“Ksar Said: Building Tunisian Young People’s Critical Engagement with Their Heritage”

CatturaThe 5th of March, the online open access journal “Sustainability” published an article stating the importance of the use of virtual reality for  increasing and promoting the value of Tunisian heritage as important cultural expressions of the past.
The article appeared as part of the Special Issue Sustainable Alternate Realities in Digital Heritage and is tiltled: “Ksar Said: Building Tunisian Young People’s Critical Engagement with Their Heritage”.
The paper describes the work undertaken as part of the ‘Digital Documentation of Ksar Said’ Project. This project, funded by the British Council, combined education, history, and heritage for the digital preservation of tangible and intangible aspects of heritage associated with the 19th century Said Palace (Ksar Said) in Tunis. Authors produced an interactive 3D model of Ksar Said and developed learning resources to build Tunisian students’ critical engagement with their heritage through inquiry learning activities within the 3D model.They used a user-centred approach, based on pre-assessment (i.e., co-creation of contents), mid-term evaluation (i.e., feedback on contents and preliminary design of virtual activities), and post-assessment design (i.e., user trial). Their results demonstrate the potential of this novel approach to virtual learning and inform future co-design, evaluation and implementation choices for improving the generative power of three dimensional virtual replication of heritage sites in the cultural heritage sector.

The authors:
Paola Di Giuseppantonio Di Franco: School of Philosophy and Art History and Interdisciplinary Studies Centre, University of Essex; Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK
Mark Winterbottom:  Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, CB2 8PQ, UK; mw244@cam.ac.uk
Fabrizio Galeazzi Department of Archaeology, University of York, York, YO1 7EP, UK; Interdisciplinary Institute for the
Humanities, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR1 4DH, UK; fabrizio.galeazzi@york.ac.uk
Mike Gogan: Virtual Experience Company, Malvern, WR13 5EZ, UK; mike@virtualexperience.co.uk

Download the pdf version of the article

 


EVA 2019 Saint Petersburg: Electronic Imaging & the Visual Arts

eva2019

We invite you to take part in the International Conference EVA 2019 SAINT PETERSBURG: Electronic Imaging & the Visual Arts (http://evaspb.ifmo.ru/en/), which will take place 20 – 21 June 2019 at the ITMO University (Lomonosov Street, bld 9, Saint Petersburg, Russia). Working language is English.

MAIN TOPICS OF THE EVA 2019 Saint Petersburg CONFERENCE:

– Digital Humanities;

– Art&Science;

– AR/VR/MR/XR technologies.

For the participation in the conference you need to register on the website of the Conference (http://evaspb.ifmo.ru/en/registration) and send the summary report (1 p., In English) to the official e-mail address of the Conference (evaspbconf@gmail.com) untill May 1, 2019.

The full texts of the reports included in the conference program, should be sent before May 15, 2019. The results of the conference will be published in the conference proceedings.

Visa Support Information is on the on the website of the Conference  (http://evaspb.ifmo.ru/en/visa-support-information)


The REACH Workshop on participatory approaches for creativity and entrepreneurship

workshop CoventryThe second REACH project Workshop is getting close!

It is planned for next Tuesday, the 12th of March, in Coventry at the venue of the Institute for Creative Enterprise  and it will discuss and explore best practices on participatory approaches in the use and re-use of content and places within the sphere of cultural heritage.

Organized by Coventry University (REACH Project Coordinator), this international event represents a great opportunity for the stakeholders in the cultural heritage sector (creative enterprises, innovative tourism organizations and local development agencies, as well as researchers and students) to investigate the value of creative participatory (re-)use and  entrepreneurship in terms of research advancement and social innovation as well as regarding the impact on public and private investment in culture.

The event is organized in three sessions and a final panel discussion.

Two sessions will take place during the morning:
the first will consider what has been done before, in other participatory projects;
the second will go deeper facing in a more practical way the creative re-use and   entrepreneurship by showcases.

In the evening, the third session will focus on the participatory approach to journalism via the Digital Meets Culture online magazine.

The day will end with the panel discussion during which the speakers will take questions from the audience.

Further information:

Workshop webpage

 


Per una scuola protagonista della cultura nell’era digitale

dicultherGli incontri dell’11-12 a Matera, del 13 a Trani e del 15-16 a Catanzaro rappresentano un momento di confronto cooperativo promosso dalla Rete DiCultHer che mette al centro la ‘creatività’ dei giovani per affrontare, mediante l’uso consapevole del digitale e con approcci innovativi, la conoscenza, l’accesso partecipato, la gestione e la valorizzazione del Digital Cultural Heritage per realizzare le istanze che hanno portato all’elaborazione e realizzazione del progetto #DiCultHer stesso.

