence to keep the communities they care about alive and accessible.

Virtual worlds are delicate things, and they can vanish with hardly a trace. Under Capitalism, preservation is often the last priority. But even if you manage to archive the offline software, a dead world can only tell you so much. It’s just as important to document how people spent their time within it.

With this series, filmmakers Derek Murphy and Mitchell Zemil offer an entertaining glimpse into these worlds and created historical records of them that may someday be of use.

Access the episodes: https://means.tv/programs/preservingworlds

Preserving Worlds website at: www.preservingworlds.net

organized as a virtual tour by University Art Galleries at the University of California Irvine.

online art exhibition The Black Index

Titus Kaphar, “Redaction (San Francisco),” 2020. Etching and silkscreen on paper. Courtesy of Titus Kaphar and Reginald Dwayne Betts. Photo by Christopher Gardener.

The artists featured in The Black Index—Dennis Delgado, Alicia Henry, Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, Titus Kaphar, Whitfield Lovell, and Lava Thomas—build upon the tradition of Black self-representation as an antidote to colonialist images. Using drawing, performance, printmaking, sculpture, and digital technology to transform the recorded image, these artists question our reliance on photography as a privileged source for documentary objectivity and understanding. Their works offer an alternative practice—a Black index—that still serves as a finding aid for information about Black subjects, but also challenges viewers’ desire for classification.

Visit the virtual tour: https://uag.arts.uci.edu/exhibit/black-index

The works in The Black Index make viewers aware of their own expectations of Black figuration by interrupting traditional epistemologies of portraiture through unexpected and unconventional depictions. These works image the Black body through a conceptual lens that acknowledges the legacy of Black containment that is always present in viewing strategies. The approaches used by Delgado, Henry, Hinkle, Kaphar, Lovell, and Thomas suggest understandings of Blackness and the racial terms of our neo-liberal condition that counter legal and popular interpretations and, in turn, offer a paradigmatic shift within Black visual culture.

Curator Bridget R. Cooks is Associate Professor, Department of African American Studies and the Department of Art History, University of California, Irvine. Exhibition and tour organized by Sarah Watson, Chief Curator, Hunter College Art Galleries, New York in collaboration with the University Art Galleries at UC Irvine, Palo Alto Art Center, and Art Galleries at Black Studies, University of Texas at Austin.

This exhibition is dedicated to David C. Driskell.

Submission deadline: March 3, 2021

Prix #arselectronica 2021 Open call!

The Prix Ars Electronica is the world’s most time-honored media arts competition. Winners are eligible for the coveted Golden Nica awards and monetary prizes of up to 10,000 Euros in each category. They will also be featured at the Ars Electronica Festival from September 8 to 12, 2021! Participation in the Prix Ars Electronica is free of charge and takes place exclusively online. A submission is only valid for participation in the competition if it has been submitted online and also finally completed online. As soon as all documents have been submitted in full, a confirmation of participation will be sent by e-mail.
The 2021 categories follow:
Computer Animation
Artificial Intelligence and Life Art
Digital Music and Sounds Art
U19-Create your world
Schedule:
Submission Deadline: March 3, 2021
Jury Sessions: April 23 – 25, 2021
Notification: Winners of Golden Nicas, Awards of Distinction and Honorary Mentions will be notified before end of May, 2021 (Ars Electronica only notificate in case the project is selected for the prize).
Awards Ceremony: The Prix Ars Electronica ceremony will take place during the Ars Electronica Festival (September 8-12, 2021). Winners of Golden Nicas and Awards of Distinction must make a commitment to accepting their awards in person and to presenting their works at the Prix Ars Electronica Forum, an artist symposium. Groups and institutions are requested to nominate a representative to fulfill this commitment. As guests of Ars Electronica, winners will receive complementary hotel and economy class airline tickets for their trip to Linz. (Due to the COVID-19 situation, changes may occur in this regard.)
Email contact: prix@ars.electronica.art
Read more about the open call here
Submission webpage

