Digital meets Culture

application deadline for international Theatre, Art and New Technologies Festival in Sardinia: 15th May 2020

THE WONDERS OF POSSIBLE – open call for artists

In November 2020, Kyber Theatre organises in Cagliari (Italy) the 7th Edition of the International Theatre, Art and New Technologies Festival called “The Wonders of Possible” – LMDP Le Meraviglie Del Possibile.

LMDP Festival is the first of this kind in 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 an Open Call to submit their projects about “Interaction between arts and technology”.

Who can attend
The participation is open to artists of every nationality, working individually or in a group of maximum 5 people.
Eligible projects
– Theatre and new technologies plays
– Art and new technologies performances
– Installations that explore and realize the interaction between artwork, exhibition space and observers with the contribution of technology.

Application (deadline the 15th of May 2020)
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).
The result is going to be notified only to selected projects by the Month of June 2020.

Economic conditions
Full coverage of all the costs for the artists’ mobility to and in Cagliari (international travels, board and accommodation), and the compliance for safety standards of the space is guaranteed by Kyber teatro. Subject to agreements with our technical director, also any material required for the presentation of the performance/show/play/installation can be covered.
The Open Call winners will have the opportunity to present their work twice (performance not paid, the participation it will be free) and to hold a workshop with entrance tickets for the audience (workshop proceeds will go to the artists).

Publication
Applying for the call, artists agree that the projects should be represented at the Festival. Selected artists must provide a short biography and an abstract of the project. They also 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.

Application materials must be sent by the 15th of May to: info @ kyberteatro.it
Website: http://www.kyberteatro.it

Tokio (Japan), 22 February - 22 March 2020

ACT (Artists Contemporary TOKAS) Vol. 2 Stasis Field

Tokyo Arts and Space (TOKAS) has supported artists in a multi-career-stage and continuously supportive program through endeavors such as open call exhibitions, exhibitions of contemporary artists, and international fellowships. In the Artists Contemporary TOKAS (ACT) series launched in 2018, exhibitions will be held to introduce artists who are worthy of attention now, centered on those that have taken part in TOKAS programs. Introduced at this second installment, titled ”Stasis Field,” are works by three artists/pairs: TANAKA Shusuke, HIROSE Nana & NAGATANI Kazuma, WATANABE Go.

“Stasis field” is a term that has been used in science fiction novels and games, to refer to an area in which time seemingly stands still or is significantly delayed, and contents appear motionless. Due to the standstill and crystallization of time in a stasis field, objects in that area are in a state where they can be closely observed, or slowed down to such an extent that their shapes appear distorted.
In their works, the three artists featured in this exhibition stop or delay time in order to make it observable from their own respective points of view, and produce works of art in which they actively respond to and creatively express the differences, shifts and distortions that result from such temporal stagnation. In times when social life is increasingly dominated by the acceleration and quick processing of all kinds of matters. Experiences we make in such special kinds of situations “Stasis fields” may function as turning points that changes existing ideas and previous perceptions.

Full press release available HERE

Web: https://willap.jp/t?r=AAAJGIO267Ep56jSFpTuyNbfQO_KxJTUiCdCpQ

e-flux: https://willap.jp/t?r=AAAJGIO267Ep56jScRcs8OR3zISKxJTUiCdCpQ

Artists/ About the work

TANAKA Shusuke (Born in 1986): Tanaka draws paintings based on inspirations encountered in daily life which bring him fresh sensations and experiences that make him feel scared or uncomfortable. The sceneries he illustrate contain a single element depicted in unusual size or highlighted in a certain way. This approach causes distorted spatial perception and a strange sense of reality. At this exhibition, Tanaka presents several new works showing sceneries he encountered recently.

HIROSE Nana (Born in 1980) & NAGATANI Kazuma (Born in 1982): The artist duo moved to Germany in 2007 and continues to produce artworks there. They transform and catabolize daily commodities and objects which we encounter on a daily basis. They explore how exactly viewers perceive the subject-matter of their works. At this exhibition, they present an installation “Still life”, consisting of fruits, vegetables, cups, and other objects – about 300 in total – molded by a special kind of porcelain compound. The objects in their works show distortions. These appear to be intentionally deformed by some kind of external force, and are in fact produced by a chemical reaction triggered by the heating of porcelain. These numerous white objects transform the entire space which they are placed in. This encourage viewers to reflect upon familiar perspectives on things.

