Digital meets Culture

Adelaide (Australia), 21-25 October 2019

Designing the Archive: 2019 Conference ASA-ICA-ARANZ-PARBICA

Text by Caterina Sbrana.

The Australian Society of Archivists (ASA), Archives and Records Association of New Zealand Te Huinga Mahara (ARANZ), the International Council on Archives (ICA) and the Pacific Regional Branch International Council on Archives (PARBICA) organize an international conference called Designing the Archive that will be held from 21 to 25 October 2019 in Adelaide, South Australia.

ph. Hiro Ishino

“The conference program aims to explore the use of empathy, creativity, innovation, experimentation, prototyping, and co-design in the development of recordkeeping systems, information governance frameworks, archival programs and services, archive buildings and spaces, or digital archives”.

The following themes will be discussed in the conferences and workshops: Innovation in next generation digital archives, Co-design of recordkeeping systems, Designing community and Indigenous archives, Designing recordkeeping systems for creative, technical and scientific activities, Designing governance and programs to meet citizen and customer needs, Design of archival spaces and buildings for preservation, exploration and discovery and Creativity in the archives.

Organizers claim that “The program provides an opportunity to explore how we manage records and archives of the design process itself across a range of industries from architecture to fashion, engineering to environmental management”.

The conference is adressed to Archivists and professionals from the archives, schools, religious bodies, NGOs, companies, government institutions, digital archivists, people keeping and working with community and indigenous archives and collections, managers involved in design of recordkeeping systems, and long term retention of digital and analogue data, professionals who work with design archives (e.g. architecture museums, fashion archives, etc).

The conference logo was created through a design process involving Pitjantjatjara artist Audrey Brumby and graphic designer Matthew Aldous in collaboration with Indigenu Gallery Director Tony Straccia. It represents people connecting and linking, going around communities talking, sharing, spreading stories and messages.

The conference takes place in the middle of Adelaide Plains, in Tarntanya land – the red kangaroo place in the Kaurna language, in Adelaide Oval. It is situated on the northern side of the Riverbank Precinct between the city centre and North Adelaide. “The oval dates back to 1871 and has been extensively redeveloped in recent years”.

The importance of the archives is fully described on ICA website where we can read: “Archives are witnesses to the past. They provide evidence, explanation and justification both for past actions and current decisions. Archives enable society to undertake a wide range of roles that enable civilised communities to take root and flourish, from enabling education and research, providing entertainment and leisure, to protecting human rights and confirming identity. Archives are unique, contemporaneous records and so once lost cannot be replaced. It is only through proper identification, care and wide access that the vital role that archives has can be fully realised to the benefit of humanity”.

Key dates

19 – 20 October 2019 – ICA Governance Meetings
21 October 2019 – ICA workshops, ASA SIGs and AGM
22 – 24 October 2019 – Conference (3 days) and ICA General Assembly (22 October)
25 October 2019 – ICA Summit on Indigenous Matters, workshops and cultural visits

Programme and more information:

https://www.ica.org/en/schedule

https://www.ica.org/en/why-archiving

21 May 2019, Pécs, Hungary

The charming Roma Cultural Heritage

The upcoming local encounter of the Minority Heritage Pilot f REACH Project will be focusing on Roma intangible cultural heritage.
It is hosted by the Gandhi High School in Pécs, the first Romani high school which became a part of the National Register of Best Safeguarding Practices of UNESCO in Hungary.
Two other Roma heritage communities, listed as an element of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Hungary will be represented as well: the Nagyecsed Hungarian and Gypsy Dance Traditions and the Rajkó Orchestra and Art School.
Beyond the three UNESCO recognized organizations, experts and professionals from Roma culture heritage sector will join the event, such as instructors of the UCCU Foundation and professors from the Department of Romology at the University of Pécs. The meeting begins at the Kóstolda Roma Home Restaurant, which is not only important for getting to know the traditional Gypsy cuisine but also stands an important venue for the local Roma culture.

20 May 2019, Brussels

First meeting of ECHOES cluster

The 20th of May , at the EU premises in Covent Garden 2, Brussels, the first meeting of the ECHOES cluster will be held under the auspices of the EU Commission.

