Digital meets Culture

20 June 2018, ELTE University, Budapest

Introductory meeting for the minority heritage pilot of REACH Project

The 20th of June, ELTE University, task leader of REACH project minority heritage pilot, headed the first meeting aimed to launch the idea of a Roma local heritage collection – representing the first case study of the Minority heritage pilot – in the 8th district, Budapest. Among the 23 districts of Budapest, the 8th district has the largest Roma population. Therefore, it seems crucial to preserve and manage the local Roma heritage, by involving local Roma and non-Roma stakeholders, including civil organisations, public institutions and local administration. This first meeting aimed at introducing potential actors to each other and to outline the first objectives, related to the establishment of the local Roma heritage collection. As an inspiratory model, the first and so far only Roma Local History Collection in Hungary was invited from Újpest, 4th district of Budapest.
The Roma Local History Collection of Újpest was introduced by its founder and director, István Gábor Molnár. This collection, including a digital archive and an exhibition, located in the building of the Roma Minority Self-Government, Újpest, is based on a twenty-year-long research of local heritage. The complex research comprehended oral history, participatory observation method and archive research.
The discussion of the meeting was focussed on the adaptivity of the “Újpest-model” to the 8th district and the potential participatory process and practices of the pilot. Possible obstacles and difficulties were also highlighted, including ethical concern, the general weakness of civil society and the lack of local Roma organizations. In other terms, the difficulty of approaching the local community emerged as a key topic for the following meetings.
Nevertheless, the participants considered the idea of the local Roma heritage collection as a pertinent project and seemed engaged to participate in it.
The Topotéka project (including the Budapest Collection, Metropolitan Ervin Szabó Library and the Budapest City Archives) offered to create a digital platform for the local Roma collection, as well as an exhibition at the building of the Budapest Collection, Metropolitan Ervin Szabó Library.
János Csóka, president of Roma Minority Self-Government of Budapest, offered to facilitate further meetings with local self-government members in the 8th district.
Anna Czékmány emphasized the educational potentials of the project and the potential application of the Roma heritage project in museum educational practices of the Petofi Literary Museum.
Ágota Szilágyi-Kispista proposed to organize exhibitions in the Gallery 8 and to involve the curators and volunteers of the Gallery in the research phase of the project.
Next steps:
Participants agreed on the importance of the project objectives and are willing to meet again in the near future, hopefully with the participation of further local actors, such as:
– representatives of the Local Government of the 8th district
– representatives of the Roma Minority Self-Government of the 8th district
– teachers / director of the Lakatos Menyhért Primary School (local primary school with a very high percentage of Roma pupils)
– members of different Roma NGOs
This introductory meeting proved for the organizers that the idea of creating a Roma Local Heritage collection in the 8th district may attract cultural heritage experts and local stakeholders as well. The following steps should include the contact with further local actors and the establishment of an action plan, including the precision of what exactly the project should collect, from whom should it collect and the methods of collection. Furthermore, it should define the milestones of the project, as well as the structure of the team. Finally, potential outcomes should be proposed, such as exhibitions, digital archives, methodological workshops, conferences or local events.
For further details click here

International conference CHCD2018 is launching a wide call for entries focusing on all different aspects of digital cultural heritage,

The 2nd Digital Heritage Best Practice Competition

The 5th International Symposium on Cultural Heritage Conservation and Digitization (CHCD 2018) in Beijing is launching the 2nd Digital Heritage Best Practice Competition to promote the relationship between digital heritage and the advancement of cultural heritage business and technology with regard to product innovation, production, and application.

The competition will bring together specialists from academia, technology and the industry and provide a professional platform to explore new ways of cultural heritage conservation and digitization and of innovative cross-disciplinary cooperation. This will allow integration of cultural heritage preservation into the global, national, and local industrial development systems and advance the development of their cooperation.

Projects may focus on all different aspects of digital cultural heritage, such as digital information acquisition and documentation, digital art, architecture, and archaeology research, cultural heritage digitization management, cultural heritage digitization visualization and interpretation, new media and information distribution channels and, cultural heritage digitization production, cultural heritage product research, and smart museums.

Best Practice will be given in the following categories:
a. Best Practice Award; b. Creativity Award; c. Technological Innovation Award
The winning projects will be shown in the “Digital Heritage Exhibition” during the September event and be asked to give a presentation during the 2-day conference.

