Digital meets Culture

Demonstrations of the PREFORMA tools in Barcelona, Amsterdam, Quedlinburg, and Stockholm

Photo credit: CC BY-SA Sebastiaan Ter Burg.

During May 2017, successful hands-on sessions and workshops have been organised by PREFORMA in several places to explain to the participants what does conformance checking mean, why is file format validation so important in long-term digital preservation, how to create their own policy profiles and how to download, install, configure and use the conformance checker to analyse their files. These workshops invite participants to bring their files and analyse them with the PREFORMA tools..

Barcelona, 10 May 2017

The first hands on session was organised in Barcelona with members of the Official Association of Librarians (Col·legi Oficial de Bibliotecaris i Documentalistes de Catalunya – COBDC), to show the functionalities offered by the DPF Manager to check TIFF files.

It took place in the premises of COBDC on the 10th of May and the session was conducted by Sònia Oliveras from the Girona City Council and Xavier Tarrés and Víctor Muñoz from Easy Innova. The attendees, who have large amounts of TIFF files, came mostly from local and national memory institutions and weren’t aware of any file conformance checker. The tools offered by PREFORMA project were the first solution in order to solve the file format conformance.

Amsterdam, 28 May 2017

Photo credit: CC BY-SA Sebastiaan Ter Burg.

A second hands-on session was organised in Amsterdam in the framework of The Reel Thing XL workshop, focusing on the challenges of using FFV1 and MKV for film digitisation.

Presentations were delivered by Erwin Verbruggen (Netherlands Institute of Sound and Vision), introducing PREFORMA and the AV challenges, Jérôme Martinez (MediaArea.net), introducing MediaConch, Eva Verdoodt & Noortje Verbeke (VIAA), presenting their film digitisation workflow and considerations using FFV1/MKV, and Reto Kromer (reto.ch), presenting the last developments on the FFV1 standardisation as far as colour information for films is concerned.

Photo credit: CC BY-SA Sebastiaan Ter Burg.

The session was closed by a panel discussion guided by the British Film Institute on the practical thresholds implementing FFV1/MKV in film digitisation. Basically the importance of the standardisation effort was discussed, as well as the posibilities for crowdfunding further development of the standards and the MediaConch tool.

The workshop was attended by 25-30 participants, mainly from film archives and film scanning services, including British Film Institute, Irish film institue, INA, Catalunyan Film Archive, Austrian Film Archive, German Film Archive, VIAA, Sound & Vision, Picturae Digitisation Services.

Quedlinburg, 29 May 2017

The third hands-on session was organised in Quedlinburg by SPK in cooperation with the Museum Association of Saxony-Anhalt, focusing again on the DPF Manager.

The session was embedded in a general meeting of the Working Group Digitisation of the Museum-Association (AG Digitalisierung MVSA). There were 22 participants mainly from medium-sized and small museums – museum-directors, curators, IT-people. There was a general introduction on file-formats for digital preservation, especially for text and images, followed by an introduction to PREFORMA and the tools created in the project.

Participants brought their own laptops and installed the DPF Manager. After that the functionalities available in the GUI version were explained and participants were able to try both the conformance checker and the policy checker.

In the end the participants agreed that the DPF Manager is a valuable tool for their digitisation-work, not only for digital preservation but also for checking image-files produced by external companies in the framework of a digitisation project of a museum.

Stockholm, 30 May 2017

Photo credit: CC BY-SA Sebastiaan Ter Burg.

Finally, the last hands-on session organised by PREFORMA in May was hosted at the National Archives of Sweden and it focuses on PDF/A and on the use of veraPDF conformance checker. The session brought together 21 persons working with archives and records management issues at public and private memory institutions, state and municipal agencies and organisations, and in SMEs.

The Riksarkivet team made an introduction to the seminar followed by a brief walkthrough of the PDF/A format. The hands-on part was divided into two main blocks: the first one focusing on conformance checking, the second one on policy checking. Each block began with a demonstration by the Riksarkivet team, and was then followed by practical exercises where the participants used veraPDF to check the conformance and policy respectively of their sample files.