Seguendo il solco tracciato nel 2018 – anno europeo del patrimonio culturale – la programmazione 2018-19 delle attività promosse dalla Scuola a Rete DiCultHer ha rappresentato un ulteriore qualificato momento per favorire la collaborazione con le Istituzioni nazionali ed europee per favorire l’engagement delle fasce giovanili ai vari temi connessi al patrimonio culturale in forma digitale, il Digital Cultural Heritage (DCH) che costituisce ormai la memoria culturale della contemporaneità nell’agire “Con i ragazzi per costruire opportunità” e per garantire contesto e sviluppi attuativi al «diritto di ogni cittadino all’accesso ai saperi e di essere educato alla conoscenza e all’uso responsabile del digitale per la salvaguardia e la valorizzazione del patrimonio culturale e dei luoghi della cultura».

L’11 e 12 Aprile 2019, a Matera, Capitale europea della Cultura del 2019, il 13 a Trani presso il Polo Museale di TRANI – Fondazione SECA, con l’evento dal titolo “Scuola e DiCultHer insieme per la titolarità culturale degli studenti. Patrimonio culturale, sviluppo territoriale, cittadinanza e digitale” e il 15 e 16 a Catanzaro, presso il Teatro Politeama, con l’evento dal titolo “PNSD on the Road – La bellezza salverà il mondo” ci sono sembrati i luoghi e i contesti adeguati per dare voce e attenzione al protagonismo del nostro sistema scolastico e ai nostri ragazzi in particolare che hanno raccolto le sfide sottese alle attività DiCultHer ed in particolare di #HackCultura20192, il primo l’Hackathon per la “titolarità culturale”, la conoscenza e la ‘presa in carico’ del patrimonio culturale nazionale da parte dei giovani, promuovendo la prima rassegna dei prodotti realizzati sui temi del Digital Cultural Heritage dalle Scuole italiane, nella prospettiva a) di renderla permanente nel Mezzogiorno d’Italia quale appuntamento culturale ricorrente per il Paese e per la Scuola in particolare e, b) di avviare il Laboratorio Scuola Matera2019 a supporto della progettazione di iniziative formative, educative e di aggiornamento professionale dei Docenti nel settore del Digital Cultural Heritage, previsto nel Protocollo d’Intesa DiCultHer-USR Basilicata in atto.

Le iniziative sono parte integrante della quarta edizione della Settimana delle Culture Digitali “Antonio Ruberti” (8-14 Aprile 2019) e sono organizzate in collaborazione con gli Uffici Scolastici Regionali di Molise, Calabria e Basilicata, con i quali DiCultHer ha specifici Protocolli d’intesa operativi sui temi dell’Educazione al Patrimonio Culturale, nonché in collaborazione con INDIRE, ICCU-MiBAC, EUROPEANA e Scholas Occurrentes. Per DiCultHer tali attività rappresentano un modo sostanziale per contestualizzare la Convenzione di Faro nell’Era Digitale contemporanea, realizzando attività formative, educative e di ricerca per dotare, in particolare, le nuove generazione della conoscenza non solo delle nuove dimensioni del Patrimonio culturale, ma anche del più vasto universo del nuovo Digital Cultural Heritage. L’obiettivo è quello di realizzare l’integrazione fra saperi umanistici tradizionali e conoscenze di metodi e tecniche computazionali nella strutturazione della nuova Cultura Digitale, attraverso modelli che puntino a creare conoscenze e competenze consapevoli trasversali per la realizzazione di quel digital knowledge design system applicato all’educazione al patrimonio culturale che mette al centro la ‘creatività’ dei giovani per affrontare, mediante l’uso consapevole del digitale e con approcci innovativi, la conoscenza, l’accesso partecipato, la gestione e la valorizzazione del Digital Cultural Heritage delle nascenti Digital Science, Humanities, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (Digital SHTEAM).


The Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon in Southern California Museums

the ARTFeminism WikipediaWikipedia is one of the most popular website and a go-to source for facts online. Anyone can edit Wikipedia, but not everyone does. Studies show that only 16% of Wikipedia editors identify as female; content is skewed by the lack of representation by women and important stories could remain untold.

Art+Feminism is a global do-it-yourself campaign to combat gender bias and improve the coverage of women, intersectional feminism, and the arts on Wikipedia.

For the past six years, DIY campaign Art+Feminism has been holding Wikipedia edit-a-thons aimed at increasing the visibility and representation of women, nonbinary, and transgender people in the arts on the most widely used online reference site.
Starting this weekend and for each weekend in March, as part of its Wikipedia edit-a-thons, Art + Feminism, in collaboration with the online art magazine East of Borneo, will organize events at Southern California museums.

