Digital meets Culture

8 November, Budapest, Hungary

Yesterday evening at 18,00 was held the “Heritage-Evenings” event, organized by ELTE BTK
Atelier Európai Társadalomtudomány és Historiográfia Tanszék.
During this joint Heritage evening, the representatives of the two H2020 projects, REACH and Open Heritage, introduced and discuss the differences and similarities of the projects and the main issues of creating a bottom-up, democratized cultural heritage.

Look at the poster for more information

Mexico City, 12-14 February 2019

PASIG 2019 conference

The Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group (PASIG) is dedicated to advancing the practice of digital preservation and archiving. It brings together practitioners, industry experts and researchers to share experience in a vendor-neutral forum on how to put preservation and archiving into practice, including:

guidelines, best practice, assessment/audit criteria and standards,
architectures, designs, workflows and deployments,
tools, systems and services,
trends, directions and emerging products/solutions,
case studies, reviews and practical findings, and
comparisons and choices such as community or proprietary, onsite or hosted, customised or standardised solutions.

The community is above all focused on the practical aspects of digital preservation; while it discusses standards, it is not a standards-setting organization. Theory, research and policy discussions are also relevant, to the degree that they have a direct and tangible impact on current digital preservation practice. The PASIG Forum is a place to share practical experiences, successes, pain points, and, increasingly, a forum for fostering coordination and collaboration to enable the most effective use of our resources. To cross-pollinate global ideas and practice, PASIG events typically alternate between eastern and western hemispheres and are held roughly every 9-12 months at volunteer host institutions. The 2019 edition of the PASIG Forum will be held in Mexico City on 12-14 February 2019. Registration is now open! Program: http://pasig2019.colmex.mx/program/

deadline for applications is 25 November

CALL FOR WORKS for QueerTech.io 2019

QueerTech.io 2019 is an annual URL+IRL exhibition of online digital media artworks by queer identifying artists from around the globe, presented by Midsumma Festival and QueerTech.io. This year QueerTech.io are introducing modest artist honorarium for selected works. The work will be shown online and in physical locations (tbc) as part of the Midsumma Festival in Melbourne from 18 January 2019.

The call for works will close Sunday 25 November. If your work is selected, it will be embedded in the QueerTech.io website as part of the online (URL) exhibition.

We are particularly interested in interactive online works and games but also include video art and screen based works. The website is the main game – we are super interested in interactive internet art projects, games and whatever you got. #NSFW is ok but might not get shown in some public contexts.

More info and application: http://queertech.io/2019-cfw/

Collaborative forms and engagement for History Making. Contribution of the REACH project

International Workshop: Digital History and Public History

The meeting, held last 29th October at the University of Alicante, represented a good occasion for All those involved in the promotion an preservation of Cultural Heritage in order to introduce the projects they are currently carry on and debate on theoretical and practical aspects for promoting collaborative forms which help to “Build History”.
On this regard, Dr Maurizio Toscano, from the University of Granada, task leader of the Rural Heritage Pilot of REACH project, gave his contribute to the dialogue with a speech on “Participatory approaches and engagement strategies in Digital History projects“.
The workshop was organised in the framework of the “Guerra e Historia Pùblica” (GeHP, War and Public History), an interdisciplinary project which aims to set up a digital platform for sharing knowledge about the Independent War of the Community of Valencia (1808-1814) among citizen and in this way,educate to peace values and promote a sensible and engaged tourism.
The use of this smart platform will allow researches, teachers, tourism agents etc…to export data and re-use them for their purposes.

Full Programme

An interactive and dynamic tool for Data Collection

Where the researcher cannot get: open platforms to collaborate with citizens on cultural heritage research data

Last week, the Editorial of the University of Granada (UGR) and Downhill Publishing have published a book about Digital Humanities, titled “Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades Digitales Aplicadas.Casos de estudio y perspectivas críticas”.(Social Sciences and Digital Humanities Applied. Case studies and critical perspectives.)
The work is composed of twenty-five chapters, each one focus on a specific theme, but all facing a common topic: the digitization as background or digital methodologies as a form. A set of approaches that, through digitization, become a source of inspiration to develop new analyses, helping in this way, to better understand the world in which we live. Chapters address a wide range of current issues such as feminism, sexuality, social control, geopolitical problems, new rights and digital threats, economy, tourism, education in multiple forms, museums, archives, digitization projects, studies literary, art.
In this framework, Dr Maurizio Toscano, from the University of Granada, task leader for the REACH project Rural Heritage Pilot, gives his contribute by signing a chapter which aims to affirm the importance to pass from a methodology of Local data collection, currently used to store the raw data collected during the research activities to Open Data Platforms.
The first is accessible by a closed number of research groups and this considerably reduce its usefulness as source of knowledge for the community. On the contrary, the storage of datasets on an online Platform would encourage the cooperation and interaction between a wide range of users, by sharing contents, best practices, and results reached during the research activity in the field of Cultural Heritage.
In order to demonstrate the huge benefit the use of this tools would bring to the entire scientific community, the author presents three case studies, which have been recently developed as results of collaboration between university research groups in the humanities.
The core of the paper is the discussion, “where we analyse the lessons learnt from applying this approach, highlighting its benefits and the intrinsic issues of the process”.