The seminar ended with an informal discussion on the results of the seminar and whether the participants initial expectations were met. These expectations was mainly about learning more about PDF/A to better understand its “pros and cons” but also to learn about validation and the PREFORMA conformance checker. The overall feedback from the participants was very positive and participants were interested to continue to follow the developments of the PREFORMA project , possibly as part of a Swedish informal reference group.

Additional workshops and seminars will be organised by the PREFORMA partners after Summer. Stay tuned at www.preforma-project.eu!

Riga, 15 May 2017

Preservation courses at the IS&T conference Archiving 2017

Riksarkivet (the Swedish National Archive) and Packed, together with veraPDF and EasyInnova, were invited to the conference to arrange a course about formats for preservation on the 15th of May. The framework of the course was based on the work done in Riksarkivet’s research and development program ArkivE 2.0 — fundamental principles for selection of format — which within the PREFORMA project was applied.

The participants were introduced to an abstract and a generic overview of the meaning of “format” and digital preservation. Within that framework the value and importance of a Conformance Checker and what makes a format appropriate in a specific user case was explored. The course covered technical, legal and archival challenges facing those who work with digital preservation and handed the task of recommending and selecting “preservation formats”.

A demonstration of the difference between file identification and conformance checking provided the participants with a much appreciated practical connection to the theoretical presentation. A more concrete and detailed view of formats were also given through the presentations of veraPDF on PDF/A, and EasyInnova on TIFF and TI/A.

The course had 12 pre-registered participants (mainly librarians, academics, photographers and digitisation companies), of which 11 attended and 10 gave their evaluation through the IS&T provided feedback form. Background of the participants included the Swedish Media Conversion Center (formally part of Riksarkivet), Latvian National Library, Dutch City of Leiden Heritage Network and ancestry.com. The overall feedback was very positive.

Happy Summer from MediaArea!

MediaConch Newsletter #10 – June 2017

Updates

We are pleased to announce the progress we’ve made this year. There are new updates to MediaConch that expand its capabilities, user stories to share, and new events related to implementation checking and the standardization of open audiovisual formats.

The MediaConch team recently collaborated with VIAA on tests to migrate their JPEG2000/MXF collection to FFV1/Matroska. Learn more about our process and findings!

The development of MediaConch has been closely following the work of the IETF CELLAR working group which is creating specifications for EBML, Matroska, FFV1 and FLAC. Review the latest versions of those documents.

Some Highlights:

MediaConch optimized its FFV1 parser, which will allow upcoming versions to provide more comprehensive implementation checking of FFV1 against its specification.
We improved the Matroska checker, particularly to support the CELLAR working group’s development of the EBML Schema, which defines Matroska’s structure in a manner similar to an XML Schema.
Attachments to Matroska files may now be analyzed against other implementation checkers. For instance, Matroska can now use VeraPDF or DPF Manager to assess TIFF or PDF data.
In collaboration with the Tate Museum, we have added a TN2162 policy checker to MediaConch. This policy assesses uncompressed video in QuickTime against Apple’s list of additional requirements that affect that combination of formats.
Several bugs were reported and fixed. Thanks to our users for their reports!
See what’s new in MediaConch’s GUI ad CLI!

Jérôme, Reto, and Kieran recently presented MediaConch and CELLAR standardization at the Reel Thing Conference in Amsterdam.

The presentations and conversations at the Reel Thing demonstrated a growing interest in the standardization process of Matroska and FFV1 as well as methods to integrate these formats into preservation environments. Conversations focused on use of these formats for film preservation challenges and collaborative work to develop more tools around lossless video.

Next steps:

“FrameMD5” computing in MediaConch, in order to compare resulting file to a source file, pixel per pixel, after a conversion to Matroska/FFV1, if the conversion includes a “FrameMD5” of the source file.
Adding more information (specific location of the error in the bitstream) when FFV1 validation fails.
Stabilization of the software, with bug fixes and more automatic non-regression tests.