Submission deadline: July 15, 2018

Download details of the competition (PDF, 115 Kb)

The Battle of the Bulge

Bastogne War Museum – A new identity for a new memorial place

The Bastogne War Museum is a new place of remembrance devoted to the Second World War, located very close to the famous Mardasson Memorial, a memorial place enriched by a crypt decorated by Fernand Léger, one of the most famous French painters of the twentieth century. The museum is housed in a brand-new building with striking architecture.
Through the prism of the Battle of the Bulge, a tour of the new museum gives visitors an insight into the causes, events and consequences of the Second World War in a modern and interactive environment.
The original scenography is filled in by three scenovisions, real multi-sensory 3D scenes, which ensure a complete immersion in History.
The route through the museum is organised into a set of sections in order to streamline your visit.

section 1: pre war atmosphere

section 2: the war conflict
section 3: Belgium under occupation
section 4: Towards liberation
section 5: The Battle of the Bulge
Section 6:Allied victory
Section 7: Towards a new world order
The Bastogne War Museum has the ambition to respond to the expectations of an audience that largely did not know the war. This is an audience that in the best case has read about the subject. But often the visitors do not really have an idea and they know the events only through vague images in cinema and on television.
The point is to turn the “memorial tourism”, of which the memorial fact is less and less present in the collective memory, into a “history tourism” with a clear civil and educational calling

The Mardasson Memorial and the Bastogne War Museum share a common ambition: to honour the memory of those who fought for our freedom and to uphold the values of peace and freedom.
Read more about the Bastogne War Museum at www.bastognewarmuseum.be
Contacts:

Colline du Mardasson, 5 – 6600 Bastogne (Belgium)
info@bastognewarmuseum.be
T : +32 61 210 220

independent, life-sized sculptural figures move and interact with each other, and with the public, through light and sound, exploring the implication and impact of machine and human conversation.

Interaction Design students created a full-scale replica of 1968 semi-interactive installation “Colloquy of Mobiles”

from CCS’s website

When we talk about talking to each other in the 21st century — communication, connection — the emphasis is often on how technology enhances or diminishes personal interaction. Every day we engage with smart machines and interfaces, from phones, tablets and laptops to cars, refrigerators, Alexa and Siri. Very little of modern life remains untouched by machines capable of conversing with us and with each other.

But what are the implications, and impact, of conversational machines in human environments?

The issue dates back generations, but it took a crucially important turn in 1968 with the interactive installation, “Colloquy of Mobiles,” in the groundbreaking Cybernetic Serendipity Exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Created by Gordon Pask, cybernetician, educator and author of numerous influential writings on Conversation Theory, “Colloquy of Mobiles” was believed to be the first exploration of its kind into the nature of machine-machine conversation.

On May 24, Detroit’s College of Creative Studies’ master’s program in Interaction Design debuted “Colloquy of Mobiles 2018” — a full-scale reproduction of Gordon Pask’s installation.

The mobiles consist of independent, life-sized sculptural figures (so-called “male” and “female”) that move and interact with each other, and with the public, through light and sound. The female forms, in particular, are deeply compelling — their shapes likened to everything from sea creatures to the human heart. This organic quality hints at the educational value of Colloquy in the present day, one suffused with smart environments, which was not the case 50 years ago.

Colloquy Introduction – Paul Pangaro, Chair, MFA Interaction Design from College for Creative Studies on Vimeo.

“Colloquy’s playfulness and emotional, non-verbal quality draws us in and, yet, the kinds of things we do on digital devices and screens are the opposite of that,” said Associate Professor and Chair of MFA Interaction Design Paul Pangaro. “What did Pask see in 1968 about a future ecosystem of conversational machines? There are hints about how to make our machine-person interactions richer and more human. And, might Colloquy give us a better appreciation for being in the physical presence of people?”

Pangaro noted that regardless of age or culture, public response in the presence of the mobiles’ three-dimensional forms is always one of curiosity.

“People want to touch the surface of the forms. These are not ‘devices’ or ‘machines’ as we think of digital interfaces today. They have an organic presence as if they are biological, not technological. Pask always looked at interaction without distinguishing between devices, machines, people. It was all universal in some way.”

Two Interaction Design (IxD) studios have worked on the project since January. IxD students consulted historical descriptions, diagrams, photographs and films to create a detailed scenario for how the 1968 mobiles functioned, along with instructions for how to recreate them. The students also built 1/6-scale models, complete with modern digital software, sensors and motors.

Based on original designs by Pask and Yolanda Sonnabend, designer TJ McLeish designed, constructed and fabricated all of the full-scale replica’s components, including the 3D forms, and he configured the motors, electronics and software that bring them to life. Building Brown Workshop in Chicago executed the intricate fabrication process for the female mobiles.

“They’re very sculptural,” said Amanda Pask Heitler, one of Gordon Pask’s daughters, who recalled her own impressions of the forms as a child during the 1968 London exhibition. “He wanted everything to be elegant. It was very important to him. He thought that the form of the thing mattered and that you should always aim to make things beautiful.”