Art + feminism invites you to participate by bringing your laptop or tablet computer to learn how to create and improve Wikipedia articles.

The events organized are:

Sunday, March 3: The Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Saturday, March 9: Vincent Price Art Museum

Sunday, March 10: Hammer Museum hosts an edit-a-thon focused on women+Film+Media

Sunday, March 17: LACMA hosts an edit-a-thon focused on Women+Design+Craft

Thursday, March 21: MCA San Diego hosts an edit-a-thon focused on women artists in MCASD’s permanent collection.

Sunday, March 31: California African American Museum edit-a-thon focused on women artists in CAAM’s permanent collection.

For more informations visit the website

 


Applications for research position on Digital Heritage and Cultural Informatics in Cyprus

CUT

Applications are invited from candidates who possess the necessary qualifications in order to fill one (1) Full-time Researcher Position: Special Scientist for Research / Senior Researcher A / ERA Chair holder on Digital Cultural Heritage) at the newly established UNESCO and European Research Area Chairs on Digital Cultural Heritage within the Digital Heritage Research Laboratory (DHRLab – www.digitalheritagelab.eu ) of the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT) in the research field of Digital Heritage and Cultural Informatics.

The selected scientist will work for fifty-four (54) months within the EU H2020 ERA Chair ‘Mnemosyne Project’, a unique EU-funded programme bringing together for the first time a worldwide network, aiming at implementing a multidisciplinary and inter-sectorial educational, research and training programme between academic research, creative industries and key Cultural Heritage stakeholders.

Read the call: https://www.cut.ac.cy/digitalAssets/162/162220_100EU_ERA.pdf

Applications must be sent via email at: HRecruits @ cut.ac.cy with the subject: “Application for Researcher Position (Special Scientist for Research – Senior Researcher A) Position – Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Informatics” no later than Friday 5 Αpril 2019, 12:00 (noon) which is the deadline for the submission of the applications. For further information please contact Dr. Marinos Ioannides (Director of the UNESCO Chair on Digital Cultural Heritage) at email marinos.ioannides @ cut.ac.cy and telephone number +357-25-002020


IIIF Conference 2019

iiifoThe 2019 International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) Conference will be held in the week of the 24th to 28th of June in Göttingen, hosted by the University of Göttingen / Göttingen State and University Library.

The Conference is intended for a wide range of participants and interested parties, including digital image repository managers, content curators, software developers, scholars, and administrators at libraries, museums, cultural heritage institutions, software firms, and other organizations working with digital images and audio/visual materials.

Website: https://iiif.io/event/2019/goettingen/

Marktplatz_(Göttingen)_jm20470

The conference encourages showcasing developments in IIIF and in particular welcomes presentations in the following areas:

  • Annotation, including full-text or academic use cases
  • Using IIIF material for Machine Learning and AI
  • Discovering IIIF resources
  • Audio/Visual use cases for IIIF
  • Linked Open “Usable” Data (LOUD) and IIIF
  • IIIF Implementation Spectrum: large-scale or small-scale projects
  • Interoperability in IIIF contexts
  • Implementations of IIIF outside of North America/Europe
  • IIIF communities (3D, archives, museums, manuscripts, newspapers, etc.)

Call for 500 words abstract, deadline 1 March: https://goo.gl/forms/qNOT6i2IAW75C6NS2


The Open Data and Ontologies for Cultural Heritage (ODOCH)

The Open Data and Ontologies for Cultural Heritage (ODOCH) aims at bringing together researchers in Semantic Web and Digital Humanities to discuss results and experiences on the design, development and use of ontology-based information systems for Cultural Heritage (Linked) Open Data. While significantly differing from the scope of workshops held in previous CAiSE events, ODOCH’19 will fit the CAiSE’19 theme of Responsible Information Systems, by providing a forum that will emphasize the need for a trustworthy spread of Cultural Heritage.

ODOCH’19 aims at attracting both IT researchers and industrials, already participating to the main conference, who are eager to discover new domains of application of their research, and professionals of humanities who will recognize in ODOCH’19 and, likely for the first time, in CAiSE, the chance to explore new opportunities. ODOCH’19 will be held in Rome, on June 3rd, 2019, in conjunction with the 31st International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE’19). As CAiSE’19, it will be hosted by Dipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica, Automatica e Gestionale Antonio Ruberti at Sapienza Università  di Roma.

http://odoch19.uniroma1.it/odoch19/

odoch

Important Dates:

  • Paper registration deadline: March 23, 2019
  • Paper submission deadline: March 30, 2019
  • Reviews due: April 15, 2019
  • Authors notification: April 20, 2019
  • Camera ready submission deadline: April 30, 2019
  • Workshop date: June 3, 2019