The mission of ECHOES (Enabling Cultural Heritage Oriented European Strategies, http://www.echc.eu) is the enhancement of all actions addressed to the conservation and valorization of Cultural Heritage in all its forms and materials in order to strengthen and make sustainable the new conservation developments.

Some of the main goals of echoes are

To create a platform for analysis, characterization and evaluation of restoration and conservation methodologies
To support the scientific community to create network with different expertise in CH conservation
To establish and standardize good practices in CH conservation to expand the lifetime of CH
To wide and stimulate discussion and consultation with stakeholders, and to raise the awareness of citizens on the importance of CH providing an open forum for discussion, problem solving and presentation of case-studies
To support EC policy development in the field of tourism and industry related with CH conservation and valorization
To play a major role in providing input to the Leadership in Enabling and Industrial Technologies (LEIT) policy on research road mapping in conservation science.

The meeting aims to discuss key topics for the ECHOES development (governance and structure) and to come out with position papers for the next framework programme Horizon Europe.

The main themes will be:

Best practices in retrieving end user requirements for preventive conservation;
Best practices in dealing with “language” problems between the diverse disciplines involved in CH R&D;
Priorities for Horizon Europe (e.g. Harmonised approach for collection management, interoperability of the collection management data);
Developing and disseminating innovative decision-support tools to promote exploitation of advanced/enabling technologies in cultural heritage prevention, conservation and restoration;
Support public-private partnerships at national and international level to promote cooperation and cross-fertilization across technology developers, end-users, policy makers, scientific bodies and business operators on innovation solutions for cultural heritage prevention, conservation and restoration.

Links to the presentations of the event:

Echoes Meeting – Prof.Baglioni
Echoes Topic 1
Echoes Topic 2
Echoes Topic 3
Echoes Topic 4

For more information, please visit the ECHOES website here and consult the brochure here.

As an extraordinary example of Cultural Cooperation, archival material about the French Revolution is now available to the International scholarly community

Agreement between Stanford University and Bibliothèque nationale de France

by Caterina Sbrana.

The cultural partnership between Standford University and the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), begun a few years ago, led to the creation of a digital archive that brings together both the resources of the archive known as Images de la Revolution française and the Archives parlementaires. The French Revolution Digital Archive (FRDA) nowadays includes thousands of resourcs regarding the French Revolution, making them available to the international scholarly community and enabling digital research.

The first archive includes thousands of high-resolution digital images regarding the French Revolution: about 14,000 visual objects like prints, illustrations, medals, coins, and other objects, showing aspects of the Revolution. These materials have been selected, mainly from the collections of the département des Estampes et de la photographie, but also from other departments of BNF. It is possible to do a search by artist, subject, genre, and place.

The Archives parlementaires is a chronologically ordered collection concerning the sources of the French Revolution: it includes parliamentary deliberations, letters, reports, speeches and other first-hand accounts from a wide variety of published and archival sources. It was conceived in the mid-nineteenth century. FRDA contains AP volumes referring to the years 1787-1794. It’s possible to easily find places, dates and terms in the published index. Users can see either scanned images of AP pages or text only.

As we can read in the presentation of the project “the FRDA was first conceived in 2006 by Stanford French professor Dan Edelstein, with input from other scholars and librarians, and was launched in spring 2013. It has been supported by grants and collaboration from The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the ARTFL project, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford University’s Division of Languages, Cultures, and Literatures, Stanford University Department of History, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France”.

Students also have an interactive Timeline of the Revolution on which they can read events year by year.

The use of the contents for non-commercial purposes is free of charge, while the one for commercial purposes is covered by a license.

Discover the FRDA: https://frda.stanford.edu/en

April and May filming

Dancing Bodies in Coventry Project

Dancing Bodies in Coventry is a multimedia project that aims to start to document the legacy of dance in the city of Coventry. Funded by a Coventry University Group City of Culture Grant, the project is being run by Rosa Cisneros and Marie-Louise Crawley from C-DaRE (Coventry University). The team also includes filmmaker Maria Polodeanu, photographer Antony Weir and sound designer David Sherriff.

