Digital meets Culture

Award given to Local Finalist for New App that Turns the Museum into a Puzzle Room

Minneapolis Institute of Art Announces 2018 Winners of Innovative 3M Art and Technology Award

The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2018 3M Art and Technology Award: “Riddle Mia This”, a mobile app proposed by technology architect Colin McFadden and digital preservation specialist Samantha Porter of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. McFadden and Porter will receive $50,000 toward the development of the project, which is an app that turns the museum into a puzzle room, providing a new, interactive way to deepen visitor engagement with Mia’s collection.

“The 3M Art and Technology Award was created to encourage innovative thinkers like Colin and Samantha to push boundaries and change the way visitors experience the museum,” said Douglas Hegley, chief digital officer at Mia. “We believe that digital technology can enable people to develop a powerful relationship with art, by inspiring the imagination and fostering curiosity.”

Founders of the Advanced Imaging Service for Objects and Spaces at the University of Minnesota, McFadden and Porter combined their expertise in 3D scanning, object creation, and virtual reality with their love of Twin Cities gaming communities to come up with their idea. The app will turn Mia’s permanent collection and digital assets—including X-rays of paintings and 3D scans of objects—into a game in which players solve a series of riddles using clues, hints, and strategy.

To develop the app, McFadden and Porter are partnering with GLITCH, a community-driven arts and education center for emerging game makers. GLITCH specializes in a collaborative design process that brings organizations together with like-minded communities and game makers to create meaningful interactive experiences.

McFadden and Porter hope “Riddle Mia This” will resonate with younger museum visitors.

“We immediately saw a chance to combine all this cool technology with the really exciting social interaction, problem solving, and exploration that comes with puzzle rooms,” said McFadden. “We knew we couldn’t go knocking holes in the museum to build hidden passageways and plant clues, but augmented reality technology will let us create a whole new universe within the museum. We’re incredibly honored to receive this award, and we can’t wait for everyone to be able to come unlock the mysteries of the museum.”

McFadden and Porter’s project was chosen by an expert panel of technology industry leaders that included Kate Boeckman, director of TR Labs Engineering at Thomas Reuters; Tim Brunelle, vice president creative director at BBDO; Peter de Sibour, brand design manager at 3M; Jenny Holman, vice president of strategy and solutions development at Clockwork; Jasmine Kar Tang, Ph.D., co-director of the center for writing at the University of Minnesota; and Patrick Kennedy, media & entertainment digital transformation lead of Accenture. 3M is the title sponsor of the award, with additional generous support provided by Accenture. More than 60 people applied for the 3M Art and Technology Award, and finalists included Sasha Kramer and Susan Wei with the project “Journeys Through Song” and Adeel Ahmad with “Loci Device.”

Founded in 2015, the 3M Art and Technology Award is now in its third and final year.

“We want to thank 3M, Accenture, our judges, and everyone who participated in this program and submitted proposals for the award,” said Kaywin Feldman, Nivin and Duncan MacMillan Director and President of Mia. “These projects embrace the idea that anything is possible and creativity is limitless.”

Mia website: https://new.artsmia.org/

3M Art and Technology award: https://new.artsmia.org/art-tech-award/

Art can be anything you want it to be, and with the rise of contemporary art, art is just that anything you want it to be

Discovering GG Barrett of Urban Fraggle Art.

As we enter a new digital age, more and more artists are redefining their craft and taking the plunge to enter the digital age. One no exception to this is GG Barrett of Urban Fraggle Art. GG (formerly Joanne) Barrett studied Fine Art at edge Hill University, but never entered the possibility of making her passion of horses and art her career. Until now.

Having never even entered the world of digital, a thought came about her 13years ago to download Photoshop. She had never used the medium before and can’t recall where the inspiration came from to design some wall art for her own walls . But she did, and what she did create, caused a buzz and she was urged to start a business.

Fast forwards to now, she has decided to take her discovery seriously and embark on the journey of digital media being used to create stunning masterpieces. Having exhibited at Waterstones, she received some beautiful comments such as ‘your art gave me escape from my mind’ and ‘a very spiritualism art’.

GG endeavours to depict the horse in a state of freedom, expressing the true nature and spirit of the horse. Being a horse lover and owner of a beautiful grey warmblood, she understands horses at a deep level, and understands their need for expression.

This is visible within her work, their titles and the stories which accompany them.