Ashley recently interviewed Eddy Colloton from the Denver Art Museum about his process and experience using MediaConch. Read it here!

Upcoming Events

June 21st, 2017 4:45 – 5:30 pm PDT: Ashley will discuss MediaConch and format standards in her talk How Open Source Audiovisual Tools Help Archivists (And You Too!) at Open Source Bridge this week in Portland, OR.

July 10th, 2017 2:00 – 5:00 pm EDT: Dave will be hosting An Archivists’ Guide to Matroska workshop at the Metropolitan New York Library Council.

July 19th, 2017 15:20 – 16:50 CEST : CELLAR (Codec Encoding for LossLess Archiving and Realtime transmission) will hold its second face-to-face meeting during IETF 99 at the Hilton in Prague. The final agenda will be published on June 23rd, 2017. Tessa and Jérôme will be attending in person.

September 20th, 2017 from 9:45a – 11:15a CEST: Jérôme and Dave will host a workshop: Checking Audiovisual Conformance, for IASA at the Ethnological Museum of Berlin.

October 11th – 12th, 2017: The PREFORMA International Conference will be held at the National Library of Estonia, Tõnismägi 2, Tallinn.

Latest Downloads

Download MediaConch’s latest release or a daily build.

New Release Notes

What’s new in MediaConch 17.05

GUI/CLI/Server/Online

Less verbose output by default
CSV output (useful for automation with the command line)
Option for creating policy from a file directly in the policy editor
New policy example based on Apple’s TN2162 which defines requirements when storing uncompressed video in QuickTime
Analyze attachments in Matroska files (useful especially with PDF or TIFF plugin, for validating attachments)
Better support of some broken Matroska files, displaying more information about the reason it is a broken file
More Matroska and FFV1 validity tests
Performance improvements
For Mac users, MediaConch is now available directly in the Mac App Store, with automatic updates

The MediaConch project has received funding from PREFORMA, co-funded by the European Commission under it’s FP7-ICT Programme.

Feedback

MediaArea is eager to build a community of collaborators and testers to integrate the software in their workflows and participate in usability testing. Please contact us if you’d like to be involved!

The new release is available to download from the PREFORMA Open Source Portal

DPF Manager v3.3 released and available to download

We present a new update of the DPF Manager. This new version can be downloaded as usual from the PREFORMA Open Source Portal.

This new version includes several improvements and fixes. One of the most interesting new features is the Statistics Module. This new section reports the most usual tags found in the analyzed files, as well as their values. Also from the ISOs validated, it is shown the errors that have been found ordered by frequency.

The rest of the enhancements and bugfixes of this new release are listed below.

Improved reports section efficiency.
Filter unreadable tags in reports.
Fixed some errors related with the metadata fixer.
Added default configuration to periodical checks definition.

In the next release, we plan to create a benchmarking tool where the DPF Manager will be compared with other well-known TIFF validators such as Jhove and Jhove2.

Don’t forget to give us feedback to continue improving the project!

London (UK); 11-17 July 2017 with pre-event symposyum on 10th July

EVA London 2017: conference, exhibitions, a research workshop and numerous of demonstration sessions

Held annually in July, EVA London is one of the international Electronic Visualisation & the Arts conferences. The first EVA conference was held in 1990, with the intention to create a space for people using or interested in the new technologies to share their experiences and network in a friendly, collaborative atmosphere. EVA London’s focus is on the development and application of visualisation technologies to various domains, including art, music, dance, theatre and the sciences.