More info:

Colloquy of Mobiles Website: https://www.colloquyofmobiles.com/

College of Creative Studies, where this blog is reproduced from: https://www.collegeforcreativestudies.edu/

Blog on Hyperallergic: https://hyperallergic.com/445834/colloquy-of-mobiles-2018-college-creative-studies-gordon-pask/

London (UK), 5 September 2018

Workshop: Co-creating augmented cultural experiences in Albertopolis

In conjunction with the international Engineering & Product Design Education Conference, and the EU PLUGGY project, Imperial College and Royal College of Art are hosting a free co-design workshop for participants to co-create cultural experiences based on the rich design and innovation history of Albertopolis using the tools for augmentation created by PLUGGY, REACH linked project.
PLUGGY (the Pluggable Social Platform for Heritage Awareness and Participation), is a 3-years Horizon 2020 EC funded project, which provides a social platform and a series of pluggable applications that aim at facilitating a continuing process of creating, modifying and safeguarding heritage where European citizens will be consumers, creators and maintainers of cultural activities.
You are warmly invited to join us for a late afternoon and evening of refreshments, problem solving, and hacking for culture!

What you can expect from the workshop
An afternoon of hands on cultural exploration and content creation that enriches your, and future visitor, experiences of the Albertopolis cultural heritage. You will be teamed up side-by-side with Imperial and RCA staff and students, cultural heritage professionals, designers and researchers and London’s community.

Agenda:
2:00 – 2:30 Registration, networking and Albertopolis orientation
2:30 – 2:45 Kick-off and introductions
2:45 – 3:30 Teams try out the PLUGGY applications based on Albertopolis experiences
3:30 – 4:15 Content developed
4:15 – 4:45 Teams pitch their work
4:45 – 5:30 Workshop wrap-up
6.00 – 8.00 Refreshments and drinks reception with Sonic playback

To secure your place at this event get a FREE General Admission ticket, clicking the button available below.
** Note; If you attend the conference, there is no need to book a ticket here. You can sign up for the workshop using the conference registration system. **

the symposium takes place 6–8 March 2019 at Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki. Call for papers deadline 31 August 2018.

“Moral Machines? The Ethics and Politics of the Digital World” symposium – call for papers

6–8 March 2019, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki.

As our visible and invisible social reality is getting increasingly digital, the question of the ethical, moral and political consequences of digitalization is ever more pressing. Such issue is too complex to be met only with instinctive digiphilia or digiphobia. No technology is just a tool, all technologies mark their users and environments. Digital technologies, however, mark them much more intimately than any previous ones have done since they promise to think in our place – so that they do not only enhance the ’ most distinctive feature but also relieve them from it. We entrust computers with more and more functions, and their help is indeed invaluable especially in science and technology. Some fear or dream that in the end, they become so invaluable that a huge Artificial Intelligence or Singularity will take control of the whole affair that humans deal with so messily.

CALL FOR PAPERS
The symposium “Moral Machines? The Ethics and Politics of the Digital World” welcomes contributions addressing the various aspects of the contemporary digital world. We are especially interested in the idea that despite everything they can do, the machines do not really think, at least not like us. So, what is thinking in the digital world? How does the digital machine “think”? Our both confirmed keynote speakers, N. Katherine Hayles (Duke University, USA) and Bernard Stiegler (IRI: Institut de Recherche et d’Innovation at the Centre Pompidou de Paris), have approached these fundamental questions in their work, and one of our aims within this symposium is to bring their approaches together for a lively discussion. Hayles has shown that, for a long time, computers were built with the assumption that they imitate human thought – while in fact, the machine’s capability of non-embodied and non-conscious cognition sets it apart from everything we call thinking. For his part, Bernard Stiegler has shown how technics in general and digital technologies in particular are specific forms of memory that is externalized and made public – and that, at the same time, becomes very different from and alien to individual human consciousness.

We are seeking submissions from scholars studying different aspects of these issues. Prominent work is done in many fields ranging from philosophy and literary studies to political science and sociology, not forgetting the wide umbrella of digital humanities. We hope that the symposium can bring together researchers from the hitherto disconnected fields and thus address the ethics and politics of the digital world in a new and inspiring setting.

300 words abstract deadline submission: 31st August 2018.