WATANABE Go (Born in 1975): Watanabe recreates real sceneries and objects around him by 3-D computer graphics and creates video works which gradually transform in ways disconnected from physical and optical laws. Based on the experience of spending a year in Finland in 2017, he produced a work in which he emphasized the perception of light in Finland which he found to be different from that of Japan. At this exhibition, he presents a new video installation that questions material, spatial and temporal characteristics by reorganizing the temporal order and angles of light falling onto books and a pile of laundry.

The cleanliness of Fuente de los Caños, Almería (Spain)

Participatory activity of Rural Heritage pilot

Saturday 15 February 2020 in Sorbas, Almería (Spain), MEMOLab, REACH project and local associations had collaborate in the cleanliness of Fuente de los Caños.
This monumental fountain, abandoned decades ago, gave water to the town and was used as a laundry. Here, much of the social life of the community developed.
The importance of this source is that it is supplied by a water mine, now practically lost.

University of Granada, leader of REACH Rural Heritage Pilot, conducted the participatory event in which more than 100 volunteers took part.
This activity has led, in addition to dissemination and teamwork, the empowerment of several groups that are acting to find the mine and put it back into operation.

Fotography by E. Aramburu and R. Corselli.

Dr György Eszter, researcher at the Eötvös Loránd university of Budapest share her fieldwork

Roma Heritage:the case study of the REACH project

Last 19 February, Dr György Eszter, interviewed by the “HALLGATOI MAGAZINE” reported her direct experience in carrying on the case study of the minority heritage pilot within the REACH project.
Dr György, presented a global overview of the objectives, initiatives and main results achieved by the pilot, pointing out how its activities and especially the local encounters revealed the potential of future cooperation between stakeholders by identifying opportunities of cross-collaboration. the interview recalled step by step the initiatives that have involved the local Roma communities promoting cohesion and dialogue.
She highlighted that thanks to the REACH support, participants of the local encounters could overcome their isolation (geographical, social and professional) and create a strong network which is very important for increasing the visibility towards each other and fostering opportunities to exchange knowledge and experiences about their good practices and struggles.
Read the full text of the interview (Hungarian language)

Generative and audio-reactive virtual-reality installation - until 5th April in Pittsburg

Oscillations 2020, new artwork by Miguel Chevalier

Oscillations 2020, Miguel Chevalier
Music: Michel Redolfi
Generative and audio-reactive virtual-reality installation
Wood Street Galleries, Pittsburgh (USA)
Curator: Murray Horne
January 25 – April 5, 2020
Software: Cyrille Henry / Antoine Villeret
Technical production: Voxels Productions

Miguel CHEVALIER Oscillations 2020 Pittsburgh (USA) from Claude Mossessian on Vimeo.

Oscillations 2020 is a new generative virtual-reality installation by Miguel Chevalier that is audio-audio-reactive with music by Michel Redolfi.
This creation allows a 3D graphic visualization of the music by Michel Redolfi.
Thanks to generative software, a waveform is generated in real time according to the frequencies and amplitudes of the music. These spectrums of the different sounds of music generate imaginary landscapes to infinity. These landscapes, which pass before our eyes, present an infinite variations: solid or wireframe, steep or flat, in black and white or in colour…
Image and music respond to each other in a fusion of an emotional nature that participates in a true synesthesia.

[Show as slideshow]

Extended deadline for entries: 20 April 2020

*/ 16th Athens Digital Arts Festival | Call for Entries “TECHNOTRIBALISM”.

The 16th Athens Digital Arts Festival exploring the endless possibilities of the future, through art, science, and technology, invites you to submit your proposals for its next edition, under the theme “TECHNOTRIBALISM”.

Due to the recent crisis, at the international public health sector, and trying to act accordingly, the ADAF team decided that our festival will not take place until our artists and visitors can be and feel safe from the coronavirus pandemic. Under these unique circumstances, we assess that our 16th edition will not be able to take place this May as it traditionally does, and is postponed for a later date. Believing that in time of crisis the best one can do is stay creative, we decided to extend our open call once more till the 20/4/2020, giving you the opportunity to suggest more creative projects. We hope that this initiative will make your “stay at home” a bit more pleasant and worthwhile also on a creative level. We wish courage, strength and health to each and everyone of you, stay safe, stay home and be creative.

CALL FOR ENTRIES

EXTENDED DEADLINE 20/4/2020

Submit your pieces at http://2020.adaf.gr

In this galaxy, not far away there is a “generation”, a tribe of people that are nurtured by technology. This generation has evolved its tech medium to a point where it has started to morph into its own entity, a new resource of power, a new regime, bringing humanity in the state we characterise techno-tribalism.