Topics of particular interest include (but are not limited to):

* Ontology-based data access for Cultural Heritage

* Cultural Heritage (Linked) Open Data publishing

* Cultural Heritage (Linked) Open Data preservation

* Cultural Heritage ontologies

* Semantic applications and information systems for Cultural Heritage

* Novel approaches enabling the use of ontologies for Cultural Heritage

* Usability of interfaces to (Linked) Open Data for humanities Cultural Heritage data

* Ontology patterns for Cultural Heritage data

Submissions

Prospective authors are invited to submit papers in any of the topics of the workshop. Papers must be written in English and comply with the CEUR formatting rules. Authors can prepare their manuscript as a PDF file, following the Latex or Word templates available on the workshop website (which are an adaptation of the Springer LNCS style templates), and submit it to the workshop organizers by accessing the CAiSE’19 EasyChair submission page (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=caise19), and selecting the track “1st International Workshop on Open Data and Ontologies for Cultural Heritage”.

After the workshop, authors of selected papers will be invited to submit extended versions of their papers to the Journal of Cultural Heritage (JCH).

For each accepted submission, at least one author is expected to register for the workshop and attend the workshop in order to present the paper. Registration is through the CAiSE’19 web site.

Workshop organization

* General chair: Tiziana Catarci

* Programme chairs: Carlo Meghini, Antonella Poggi

* Publicity chairs: Valentina Bartalesi, Domenico Fabio Savo


ABLE Summit on digital accessibility in higher education

able summit

ABLE (Accessibility for a Bolder Learning Experience), is an  initiative by the Office of Information Technology (IT) in collaboration with the Student Affairs Accessible Education Office (A.E.O) at the American University of Beirut (A.U.B), to open the doors of higher education for all through digital accessibility.

More than 200 experts, frontline workers, innovators, vendors and end users from around the world are expected to attend the April summit to share innovations, best practices, implementation strategies, and research and education in assistive technology (AT) and accessibility.

“Excellence in education is when we do everything that we can to make sure they become everything that they can.” Carol Ann Tomlinson.

ABLE aims at increasing the retention and success rates of students with disabilities and to support their readiness for life after university by developing and deploying accessibility to campus-wide IT resources.

ABLE scope covers assistive technologies (A.T), learning content, services, resources, policies, inclusive IT support, collaboration platforms, IT facilities and learning spaces.

The ABLE initiative includes, but not limited to:

  • The ABLE Summit annual event
  • A national joint project to implement digital accessibility in higher education with a consortium of universities, governmental and nongovernmental entities.

The ABLE summit will feature renowned speakers from global leading organizations in industry  and academia, to boost awareness, charge collective momentum and to trigger related initiatives.

Website: https://sites.aub.edu.lb/able/

 


Rome Reborn original project and new apps

rome rebornRome Reborn Project was an international initiative launched in 1996 with the goal of creating 3D digital models to illustrate the urban development of ancient Rome. According to the advice of the project’s advisory committee, the work of modeling begun recreating the city in year 320, under the emperor Constantine. This was a transition moment for the ancient city from the point of view of its architecture, which saw an increasing of Christian basilicas and churches built near to older structures such as the Pantheon and the Roman Senate House, thus enticing a great change in the urban landscape in that moment. The model shows a very neat panorama, which doesn’t account the recreation of the actual conditions of traffic, dirt and confusion of antique Rome’s crowded streets; but permits to explore over 7,000 buildings and monuments as they are known through literature, maps, and catalogues.

Rome Reborn–Flight over Ancient Rome from Bernard Frischer on Vimeo.

What was a digital humanities project at the University of California at Los Angeles, where architectural historians and 3D modelers were involved into its early development and then launch, grew along time well beyond the project itself and various versions of Rome Reborn have been developed by artists, classicists, archaeologists, and 3D modelers at numerous institution, whom have not always been cited and credited for their work. Although some criticism arised along time, due to the fact that a project originally funded by public money was eventually the base for highly commercial products copyrighted by an ad-hoc created, for-profit company, the new app Rome Reborn® VR nowadays utilizes version 3.0 of the 3D digital model as originally created and makes the model publicly available using Virtual Reality headsets and personal computers (Windows and Mac), for new experiences of education and entertainment: users can immerse in the ancient city, walking down its streets and entering some of its most famous buildings while listening to the commentary of highly qualified experts.

Whether such cultural heritage content should be more available to the public in an open-access repository is still an open question; in any case the project is indeed one of the best examples in the field of digital cultural heritage and 3D interactions with the past.

Rome Reborn: https://www.romereborn.org/

East-end-of-Roman-Forum-720x405