To create her work she uses still media to transform what was once a boring photograph into a stunning visual piece of art, capturing the true spirit of equine.

To see more visit urbanfraggle.com

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Brasov (Romania), 29-30 May 2018

VRTCH’18 – 1st International Conference on VR Technologies in Cultural Heritage

Preserving Cultural Heritage is a complex task that requires skills and techniques which need to be constantly upgraded. This 2-days event is thought not only as a classic conference, but also as a multi-level tutoring and an multidisciplinary collaboration opportunity for experts, librarians, researchers and all the other related stakeholders. In order to achieve common methodologies and best practices, between 29-30 May, 2018, we have the opportunity to come together, exchange ideas, experiences and know-how, and elevate research in Cultural Heritage and adjacent areas.

The scope of the VRTCH’18 is to:

Disseminate the findings of new research
Train participants in various fields related to preserving cultural heritage through VR technologies
Offer an environment in which participants interact and exchange knowledge
Make connections with experts and create new possible collaborations for the future

The VRTCH’18 conference comes in the context of the European Year of Cultural Heritage, giving us the opportunity to capitalize on this evolution of events. The final purpose is to bring together as many participants with as many different backgrounds as possible, in order to receive a highly diversified audience which will have the opportunity to achieve a good level of understanding of the mutual needs, requirements and technical means available in this field of research.

Our goal is to welcome research papers on tangible and intangible Cultural Heritage. We would like to host presentations on using state-of-the-art technologies and equipment for the preservation and digitization of Cultural Heritage content, applicable to archeological sites, monuments, museums, art galleries and so on. Moreover, VRTCH’18 covers useful topics, such as exploitation-ready technologies which can demonstrate the adoption of sustainable paradigms by the general public, companies, curators and managers of cultural entities. We have already initiated the first steps into involving policy makers which can influence the wide public, such as local museum directors, leaders of the oldest evangelic churches and representatives of the local authorities.

More info: http://www.eheritage.org/eheritage-2018-conference/

CALL FOR PAPERS CURRENTLY OPEN UNTIL 1st APRIL

26-28 September, Dubrovnik, Croatia

Upcoming Conference: The Best in Heritage

Annual, global conference featuring award-winning museum, heritage and conservation projects.

The conference, that celebrates its 17th edition, will take place in the UNESCO heritage site of Dubrovnik on 26-28 September and during the three days programme will feature more then 40 award-winning achievements from 2017.

The Best in Heritage is an annual conference on which award-winning museum, heritage and conservation projects present their success stories. Representatives of over forty laureates elaborate on their achievements, which have been recognised by professional juries over the past year for their outstanding quality. Aim of the conference is to promote these exceptional projects which demonstrate innovation and excellence concerning the care and communication of heritage.

The event is organized by the European Heritage Association, in partnership with Europa Nostra with support of Creative Europe Programme and Endowment Fund of ICOM.
European Heritage Association, based in Zagreb is non-governmental, non-profit organisation, member of Europa Nostra, dedicated to promoting every aspect of professional excellence in heritage professions.
Its mission is to select and present examples of the best and most successful practices and use their power as change-makers in spreading quality and excellence in public memory domain, contributing thus to creating a powerful profession and better use of heritage.

All awarded projects are available on The Best in Heritage website, organized in a list of several cathegories such as conservation, education, digitalization, art, ethnography and range from the preservation of rural heritage to the promotion of human right as well as immigration, science and history.

Read more about the Conference and the awarded projects here

Issue 10.2: ‘Moving the Sensate: Questions of Affect and Embodiment for the 21st Century’

Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices / call for papers – Extended Deadline

Call for Submissions: Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices

Issue 10.2: ‘Moving the Sensate: Questions of Affect and Embodiment for the 21^st Century’ & Open Call

The Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices invites submissions on an ongoing basis but welcomes submissions for its conference and open call issue by 28 February 2018.

The JDSP (ISSN 1757-1871) is an international refereed journal published twice a year by Intellect. It has been in publication since 2009 for scholars and practitioners whose research interests focus on the relationship between dance and somatic practices, and the influence that this body of practice exerts on the wider performing arts.

Principal Editor:
Sarah Whatley / Coventry University
Associate Editors:
Kirsty Alexander / University of Sterling
Natalie Garrett / Coventry University
Emma Meehan / Coventry University

For issue 10.2 we invite submissions that respond to the themes of the 2017 Conference of Dance and Somatic Practices: ‘Moving the Sensate: Questions of Affect and Embodiment for the 21^st Century’, as well as our open call themes.