NEMO overview and statement on Museum reopenings

© Arxiu Fotogràfic del Consorci del Patrimoni de Sitges

NEMO, Network of European Museum Organisations, has published a country-specific overview of the status quo of museum operations during the pandemic. The list includes information from 31 European countries concerning reopenings, national guidelines and advocacy measures. Together with the overview, NEMO also released a statement calling for the comprehensive and sustainable reopening of all museums in Europe. NEMO wants policy makers to fully realise the potential in collaborating with museums to reactive urban life and assist people in finding the new normal.
NEMO news article: https://www.ne-mo.org/news/article/nemo/nemo-publishes-detailed-overview-of-museum-reopenings-in-europe.html
Link to the statement.
Link to the overview.
Share the social media posts:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NEMOoffice/status/1363783476865032194
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NEMOoffice/posts/4077181255667874
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6769548568807141376

Save the Date: April 21-22, 2021

SoPHIA´s Virtual Stakeholder Conference

The SoPHIA Platform for Holistic Heritage Impact Assessment is happy to announce a two-day conference which will bring together a diverse group of stakeholders to review interventions in Europe’s urban heritage, through keynotes, thematic sessions, workshops, and artistic interventions. The meeting will offer the occasion to establish a collective reflection on the diverse impact of cultural heritage and to gather feedbacks and inputs on the Holistic Heritage Impact Assessment Model developed under the Horizon 2020 funded SoPHIA project.
Registration is free of charges.
More information are coming soon: visit the SoPHIA’s website to stay up to date and share the event on Twitter and Facebook.

The influence of the emotions in the construction and experience of museums.

NEMO Report on emotions and learning in museums

This new report explores how emotions influence the design and understanding of museums and offers suggestions of how museums should make use of the “emotional effect” to create greater impact and memorable experiences. Emotion are considered a pre-condition for learning: in this perspective, the report highlights the importance for Museums to facilitate emotional experiences and to foster empathy to better connect with visitors.
The study was conducted by NEMO Working Group LEM – the Learning Museum. The group explores topics relating to the fields of museum education, audience development, intercultural dialogue and lifelong learning. It organizes exchanges and learning through regular study visits to different museums, as well as producing studies and reports.
Read and download the full text of the report here.
Read more here
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NEMOoffice/posts/4069673279752005
Twitter:https://twitter.com/NEMOoffice/status/1362695282404818945
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6768459149714976768

online workshop, 24th February 2021

Space for CH: How space technology can help monitor and preserve our cultural heritage

Several factors, both natural and anthropic ones, endanger nowadays our cultural heritage: subsidence, ground motion, pollution, looting, collateral damages and intentional attacks. Data provided by the European Space Agency Copernicus fleet of satellites and other cutting edge technologies leveraging on artificial intelligence and machine learning can help better assessing the risk and preserving sites at risk.

These themes were discussed during the workshop “Space for Cultural Heritage” organised by the Downstream Gateway on February 24th 2021, from 09:00 to 16:00.

Recordings of the workshop available here: https://down2earth.esa.int/2021/03/space-for-cultural-heritage-workshop/

The workshop foresaw the participation of actors both from the Cultural Heritage and the Space Sector in order to present opportunities and challenges in the use of space technologies and derived data for the protection, valorisation, and fruition of cultural assets.

Objectives
The main objectives of this workshop were to present the policy and regulatory framework in the sector; debate the actual challenges, both natural and anthropic; present new technologies that help in the discovery, monitoring and preservation of cultural heritage; and present ESA’s activities in support for the cultural heritage sector.

Expected Outcomes
a. Identify user needs.
b. Evaluate how space technology combined with artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms can support the sector.
c. Raise awareness of those new opportunities and create a link between cultural heritage community and space technology experts.

Download here the brochure of the event.

For more information on the topic, you can read ESA article on “Earth Observation applications and machine learning for cultural heritage preservation“.

The ESA Downstream Gateway

The ESA Downstream Gateway provides a single interface to non-space communities to interact more easily with ESA, its business opportunities as well as broad expertise in space based technologies, data, applications, and services.