Sarah Worth director of Highly Sprung Performance Theatre Company (April 2019) Photo Credit: Antony Weir

The project is a number of films that will begin to cover the past, present and future of dance in Coventry, and a series of related podcasts, that will form an online archive focused on dance and begin to tell the story of dance in Coventry. The project also aims to go out into the city and creatively share these materials with a variety of communities.The project brings forward a range of dance artists, festival organisers, dance schools and local groups, and allows them to share their stories with the wider Coventry community.

DBiC Declan McHale Irish Dance Academy _1

Declan McHale from the Irish Dance Academy in rehearsal for the World Championships (April 2019) Photo Credit: Antony Weir

In such a way, Dancing Bodies in Coventry aims to lay the groundwork for thinking about documenting the legacy of dance in Coventry and opens up conversations around Coventry’s intangible cultural heritage. This work contributes to Coventry City of Culture 2021 as it aims to bring local voices to the forefront allowing several key stakeholders to benefit through the knowledge production and knowledge sharing of the project, especially in bringing forward ‘lesser known’ independent dance artists and voices that have previously been somewhat hidden.
Dancing Bodies in Coventry also feeds into ongoing conversations around dance, heritage and legacies that are taking place at C-DaRE and in the wider dance research field. The films will feed into the CultureMoves project (and especially the forthcoming MOOC). Our hope is that an up-to-date Coventry dance archive can help inform this wider European project’s thinking on dance’s place within online archives as intangible cultural heritage.

Filming has been taking place in locations across Coventry throughout the months of April and May.

Adrian Dowling discussing ECLIPSE Club (April 2019) Photo Credit: Antony Weir

Imagineers Productions and Media Mania’s “Venture” Performance Carousel (April 2019) Photo Credit: Antony Weir

To date, the operators have been moving through the city, finding out about site dance practice and uncovering the city’s dance stories by interviewing and filming a range of artists and academics including: Declan McHale from the Irish Dance Academy, Adrian Dowling who is running the ECLIPSE Club reflections project, Lily Hayward-Smith, Jenna Hubbard, Ella Tighe, Flux Dance, Katye Coe, Natalie Garrett Brown and Emma Meehan from the Sensing the City project, Oliver Scott from Mercurial Dance, Jane Hytch and Kathi Leahy from Imagineer Productions, Sarah Worth from Highly Sprung Physical Theatre Company, Kate Lawrence from Vertical Dance Company, Sarah Whatley, and Coventry University’s current dance undergraduates. The work encountered encompasses a variety of dance and movement forms including Irish traditional dance, flamenco, house music, physical theatre, vertical dance and more contemporary and somatic-based practices.

The project is now entering its post-production phase and completed films will be available online in July 2019. Watch this space!

For more information contact:
Rosa Cisneros
E: ab4928@coventry.ac.uk.
Twitter: @RosaSenCis
Marie-Louise Crawley
E: ad1803@coventry.ac.uk
Twitter: CrawleyMLC

Hommage to the work of the painter artist Pierre Soulages, who will celebrate his 100th birthday on 24 December 2019.

“Pixels Noir Lumière” new digital exhibition by Miguel Chevalier

Digital artist Miguel Chevalier currently has the solo exhibition “Pixels Noir Lumière” in Soulages Museum in Rodez that pays tribute to the work of the painter artist Pierre Soulages, who will celebrate his 100th birthday on 24 December 2019. The exhibition presents two immersive generative and interactive digital installations, “Pixels Liquides” and “L’Origine du Monde”, which explore light as an artistic material.

Miguel CHEVALIER “Pixels Noir Lumière 2019” Musée Soulages, Rodez (France) from Claude Mossessian on Vimeo.

“Pixels Liquides” is an interactive installation projected on the wall (13.40 m x 7.80 m) like a large moving painting. Flows of virtual paintings of different shades of black and blue flow on the wall that has become canvas, creating large abstract paintings in real time. The virtual web is constantly changing. It reveals a light painting with surprising material effects. The movement of the spectators disrupts the work. It is a form of “electronic dripping”, where the spectator, like a digital brush, imposes his own gestures and modifies the work in its development.