Conference themes acknowledged the post-capitalist sensibility of the 21^st century, and the ways in which somatic informed dance does and might contribute to understandings of affect and embodiment. Submissions might therefore develop new thinking in the areas of:

Conceptions of the post-human and the dancing body
Transgender identities, and notions of difference
Dance as the radical, and site for political activism in a post-capitalist society
Responses to the non-human turn, new materialism,
Critiques of anthropocentricism and inter-species performance,
Mediated bodies and performance, in the era of big data, smart cities and technology advances

Further themes might include:

The pedagogical philosophy of somatics and how this might be seen to challenge or negate dominant approaches to learning and creativity
The history of somatic practices
The current application of somatics to dance/performing arts training and education
The aesthetic implications of working with/from a somatic understanding
The ‘body’ as a site of discourse in western culture, the influence of eastern cultures on notions of embodiment and how somatic practices challenge/collude with these ideas

Submissions:

Standard articles should be in the range of 4000-6000 words. A more flexible approach may be possible for other formats and styles of submission but any deviation should be discussed with the editors prior to submission and contributors need to work within the existing Journal design template (a free to view issue is available on the Intellect website as illustration).

Please include article title, abstract (200 words), keywords and full article. In another document, please include author’s name and affiliation, biography (200 words), postal and email address. Please submit in Word format.

Artist’s pages: Please submit a pdf with how you wish the article to appear in print, along with text (Word) and any images (tiff/jpeg/pdf, 300dpi) attached separately in the same email.

Please submit via the link below by 28 February 2018.

Please see https://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=160/view,page=0/ for further information about the journal and submission guidelines.

The deadline for submission is February 20, 2018.

Call for Proposals: Virtual Archaeology at EAA

In September 2018, the EAA European Association of Archaeologists will organize its annual meeting in Barcelona. More than 2000 scholars will attend its scientific sessions. Coinciding with this event, and in collaboration with EAA local organizers, an exhibition on Virtual Archaeology applications will take place. It will be addressed to scholars in archaeology and cultural heritage, but also to wider audiences.

We invite archaeologists, historians, computer scientists, specialists in computer graphics and any scholars related with Virtual Archaeology and the wider Digital Heritage field to send their projects to be exhibited during the Conference. Specifically, we ask for:

Short videos of virtual environments related to archaeological materials, sites, monuments, and ancient landscapes.
Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality or Mixed Reality projects using head-mounted displays, mobile devices or tangible interfaces.
Desktop systems displaying web-based virtual museums.

The organizers will provide the necessary space and arrangements for immersive, tangible and desktop-based installations to be accessible to EAA participants during the whole conference. The exhibition will also be linked to some of the scientific sessions (e.g. #66, #363, #448, #480).

The EAA Organization will edit a 30-minute video displaying short snippets of virtual reconstructions, from early solid-modelling projects to the latest laser-scanned, multi-agent interactive environments. The video session will be open to EAA participants, but we intend to offer it also to Barcelona citizens and tourists in a fully open event aimed at the widest audience possible. This event will be advertised in TV and other media.

Please fill in the application form below and send it to the organization team: Laia Pujol (Laia.Pujol@upf.edu) and Joan A. Barceló (JuanAntonio.Barcelo@uab.es). The deadline for submission is February 20, 2018. The EAA scientific committee will select the final projects to be showcased at the EAA venues during the conference. The final decision will be announced via email until March 20, 2018.

20 years ago, also in Barcelona, we organized the very first exhibition of Virtual Reality reconstructions in Archaeology with a huge success for that time. It is time to revise what was presented 20 years ago, to learn what has changed, and to set our challenges for the future of Digital Archaeology.

More info: https://www.e-a-a.org/eaa2018.

Application Form: .docx, 166 Kb

The ‘Provenance of Knowledge’ is the theme of the next ICOM-CIDOC conference, in Heraklion-Crete-Greece from 29 September to 4 October 2018.

CIDOC 2018 Call for Papers – EXTENDED DEADLINE

Extended deadline until 31st March: proposals for presentations, workshops, case studies, for CIDOC’s annual conference.

Visit the CIDOC 2018 Call for Papers page for submission guidelines and selection criteria: http://www.cidoc2018.com/call-papers.