To enframe this world in serving us we created technology, while technology gradually enframed us in serving the data- flux. In this early hyper historic era what became the utmost necessity, is the continuous flow of information. In a causal relationship, our need to access it grows perpetually.

We, being the primitives of this era, appear pure and naive yet shaping the very foundations of this new world, where information is recognized as the super- power and data is moving towards becoming an equivalent to god – maker and regnant of everything.

Privacy and property are more and more giving into the preciousness of free access to data, shifting human heritage of all shorts in intangible flows of information, organised in massive virtual libraries. Our homo sapiens collecting fetishes are turning pale in front of the immenseness of options we can get in the collectively build digital world, shifting in relation our perception on ownership, assets, wealth and equity.

In this new period of collective production of information, our value translates in our contribution in the data flux and our access to it poses, not only as entertainment, but also as a possible key in eradicating our human sufferings. All of us, workers of this regime, dazed by the vastness of information, its potential power, we mirror ourselves in the digital world.

Algorithms, already present everywhere in the digital realm, are reading us better than ourselves, better than our friends and siblings and in the name of optimization of our virtual experience, we are gradually letting them make decisions for us, filter our perceptions predict our behavior, our bio metrics, our emotions. All manifestations of culture can now be experienced on a digitized basis, translated to a language (code, DNA) and stored for everyone who possess it to experience regardless the circumstances. Markets and Money are transfiguring into intangible algorithmic byproducts. Everything to serve the information flow.

The International festival for Digital Arts in Greece, Athens Digital Arts Festival, is calling the art world and the world of science and technology, to submit works and achievements which outline, comment, foresee, or determine this contemporary epoch in order to compose the content for the upcoming 16th edition of the festival which will take place in spring 2020.

Close your eyes and connect to your data-doppelganger your mirrored algorithmic self to your digital footprint. You are part of techno-tribalism, you are part of ADAF 2020.

#TechnoTribalism #ADAFgreece #ADAF2020

READ MORE

Detailed information about the submission process and the call for entries is available at the following link: www.adaf.gr

Submission deadline for 2-page abstract: 10 March 2020

Call for book chapters: CEPROQHA Project

Data Analytics for Cultural Heritage: Current Trends and Concepts

Editors: Abdelaziz Bouras ¹, Abdelhak Belhi ^1,2, Abdulaziz Khalid Al-Ali ¹, Abdul Hamid Sadka ³

College of Engineering, Qatar University, Qatar
DISP Laboratory, Université Lumière Lyon 2, Lyon, France
Brunel University, London, United Kingdom

Book Scope

In light of the recent advances and techniques in the cultural domain using artificial intelligence, the book aims at addressing new and current challenges related to the effective implementation of AI technologies in the cultural context. The book chapters are mostly related to the application of AI to the cultural heritage digitization process aiming at empowering the value of the digitized assets through advanced artificial intelligence techniques. We particularly focus on improvements to the data acquisition stage as well as the data enrichment and curation stages using advanced artificial intelligence techniques and tools.

For this book, we consider the following focus areas in the cultural heritage domain:

Data acquisition
Data enrichment
Data management
Data preservation

MORE INFO and SUBMISSION: https://www.ceproqha.qa/call-book-chapters/

Introduction

Art and culture are some of the most reputable history transfer mediums through civilizations and generations. Cultural objects are distinguished by their higher value and attractiveness as they hold a lot of cultural and historical information. The physical preservation of cultural assets was known to be the only tool to conserve these objects for the long term. This process is reported to take a considerable amount of time and tends to be often costly. However, since the emergence of digital technologies, and thanks to their reliability and continuously dropping costs, the digital preservation of cultural objects is continuously catching the eyes of heritage organizations and is studied as an efficient and reliable alternative to the physical preservation. Cultural institutions such as museums, galleries, and heritage management organizations are currently investing a lot of efforts and resources to digitize and preserve their collections using cutting edge acquisition technologies. This process was often reported to be successful as we started to see multiple initiatives such as virtual museum tours, high-quality replicas of cultural objects, digital enrichment, linked data, etc. More recently, and with the recent breakthroughs in the AI domain, new techniques have been developed and aim at enriching the acquired data using artificial intelligence. In the past, cultural data enrichment was only possible using semantic tools or manual annotation which did not fully leverage the hidden information that can be extracted using AI technologies. Nowadays, artificial intelligence techniques for classification and content generation are being studied by multiple research groups around the world and thanks to the abundance of cultural data, some new challenges were presented to researchers to make the assets digital preservation more effective.