The full bibliographical cite is:
Toscano, M. (2018). Where the researcher cannot get: open platorms to collaborate with citizens on cultural heritage research data. En E. Romero Frías y L. Bocanegra Barbec(Eds.),
Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades Digitales Aplicadas (pp. 538-561). Granada, España: Universidad de Granada [ISBN: 978-84-338-6318-8]. New York, USA: Downhill Publishing [ISBN:978-0-9897361-7-6].

The book, available in Open Access, can be downloaded at http://editorial.ugr.es/pages/publicacionesenabierto
The DOI, available on Zenodo, is https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1469337

the festival is accepting submission from international videoartists

Magmart | video under volcano

Magmart | video under volcano is an international videoart festival, which over the years has seen the participation of more than 1400 artists from +80 different countries, with thousand submitted videos.

The Festival is open to all international videoartists. Partecipation is free.

Between all submitted videos, will be done a final selection based on vote of an international Jury composed by experts.

Any author can participate with max 5 videos.

Deadline: Will be accepted only the videos received within midnight of April, 07 2019.

https://www.magmart.it/rules.php

Cyprus 29th October-3rd November 2018

REACH project supports EUROMED Conference 2018

The 7th edition of the International Conference on Digital Heritage will host hundreds of excellent oral and poster presentations, as well as workshops and demonstrations from academia and industry, reflecting the wide scope of the work of the main actors in the area of cultural heritage. Contributions are expected by policy makers, professionals, students and delegates from more than 60 countries.

The common goal is to focus on interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary research on tangible and intangible Cultural Heritage, the use of cutting edge technologies for the protection, preservation, conservation, massive digitalisation and visualization/presentation of the Cultural Heritage content.

REACH project supports EUROMED 2018 because of the essential rule played by digitization for the promotion of participatory approaches to culture.
REACH is already coordinating its activity with other main players in the sector as VIMM project and Photoconsortium, both, directly involved in the support of the conference too. As in the past they will keep cooperating and promoting future initiatives in line with this upcoming one and support the use of new technologies for increasing the awareness and participation of people to the enhancement of the European cultural heritage.
Read more about Euromed 2018 at http://www.digitalmeetsculture.net/article/7th-euromed-2018-conference-progress-in-cultural-heritage-e-documentation-preservation-and-protection/

interesting PhD dissertation by Serdar Aydin focused on the architectural heritage best practices tested in Kashgar, China

A digital design approach to creative and participatory content-making in digital heritage

“Decoding Kashgar: A Digital Design Approach to Steer and Diversify Creative Engagement in Digital Heritage.” is the title of a PhD thesis by Serdar Aydin at the Victoria University of Wellington.

Digital tools have become critical instruments in preserving and communicating the value of heritage as important cultural expressions of the past. A consequence of digitalisation is the democratisation of heritage institutions, such as museums, which are found to value increasingly new types of content and new profiles of audiences. Digitisation plays a vital role in the alteration of the convictions of the heritage field to ‘materiality’ and ‘actuality.’ Although researchers acknowledge the significance of digital heritage in leading us into new ways of expressing ‘authenticity’ and ‘virtuality,’ studies have been confined to heritage activities comprised of digital documentation, representation and dissemination. Previous studies have reported on the role of public engagement in digital heritage which is criticised as consumptive, passive, guided and descriptive. Instead, the motivation of this research is to explore a new role that is ‘generative,’ ‘active’ and ‘creative’ for the production of heritage knowledge.

This dissertation demonstrates an innovative digital design approach to creative and participatory content-making in digital heritage. The research investigated the use of creative content generated collaboratively for knowledge production and acquisition in architectural heritage and tested in Kashgar, the westernmost city in China. The research conceives an interdisciplinary methodology, integrating design with the standard activities involved in digital heritage. The research examines the role of creative engagement for constructing digital heritage: creative engagement in a hybrid immersive virtual reality environment is experimented with and findings are analysed qualitatively. Then, to measure the outcome of creative engagement quantitatively, a well-known technique in data mining is used to expose undisclosed patterns. It is the first time in digital heritage that a study employs association rule mining to interpret user-generated content. The qualitative findings of two initial experiments are synthesised with quantitative results of the third experiment to investigate how the creative contribution of people in content-making is generalizable.