SAVE THE DATE: 13.-14.12.2018 POEM project Opening Conference in Hamburg

Call for Papers: “Participatory Memory Practices”

“Participatory Memory Practices: Connectivities, Empowerment, and Recognition of Cultural Heritages in Mediatized Memory Ecologies”
The conference addresses a multidisciplinary and international group of scholars and experts from memory institutions, civil society, policy makers, social entrepreneurs, the coding community and creative industries.
The goal is to collect contributions by the participants and implement a socially, inclusive public memory. To reach this purpose it is required to develop a comprehensive understanding on concepts, practices, and media infrastructures that facilitate the partaking of people from various backgrounds in the heritage building work of memory institutions (libraries, archives, and museums).
The Innovative Training Network “Participatory Memory Practices. Concepts, strategies, and media infrastructures for envisioning socially inclusive potential futures of European Societies through culture” (POEM) will provide this comprehensive knowledge by studying in practice theoretical approaches on how connectivities are built by institutions, people and groups, and media infrastructures for a socially inclusive, participatory heritage work.
Proposals should be sent until September 15th 2018 to poem.gwiss@uni-hamburg.de.
They should not exceed a length of 600 words and include bios of max. 200 words.
More information about the POEM Opening Conference at:
https://www.poem.uni-hamburg.de/en/opening-conference.html
Information about POEM Project:
https://www.poem.uni-hamburg.de/en/about.html

application deadline: 12 July 2018

TWA Cultural heritage Digitisation Grant fund returns for third year

After providing over £12,000 of support for UK cultural heritage institutions and business archives to digitise their holdings in its first two years, the TownsWeb Archiving Digitisation Grant has returned once more in 2018.

The Grant has funding awards of up to £5000 available to help archives, museums, libraries and galleries digitise and open up access to their collections.

Any UK heritage organisation is welcome to apply for the funding, simply by completing and submitting the Grant application form. As in previous years, each bid will be scored across three core criteria: heritage need, social and community impact, and research impact.

As in previous years, applications will be assessed by a three-strong judging panel made up of John Chambers, chief executive of the Archives & Records Association; Claire Adler, independent HLF mentor and heritage consultant; and Paul Sugden, lead digitisation consultant at TownsWeb Archiving.

The deadline for TWA Digitisation Grant applications is 12^th July 2018. Find out how to apply and read more details at:

https://www.townswebarchiving.com/twa-digitisation-grant/

deadline to provide your input and views is 30th June 2018

H2020 ViMM Project: Consultation for the final version of the EU Manifesto on Digital Cultural Heritage

The H2020 Virtual Multimodal Museum Project (ViMM: www.vi-mm.eu) is a high-visibility and participative Coordination and Support Action (CSA), funded under the EU Horizon 2020 programme (CULT-COOP-8-2016). The project brings together Europe’s and the world’s leadingpublic and private sector organisations working on Virtual Museums and in the wider sector of Digital Cultural Heritage, to support high quality policy development, decision making and the use of technical advances. The partner consortium (seebelow) is supported by an Advisory Board and (in the meantime) with more than 800 Experts, in building the ViMM Framework, involving decision-makers and expert practitioners in defining and resolving issues spread across 7 interlinked Thematic Areas (‘the 7 Ds’): Definitions – Directions – Documentation – Dimensions -Demand – Discovery – Decisions

Major project’s results will include:

A highly interactive and wide-reaching ViMM communication Platform which:

enables focused contributions and Working Group discussion by everyone interested
provides access to innovations, cases of excellence and decision-support
Key events at policy and practitioner/ stakeholder levels and extensive use of social media
A clearer, evidence-based view of the impact of Virtual Museums and Digital Cultural Heritage on society and the economy
A Manifesto and Roadmap for Action to be validated at the final ViMM international conference in 2019.

The project is on the stage to develop the EU Manifesto.

Building on the results from its seven (7) Thematic Areas and the twenty one (21) Working Groups, ViMM is now calling for comments from the Digital Cultural Heritage (DCH) community on the draft of its first planned major statement: the ViMM Manifesto: https://goo.gl/4MU7Gr

Therefore, we invite and welcome general comments on the ViMM Forum https://goo.gl/DAxT25

Alternatively, please download the document, make comments by activating in MS Word the Track Changes and send us the new document to manifesto@vi-mm.eu. The given deadline is: 30^th of June 2018.

Your comments at this stage are highly valued. The final version of the Manifesto will provide a basis for the Roadmap and Action Plan for DCH which follow it.

Please be sure that you register on our platform (if you haven’t done it yet: www.vi-mm.eu) and/or follow and like us on the Social Media:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/vimmuseum?lang=en
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8578688

deadline is 25th June 2018

Edinburgh Short Film Festival call for entries!

The ESFF screens 8 nights of short film every Autumn at cinemas across Edinburgh, featuring the best International, UK & Scottish short films from drama to documentary, comedy to animation, experimental to web series.

We’re also awarding prizes for Best Film, Best Animation and Best Scottish Short and we’re working with partner festivals to showcase our favourite shorts to audiences internationally, including this year: Barcelona Int. Short Film Festival, Fastnet Film Festival, the Sardinia Film Festival, Firenze FilmCorti 2018, the Adriatic Film Festival and Hidden Door among others!

But get your skates on – The FINAL Deadline is Monday June 25th!
https://www.edinburghshortfilmfestival.com/call-for-entries/