“L’Origine du Monde” is an interactive installation projected on the ground (12 m x 7.50 m) inspired by biology, microorganisms and cellular automata. The installation presents different black and white virtual paintings composed of universes of cells that proliferate, divide, merge in a rhythm sometimes slow, sometimes fast. This organic world sometimes mixes with unstable mega pixels of black and white. The artist blends the cells, the basic elements of life with the pixels, the basic elements of artificial “life”. These fluid universes react visually according to the movements of visitors. Disruptions in the trajectory of these cells are created under their feet. “L’Origine du Monde” creates new visual experiences thanks to the superposition of different layers of images. The floating shapes create impressive optical illusions.

These two immersive installations are above all living experiences that engage the visitor’s body and their mobility in space. The relationship to the image is built in the register of displacement to explore all the potentialities of the work, just as for Pierre Soulages’ “Outrenoirs” to capture the variations of light on the paintings.

One of the museum’s crown jewels is now available on the web: consulting it opens a new world.

New-York Historical Society: 8000 sheets digitised

by Caterina Sbrana.

In my latest article I have been talking about the digital collection of the New-York Historical Society. During my research I was really captivated by a collection containing over 8,000 sheets, collected since 1816, that you can consult in the website freely.

This collection includes several categories: colonial objects, events in the history of the nation, European and American birds, landscapes, cityscapes, portraits, some portraying historical figures and many self-portraits of artists, illustrations of literary or journalistic works, graffiti and documentary Civil War sketches.

Among the highlights we can find 500 watercolours by John James Audubon, his largest repository in the world; 221 drawings of George Catlin about Native American culture; 350 drawings and sketchbooks of Asher B. Durand; including important drawings by Hudson River School artists such as Thomas Cole, Jasper Cropsey, and John Frederick Kensett.

Audubon was an extraordinary lover and observer of birds and nature.

The drawing section is divided into: About, Hightlights, Has image and Full collection. With its 243 pages the full collection allows you to view drawings in different ways. We can view the drawings by filtering the search by title, date, object name. In this way the drawing appears on the left, then the title, the date and object number on the right.

https://www.nyhistory.org/exhibits/category/all/55/grid/paged/title

In the other way you can see only the images of the drawings; passing over them with the mouse, without clicking, we acquire some information about the work such as the title, the date, the author. In both modes you can acquire more information by clicking on the image. It is also possible to either send the image to a friend or order it in a digital version.

https://www.nyhistory.org/exhibit/president-abraham-lincolns-coffin-lying-state-white-house-washington-dc

To conclude, the collection furnishes a comprehensive survey of American art from its Inception, dominated by European artists, up through the 1860s, by which time native-born artists had asserted an American identity.

Louise Mirrer, President and CEO of the New-York Historical Society, presenting the exhibition titled Silicon City wrote that “the future” very quickly becomes history, and that history is all too easily lost.

I agree with this thought, and I would add that history can continue to live in the second reality that humanity has created: virtual reality.

Visit the website: https://www.nyhistory.org

24-26 September 2019, Brussels

Get Involved!

Next September 2019 world leaders from industry, finance, academia and business will meet in Brussels in occasion of the European research & Innovation Days, the annual policy event which aims is to mobilise EU citizens, increase awareness and understanding of how important research and innovation are in addressing the challenges that face society. The debate will cover vital areas of science, engineering, medicine, and wider social and environmental concerns.

It will also provide an important opportunity for key stakeholders to input ideas into the overall strategic planning for the future Horizon Europe.
Speakers will include ministers, commissioners, members of European Parliament, researchers, as well as surprise guests each day.
The event will host three different sections:
– A policy conference for debating and shaping the future research and innovation landscape.
– An Innovative Europe Hub meeting and exhibition space for inventors, investors, entrepreneurs and the whole range of services, businesses, civil society organisations, agencies and intermediaries that make European science technology so dynamic.
– Science Is Wonderful! A free exhibition which will brings the world of science to the public showing how science impacts the daily lives through hands-on experiments, live demonstrations, face-to-face chats with researchers. Participants will face topics such as how to fight cancer, slow down global warming, prevent hunger and drought, facilitate human life in space.
Workshop sessions will be joined by research and innovation practitioners from around the world to discuss and co-design solutions to deliver the next great transition to a sustainable and prosperous economy, society, and planet.
Participants will collaborate across polices, setting the direction, spurring innovation, triggering investment, and mobilising citizens.
The event really represents a great opportunity to network, share best practices and knowledge.
Registration will be open at the end of April.
Link to the webpage.

the plenary of the Fiftis in Europe kaleidoscope project was hosted on 25th April at the National Library in Buda Castle

50s in Budapest, news and updates from the project

photos by Valentina Bachi.