EVA London 2017 is held on 11-17 July 2017 with a preliminary event on the 10th July, and:

has a focus on visualisation for the arts and culture – interpreted broadly to include its implications, effects, and consequent strategies and policies
covers the burgeoning creative uses of digital media for works of art and creative productions
is a networking event for groups and projects, including European projects and groups
includes a free-of-charge Research Workshop for MA, MSc and PhD students and others, to share their research in a friendly and informal setting
is inspiring and informative, collaborative and friendly

Website and full programme: http://www.eva-london.org/eva-london-2017/programme/

EVA London’s Conference themes 2017 include:

Digital Art
Data, Scientific and Creative Visualisation
Digitally Enhanced Reality and Everyware
2D and 3D Imaging, Display and Printing
Mobile Applications
Museums and Collections
Music, Performing arts, and Technologies
Open Source and Technologies
Preservation of Digital Visual Culture
Virtual Cultural Heritage
Virtual Worlds and Video Game Art

an innovative program focuses on the ways in which museums use digital technology and media to enhance services, collections and user engagement

Pratt Institute School of Information in NY – Master of Science Museums and Digital Culture

The Master of Science in Museums and Digital Culture (MDC) of the Pratt Institute in NY (School of Information) is an innovative program that breaks new ground as the first museum master’s degree designed for the digital world, advancing the concept of a museum studies program. The program focuses on the ways in which museums use digital technology and media to enhance services and collections and engage with visitors across physical and virtual contexts.

The program features partnerships and fellowships with NYC’s leading museums the MDC program prepares students with the knowledge and digital skills for careers in today’s information-and-technology-rich museum environments. Through structured practicums and field research, students develop into innovative and creative leaders in the museum field.

This cutting-edge program designed for the 21st century museum in the digital age is an innovative museum studies program that focuses on the digital life of museums across collections, galleries and activities, preparing graduates with the knowledge and skills necessary for careers in this rapidly changing field, and the ability to engage and interact with today’s diverse and connected global audiences.

The curriculum builds on commonalities of knowledge and skills across GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) and addresses emerging areas of the museum field including digital information behavior, digital seeing and aesthetics, digital curation, and the integration of the physical and digital life of the museum, so that:

Students learn from expert faculty about key areas of study including visitor engagement, user experience, digital curation and preservation.
Students gain skills and knowledge in all aspects of digital technology use across the museum sector, physical and digital, real and virtual.
Graduates are prepared to take on leadership roles as museum professionals who can meet the challenges of museums in our digital world.

More information and contacts: https://www.pratt.edu/academics/information/degrees/museums-and-digital-culture-ms/

The new event by The Trampery and Barbican Centre will deal with the possibility to speculate on space and its construction with technological tools.

IM052017: Speculative Societies

Thursday, 25th May 2017

7 – 9:30pm at The Trampery Republic

A previous edition of Interfaces Monthly (IM092016: ‘A Matter of Materiality’) explored the spatial politics of materiality and immateriality. As an extension of this, IM052017: Speculative Societies will deal with the possibility to speculate on space and its construction with technological tools. Both individual logics and collective experience are affected by how we build, and intend to build, the world around us. Through biopolitical and architectural concerns, practitioners propose alternative narratives that encourage us to critique our lived realities, offer ideas for reform and imagine societies beyond our time. How can we use art and technology to invite a deeper look at the social interactions that underpin community formation?

Max Colson is a London-based artist using photography and moving image to explore urban architecture and land development strategies. ‘Virtual Control: Security and the Urban Imagination’, his first solo exhibition, was hosted at the Royal Institute of British Architects (2015). His work has been featured in a range of publications across architecture, design and photography, including Icon (2015), Architecture Today (2015) and Hotshoe International (2013). He has exhibited in group shows across Europe including Showroom MAMA in Rotterdam (2016), Nooderlicht Photogallery in Groningen (2015) and C/O Berlin (2014). Formerly he was a Leverhulme artist in residence at UCL Urban Laboratory (2014-2015). He is currently an artist in residence at Arebyte Gallery in Hackney Wick, conducting research for a show in November 2017. He teaches on the MA Graphic Communication Design at Central Saint Martins, London.

Ling Tan is a designer, maker and software developer interested in how people interact with the built environment and wearable. Trained as an architect, she enjoys building physical machines and prototypes ranging from urban scale to wearable scale to explore different modes of interaction between people and their surrounding spaces. She is currently working at Umbrellium in London to understand social wearables through community participation, where she created WearON, and open source prototyping platform for wearables. She hosts wearable workshops to encourage people with limited coding skills to go beyond the boundary of what they perceive to be doable with their given skillsets. She has worked with museums such as Wits Art Museum, South Africa and Watermans Art Centre, UK. Her works have been exhiited in shows such as Utopian Bodies: Fashion Looks Forward (2015) and features in magazines and websites across the globe such as Dezeen, Wired and Fast Company.