*About the CIDOC 2018 Theme*

The ‘Provenance of Knowledge’ is a core element of good practice in documentation and so is the theme of the next ICOM-CIDOC conference, in Heraklion-Crete-Greece from 29 September to 4 October 2018.

As an essential aspect of documentation, Provenance of Knowledge refers to the attempt to trace the origins of the information and knowledge about an object, an entity or an idea in order to reconstruct the whole chain of creation, use, interpretation and dissemination of relevant information and knowledge. The ultimate purpose of this reconstruction is to confirm, illustrate, and validate the information and knowledge contained in the documentation in order to facilitate understanding across times and cultures. In this way, it contributes to scholarly citation in information handling while connecting all the material evidence kept in museums and other memory institutions.

The validation of information and knowledge has been greatly helped by the increasing use of digital technologies in documentation. However, this advancement in documentation has created new difficulties as the abundance of the available information makes it difficult to introduce standards and processes to model and maintain the development and validity of documented information.

The 2018 CIDOC conference aims at supporting museums by deepening the understanding of documentation as a means of knowledge preservation, dissemination and exchange.

Berlin (Germany), 18-24 June 2018

Sharing Heritage – Sharing Values / European Cultural Heritage summit

The European Cultural Heritage Summit will take place from 18-24 June 2018 in Berlin, Germany. This Summit, with the motto “Sharing Heritage – Sharing Values”, has been recognised by the European Union as one of the key public events of the European Year of Cultural Heritage (EYCH) and will be supported by the EU’s Creative Europe programme.

The European Cultural Heritage Summit will be co-hosted by Europa Nostra, the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, SPK) and the German Cultural Heritage Committee (DNK), acting as national coordinator of the EYCH in Germany.

The Summit will engage and mobilise a wide range of stakeholders, public and private, for an ambitious European Cultural Heritage Agenda. The Summit will be attended by highest representatives of EU Institutions, Member States and civil society organisations from all over Europe.

The core events will be held by the Summit’s hosts on 21-22 June. Additional events will be organised by European and German partner organisations on 18-20 June and/or 23-24 June.

Website: http://european-cultural-heritage-summit.eu/

Helsinki (Finland), 7-9 March 2018

DHN 2018 Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries

The 3rd conference of the association of Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries (DHN) will be held at the University of Helsinki March 7–9, 2018. The conference is organised by HELDIG – the Helsinki Centre for Digital Humanities at the University of Helsinki, the Faculty of Arts.

The overarching theme this year is Open Science. This pragmatic concept emphasises the role of transparent and reproducible research practices, open dissemination of results, and new forms of collaboration, all greatly facilitated by digitalisation.

In 2018, the conference seeks to extend the scope of digital humanities research covered, both into new areas, as well as beyond the Nordic and Baltic countries. This year, the conference welcomes in particular work related to the following themes: History, Cultural Heritage, Games, and Future.

Website: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/helsinki-centre-for-digital-humanities/dhn-2018

In addition to the main conference tracks, the DHN programme includes interesting pre-conference workshops (http://heldig.fi/dhn-2018/programme#section-45496) and a 1,5 hackathon on digitised newspaper corpora and web-archives. The hackathon takes place on 5-6 March, prior the main conference.

Visual representations of the Roma of Romania in the 19th and 20th centuries in the Europeana collections: between stereotypes and truthfulness

The Europeana Research Grants Programme 2017 awards a Roma cultural heritage project

In 2017 the Europeana Research Grants Programme collected research proposals all over Europe connected to the theme of intercultural dialogue.
Three projects has been chosen within more than 60 proposals and one of them is focused on the Roma identity and cultural preservation.

The project creators, Dr.Caterina Preda is an assistant Professor at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Bucharest in Romania.
“The project provides a web platform, which includes the visual representations of the Roma of the Romanian territories as they appear in the Europeana collection in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries depictions. This web-platform will be used as a didactic tool in the classroom, in high school and university level courses. The research investigates the ways in which the stereotypical repetitive representations of the Roma help explain the current underprivileged situation of this community in Europe and in Romania in particular. The project argues for a more balanced and comprehensive understanding of a largely unknown history by using visual representations taken from the archives of the libraries, which are included in the Europeana collections.”

More information on
Caterina Preda
The winners of Europeana Research Grants Programme 2017