Throughout this book, we mainly consider the challenges related to the improvement of the data acquisition, data enrichment and data management processes in the cultural heritage data lifecycle pipeline using advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies with an emphasis on recent applications related to deep learning for visual recognition, generative models, natural language processing, super resolution, etc.

Athens (Greece), 5-6 March 2020

Interfaces Conference: Cultural Synergies, Creativity and Innovation

Cultural practitioners, policy makers, cultural managers, artists, curators and creative entrepreneurs are invited to a 2-day international event that explores how cultural synergies could contribute to innovation and creativity in the field of culture. In this final international activity of the INTERFACES network co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union, we aim to explore how cultural synergies could contribute to innovation and creativity in the field of culture.

Join us at Onassis Stegi in Athens and participate in the discussion on how we can strengthen audience development as a mean of improving access to European cultural and creative works, promote transnational mobility of artists and foster capacity building through innovative approaches in the cultural sector.

This event will be a great opportunity to exchange insights with over 25 cultural practitioners, policymakers and representatives of 16 Creative Europe funded cooperation projects and of course network with fellow professionals from the field of Culture and the Arts. The main objective of the conference is to engage a discussion between the different European projects and networks and enable a transfer of knowledge and experience from within projects funded by the Creative Europe programme just before the official launch of the new programme for 2021-2027. We propose to focus on the following topics:

Inclusion, Diversity, Access, and Equity in the Arts and Culture Sector
Art, Space and the Public Sphere
Networking, Cooperation & Professionalization in the Culture Sector
Arts, Innovation & Digital Media

Day 1, Thursday 5 March 2020, 18.00-21.00

Day 2, Friday 6 March 2020, 09.00-20.00

FULL PROGRAMME: https://www.onassis.org/whats-on/interfaces-conference

REGISTRATION: https://www.eventora.com/en/Events/interfaces

Brussels, 26th February 2020

IMP Concluding Symposium: Museums and intangible heritage: towards a third space in the heritage sector

– How can museums avoid the trap of “freezing” intangible cultural heritage in time by integrating it into more static collections?

– How may we assure that heritage practitioners and communities are sufficiently being heard in display settings?

– What are the best ways to bring audiences into the museum, allowing for participatory experiences, yet avoiding the commodification of intangible heritage?

These are some of the main themes faced by the Intangible Cultural Heritage Project and that will represent the basis of its conclusive symposium which aims to identify the best way for establish a solid liaison and cooperation between Intangible Cultural Heritage and museums for a mutual benefit.

The project started in 2017 and over the past three years it explored the interaction of museum work and intangible heritage practices in a comparative European context.
It organized 5 previous conferences which featured in depth theoretical contributions, workshops, artistic co-creations, numerous discussions and many inspirational testimonies from the fields of museums and intangible cultural heritage.

This concluding symposium is addressed to key stakeholders from the fields of intangible heritage and museums, such as heritage practitioners, museum professionals, policy makers, academics and representatives of transnational networks.
The aim is to explore the various ways in which museums and safeguarding living heritage go together and to step into reciprocal understanding of different methods, possibilities and approaches.
The outcomes of the public forum will be used for drafting future-oriented recommendations and methodologies for both policies and practice.

More information:
Symposium webpage
Symposium programme

IMP Concluding Symposium

Museums and intangible heritage: towards a third space in the heritage sector

On February 26, the Intangible Cultural Heritage Project will hold its final symposium in Brussels.
The conference aims to draft the conclusions of the cognitive and investigative activities started in 2017 and developed through a series of meetings all focused on identifying the best way to combine the tangible cultural heritage preserved in museums with the tangible cultural heritage related to practice and way of living. The symposium organizers explain that cooperation between intangible heritage and museums can bring enormous benefit to both sides. For example, museums can enrich their object-based collections by including testimonies and practices relating to living, intangible heritage. Heritage practitioners and communities, on the other hand, can gain a wider audience, and can benefit from museum documentation and preservation expertise in order to safeguard their particular branch of intangible cultural heritage.
But often, misunderstandings and conflicts take the place of a fruitful collaboration. The Intangible Cultural Heritage and Museums Project (IMP) faced the causes of this lack of communication and look for solutions to overcome them.
The final symposium addresses key stakeholders from the fields of intangible heritage and museums, such as heritage practitioners, museum professionals, policy makers, academics and representatives of transnational networks.
The main topics of discussion will regard the best ways to bring audience into museum and to promote participatory experiences.

The outcomes of the public forum will be used for drafting future-oriented recommendations and methodologies for both policies and practice.
Symposium webpage
Discover more about IMP