Hosted by partner OSZK, on 25th April a plenary meeting for the “Fifties in Europe Kaleidoscope” project took place in the beautiful premises of the National Library in Buda Castle. The meeting was attended by all the partners and was extremely useful to review the progress in each activity and to plan the next steps for project’s milestones.

Of particular interest were the presentations by Frederik Temmermans (imec) about the process of training for the visual recognition algorithm, that is currently going through million cycles of training in order to “learn” to recognize key features of the visual imagery of the 1950s; also the presentation by Maria Ralli (NTUA) focused on the latest development of the WITH infrastructure for annotation of digital collections. Important discussion took place about the upcoming education MOOC of the project, that is planned to be launched in the second semester of academic year 2019-2020 on KU Leuven’s online platform and which is featuring a good collaboration with the colleagues of Culture Moves project. Finally, curator Sofie Taes drove a lively discussion about the upcoming photographic exhibition that is currently under preparation, and which will be launched by Photoconsortium in Pisa in September 2019. Some preliminary thoughts were also shared about the final conference to be hosted by SPK in February 2020.

This two-day event will celebrate the ADAF and the artists who took part on it, and the mission of developing the Cultural and Creative Industry in Greece

Tribute to the 15 Years of Athens Digital Arts Festival

Athens Digital Arts Festival (ADAF), the representative of Greece in the international digital art scene, celebrates 15 years of constant presence with a great tribute event on 10 and 11 of May, opening for the first time to the audience the ex-shopping center FOKAS, at 41 Stadiou Str.

K.BHTA (Friday, 10/5) and Athens Voice Radio 102.5 (Saturday 11/5) on dexxx of the Tribute to the 15 years of Athens Digital Arts Festival.

Emphasizing on its DNA, it presents to the public a multi-dimensional program with impressive interactive installations, web art by COSMOTE Fiber, top-of-the-top Video Art & Animation projects, explosive DJ Sets as well as interactive booths for the audience, artists and volunteers, who will have an active role to this celebration as they form the nucleic acid of its genetic code.

A tribute to all these artists, collaborators, institutions and volunteers who have been supporting the Festival for 15 years.

This two-day event will include some of the most impressive works by artists who have participated in the entire history of the Festival, as one of its main aims is to promote artists and to develop the Cultural and Creative Industry in Greece. The tribute will feature live sets, in a super-festive mood.

May, the festival’s milestone, the cradle that brought it to life, is the perfect time for this retrospective action that is dedicated to its history. Returning to its roots, ADAF reactivates, this time, the ex-shopping center FOKAS, at 41 Stadiou Street, in the heart of the city, with a great celebration of contemporary culture in Athens.

Participants and friends of the Festival, you are all honorary guests. Visit the tribute event and celebrate 15 years of digital art in Athens!

We would like to express our sincere thanks to the Unified Fund for Supplementary Insurance and Lump-sum Benefits and to the Governor, Nikos Brikis, as well as the Program of the Ministry of Labor, Social Security and Social Solidarity “Recovery of the Historic Center of Athens – Exploitation in terms of social return” of the property on Stadiou Street 41, which hosts the International Festival of Digital Arts in Greece.

Without their valuable help, it would not be possible to carry out our activities.

View Facebook event

#ADAFTribute #ADAFMayDNA

In Cooperation: Attica Region

Coorganization: OPANDA

With the support: Ε.Τ.Ε.Α.Ε.Π. | Ministry of Labour, Social Insurance and Social Solidarity “Recovery of the Real Estate of the Historic Center of Athens – Exploitation in terms of social return”