Save the date: 3-4 March 2021

UNCHARTED project presented at the 1st MESOC International Workshop

“Societal Impacts of Culture: A transitional Perspective”: this is the titled of the 1^st international workshop that was held online by MESOC, the H2020 sister project of UNCHARTED. The meeting provided the opportunity to discuss with experts and stakeholders the role of culture in urban change, as well as methodological and operational approaches needed to support social impacts assessment and evaluation.
The agenda was scheduled in several sessions during which MESOC partners presented the first outcomes of the research designed to propose, test and validate an innovative and original approach to measuring the societal value and impacts of cultural policies and practices.
In addition the two-day meeting offered a schedule of round tables and parallel focus groups that actively involved the invited audience to a lively debate and to exchange knowledge and experiences related to their respective field of research.
In the framework of session 1, the panel debate titled “The social impacts of culture and cultural Policies” was dedicated to collect inputs and feedback on MESOC concepts by representatives of projects funded on the same call: in this specific context, Professor Arturo Rodríguez Morató, from the University of Barcelona, presented the UNCHARTED Research and Innovation Action and joined the discussion with the parallel project INVENT.
Moreover, other members of the UNCHARTED staff participated in the following focus groups providing additional contributions to the scientific discussion.
Download the MESOC Workshop schedule here.
Previous blog on MESOC workshop here
MESOC website

Neoliberalism and visual arts: an UNCHARTED conference talk

On 3rd December 2020, Professor Victoria Alexander , from Goldsmith, University of London, UNCHARTED project’s partner, gave a keynote address to the online conference “Another Artworld: Manifestations and Conditions of Equity in Visual Arts”.
The event was organized by the UNESCO Chair for Cultural Policy and Management of the University of the Arts in Belgrade in partnership with the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia. It received financial support by Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Serbia, the Austrian Kulturforum (Austrian Embassy in Belgrade) and was supported by the European Network on Cultural Management and Policy ENCATC. The main goal of the conference was to establish a discussion on principles of democratic governance and decision-making models in the field of visual arts, with the desire to broaden knowledge and consider possibilities of its implementation.
The talk draws on Professor Alexander’s work on heteronomy in the arts field and was based on the research she carried out in cooperation with Oliver Peterson Gilbert from Goldsmith, Post-Doctoral Research Assistant for UNCHARTED, in the framework of the project WP1, devoted to understanding the societal value of culture.
The contribution focused on the way Neoliberalism has affected cultural values in the UK and in the European Union. Neoliberalism, defined as a market-oriented ideology, has been taken up especially in Anglo-Saxon contexts, but also in various ways and degrees across the whole of Europe. Many of these effects are negative, for instance, shifts to the measurement of the social value of art by extrinsic yardsticks (such as economic and social impacts), rather than valuing art intrinsically. Neoliberal discourse also accompanies the decline of state support for the arts that is also accompanied by more market-based control mechanisms, all of which affect equity in the visual arts. The talk explores the extent to which cultural values are negatively impacted in such ways. In addition, as a counterpoint, it also looks at how Neoliberalism influenced some positive cultural values, for instance, more inclusive exhibitions and performances, as well as opening spaces for resisting discourses and DIY actions. By gauging the extent of the penetration of neoliberal discourse into European cultural values, the talk identifies challenges for visual artists.
The entire contribution can be viewed on YouTube here.
To know more about the influence of neo-liberalism in the configuration of the values of culture, consult the UNCHARTED work Package 1 webpage and read the full text of the related deliverable D1.4 here.
UNCHARTED website: uncharted-culture.eu

online 23 and 24 June 2021

European Research and Innovation Days 2021

The European Research and Innovation Days are announced to take place online on 23 and 24 June 2021.

The Draft Programme is now out, with over 60 live sessions, ranging from high-level plenaries to immersive panel discussions and workshops. Session topics include Horizon Europe, the new European Research and Innovation Programme, our recovery from the Coronavirus pandemic, the European Research Area, European Innovation Ecosystems and much more.

Create your own programme and join your favorite sessions to discuss about research and innovation with other participants from across Europe and beyond. Attend some of the specialised workshops to discuss, interact, build new networks and work together to find solutions for our global challenges.

Questions? Check the Q&A area on the EU Research and Innovation Days website, where you can find answers to the questions you may have about the upcoming event.

Brought to you by the European Commission, the European Research and Innovation Days gathers together policymakers, researchers, entrepreneurs and citizens to debate and shape the future of research and innovation in Europe and beyond.

This year marks the start of Horizon Europe, the most ambitious EU research and innovation programme ever and will be a decisive moment to strengthen our European Research Area. Cooperation in research and innovation is essential in our recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and will pave the way to a greener and more digital future.

Building on the great success and impact of the last online edition, this year’s event will again be fully digital, allowing everyone to get involved from anywhere. As in 2020, the online policy conference is expected to attract thousands of participants from all over the world.

@EUScienceInnov and join the conversation at #RiDaysEU.