Iain Ball is an Artist. His work explores speculative (both real and imagined) scenarios pertaining to weird cultural transformations which have manifest as the result of sudden spurts of rapid technological change and stewed within periods of stagnation and lament. His largely sculptural practice considers how interfaces, networks, environments, disruptive technologies and complex systems power-up and energise Art objects in new and strange ways. Recent solo shows include ‘Praseodymium’ at Cell Project Space, London UK (2016) and ‘ENERGY PANGEA + GOCH live’ at Future Gallery, Berlin (2015). His work has been featured in Art Monthly, The post internet Survival Guide, Rare Earth Exhibition Catalogue, and Sleep Magazine. He has an MFA in Sculpturefrom the Slade School of Fine Art (2015).

Valinia Svoronou is an artist based in London and Athens. She works across different forms of media including video, sculpture, poetry, textual and installation work in order to explore fiction in terms of tropes, means and affective modes of presenting narrative within charged geotechnological landscapes which have existed in the past, present or are part of a speculative future. Recent shows include ‘The glow pt 2, gravity regimes’, a solo exhibition in Berlin curated by Rachel Walker, at Frankfurt am Main, ‘The Equilibrists’, a group show co-organised by the New Museum and the Deste Foundation, Athens. Her work has also been shown at the Showroom Gallery and Assembly Point among other spaces in London. Her work has been featured in Berlin Art Link, Frieze, DIS magazine and Vice. She has an MFA in Sculpture from the Slade School of Fine Art (2015).

LOCATION:

The Trampery Republic

9th Floor, Anchorage House

2 Clove Crescent

London

E14 2BE

United Kingdom

REGISTRATION REQUIRED via eventbrite

Venice (Italy), 22-23 May 2017

Fashion Digital Memories, symposium

The expression ‘Fashion heritage’ refers to a heterogeneous group of objects, different in nature and meaning. Lately, a general interest towards museum collections and archival materials related especially to fashion has been rising, demanding for access to this incredibly rich field of knowledge. It is the very variety of the ‘traces’ fashion leaves behind – not only clothes, but accessories, textiles, plates and magazines, sketches and photographs – that requires a reflection on what kind of technologies are better suited and how to apply them in order to preserve, disseminate and exploit these materials in all their potential.

The symposium gathers some of the most interesting case studies shaping their own practices in between the more traditional museum or archival practices with the new possibilities allowed by technology. These experiences nuance the relationship between fashion heritage and digital technologies. In presenting them all together, the symposium wants to tackle a variety of issues, concerning innovative techniques developed to update consolidated museum and archival practices, as conservation and traditional studies of material culture; reflections on how to incorporate technology in the conceptual and material development of displays and exhibitions; actions aimed at presenting fashion heritage to a wider – and often unspecialised – audience in appealing ways, exploiting the potential of social media and experimental platforms.

Invitation (PDF, 203 Kb)

Programme (PDF, 408 KB)

The opening keynote speaker will be Timothy Long, curator of Fashion and Decorative Arts at the Museum of London, who will describe how fashion heritage and technology intertwine in his own practice, crossing the realms of preservation, display and communication, and introducing the three main areas explored by the conference. The closing keynote speech will be given by Professor José Teunissen, Dean of the School of Design and Technology at London College of Fashion, whose practice as curator and educator bridges the gap between diverse territories, constantly challenging the boundaries of the relation between fashion and technology.
Speakers will also include Sarah Scaturro, Head Conservator at The Costume Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of Arts, in New York, Dr. Kate Bethune, Director’s Researcher at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and Karen Van Godtsenhoven, Curator of Fashion at MoMu ModeMuseum Provincie Antwerpen.