Summary: http://www.themuseumofgamers.org/archive/2018/10/23/thesis-summary

Free access to the thesis: http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/handle/10063/7083

CC-BY-NC-SA

Kashgar image CC BY-SA 2.5 es

Facet Publishing announce the publication of 'Digital Archives: management, use and access' edited by Milena Dobreva

A wide-ranging overview of how the shift to digital is changing the landscape of archives

Today, accessibility to digital content is continuing to expand rapidly and all organizations which collect, preserve and provide access to the collective memory of humankind are expected to provide digital services. Does this transition into digital space require a substantial shift in the professional philosophy, knowledge and practice of archives?

This edited collection attempts to explore these uncharted territories by bringing together inspirational and informative chapters from international experts to help readers understand the drivers for change and their implications for archives. Editor Milena Dobreva said, “I hope the book will broaden and deepen the thinking and dialogue between all those academics, professionals and students who are working on different aspects of the digital cultural and scientific heritage”.

The book: http://www.facetpublishing.co.uk/title.php?id=049344#.W87TXfZuLIU

Reassessment of the role of archives in the digital environment serves to develop critical approaches to current trends in the broader heritage sector, including cultural industries experimenting with sustainable business models for cultural production, digitization of analogue cultural heritage, and the related IPR issues surrounding the re-use of digital objects and data for research, education, advocacy and art.

Professor Kalpana Shankar said, “Archives and access continue to matter, perhaps more than ever. As digital material proliferates and the tools to manipulate it do so as well, what is real and what is false online become difficult to disambiguate. Human rights, scientific research and ‘wicked’ geopolitical problems (and solving them) rests on accurate and universal access to records and data, whether one is talking about the international crises of forced migration and refugees, human rights, political corruption or climate change. The work of this book is in helping us, the reader, understand how archives and archivists navigate the entanglement of technical, social, organizational and legal challenges they face daily”.

Dr. Milena Dobreva is an Associate Professor at UCL Qatar where she is coordinating the MA in Library and Information Studies leading the introduction of four pathways in the programme including a specialisation on Archives, Records and Data Management. Previously she served as a Head of the Department of Library Information and Archive Sciences at the University of Malta spearheading the redesign and expansion of the departmental portfolio, and as the Founding Head of the first Digitisation Centre in Bulgaria where she was also a member on the Executive Board of the National Commission of UNESCO. Milena is a member of the editorial board of the IFLA Journal, and of the International Journal on Digital Libraries (IJDL) and is the co-editor of User Studies for Digital Library Development (Facet, 2012).

Contributors
Carla Basili, Italian National Research Council and Sapienza University;

Pierluigi Feliciati, University of Macerata; Edel Jennings, Waterford Institute of Technology; Enrico Natale, University of Basel; Gillian Oliver, Monash University;

Elli Papadopoulou, European Open Science Cloud pilot project; Oleksandr Pastukhov, University of Malta; Guy Pessach, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Trudy Huskamp Peterson, archival consultant and certified archivist; Panayiota Polydoratou, Alexander Technological Educational Institute (ATEI) of Thessaloniki;

Kalpana Shankar, University College Dublin; Sotirios Sismanis, information professional; Donald Tabone, Middlesex University, Malta.

The book is published by Facet Publishing and is available to pre-order from Bookpoint Ltd | Tel: +44 (0)1235 827702 | Fax: +44 (0)1235 827703 | Email: facet@bookpoint.co.uk | Web: www.facetpublishing.co.uk. | Mailing Address: Mail Order Dept, 39 Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4TD. It will be available in North America from the American Library Association.

Warsaw University,16th October 2018.

REACH project presented at the International Conference on Multiple Heritages

Last Tuesday 16th October, was celebrated the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the Centre of studies of French language and culture at Warsaw University. For the occasion an International Conference titled: “Science et Société dans une Europe qui change”was held, where REACH project and its pilots were presented by Dr. Luda Klusakova, from Charles University, task leader of the Small Towns Heritage Pilots. This true cultural heritage of Warsaw University founded in 1958 with Michel Foucault as its first director, the center considers as its cultural heritage also the Staszic Palace, the seat of contemporary Polish Academy of Sciences, where in 1924 the French institute was founded.

Read more about the celebration at http://www.okf.uw.edu.pl/fr/multimedia/item/729-60-urodziny-okfisf-uw.html