Abstracts and bio (PDF, 393 Kb)

The symposium is organised by the Europeana Fashion International Association in collaboration with Università IUAV di Venezia and The New School – Parsons Paris. The event is co-funded by the European Commission within the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Programme.

Monday 22 May 2017, 14:00-17:30 – Tuesday 23 May 2017, 09:30-13:00

Aula Tafuri, Palazzo Badoer – Università IUAV di Venezia
San Polo (Calle de la Laca) 2468
30125 Venice

The event is free, registration is required. Register here:
https://europeanafashion2017.eventbrite.co.uk

About Europeana Fashion International Association
The Europeana Fashion International Association is a non-profit organisation established in order to bring together and engage fashion institutions (both GLAMs – Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums – and the creative industry) in the valorisation and exploitation of fashion heritage online.
One of the main objectives of the Association is to maintain and enrich the Europeana Fashion aggregator, through which more than one million fashion objects can be accessed, shared and promoted on-line, and that brings together more than 35 public and private archives and museums, coming from 13 European countries, in order to collect and give free access to high quality digital fashion content, ranging from historical dresses to accessories, catwalk photographs, drawings, sketches, videos, and fashion
catalogues.
Info: communication @ europeanafashion.eu

Follow Europeana Fashion:
Website www.europeanafashion.eu
Instagram europeanafashionofficial
Twitter @eurfashion
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/EuropeanaFashion/

Multimedia app shows „Snow White“ and plays Estonian film music in the National Library in Tallinn

Pop-Up Museum supports a new exhibition at the Estonian National Library

On 2 May 2017 the National Library of Estonia launched a MuPoP exhibition in the Library’s foyer. The exhibition introduces one book illustration stored in the National Library together with famous film tunes, creating a nostalgic but also educating effect. The exhibition app was prepared by the Amsterdam-based company Noterik which specialises in multimedia apps. The technology of the Pop-Up Museum was developed in the framework of E-Space EU-funded project (2014-2017), of which the Estonian Ministry of Culture (EVK) was a prominent partner too.

The app introduces one original illustration to „Snow White“ by the renowned Estonian illustrator Siima Škop, accompanied by Estonian film music. Each tune has been matched with the characters and objects on the illustration. The app enables to introduce to the younger generations the beautiful film music written by Estonian composers for well-kown films („Karoliine hõbelõng“, „Nipernaadi“, „Mehed ei nuta“, „Siin me oleme“, „Hukkunud Alpinisti hotell“, „Nukitsamees“, „Kevade“, etc.).

The National Library’s digital archive DIGAR enables to browse through many other book illustrations, and all are welcome to the Art and Music Reading Rooms on floor 8 of the National Library to discover the original illustrations and sound recordings from the Library’s collections.

The exhibition was prepared by Rena Tüür and Katre Riisalu from the Fine Arts Information Centre, and it celebrates the Year of Children’s and Youth Culture. The original illustrations by Siima Škop to „The Sleeping Beauty“ can be seen in the reading area on floor 5 until 31 May.

Additional info:

Contact at Estonian National Library:

Ave Tölpt, Head of Exhibitions, Ave.Toelpt @ nlib.ee
Katre Riisalu, Head of Fine Arts Information Centre, Katre.Riisalu @ nlib.ee
Terje Talv, Marketing and Communications Manager, Terje.Talv @ nlib.ee

On the occasion of the launch event of Europeana Photography, the new online platform about early photography, a station with the Pop-Up Museum was set up for trying the Man Meets World exhibition

“Man Meets World”, Pop-Up Museum exhibition in Pisa, 20th May 2017

One of the virtual interactive exhibitions about Belle Epoque, which are curated by KU Leuven and powered with the MuPop (the Pop-Up Museum tool developed in 2016 within E-Space project) was on show in Pisa on 20th May.

On the occasion of the launch of Europeana Photography – the new online platform about early photography curated by PHOTOCONSORTIUM and Europeana – a sparkling event was organized in Pisa, at the premises of Museum of Graphics during the European Night of Museums.

The Europeana Photography launch event in Pisa included presentations by international speakers and a live demo of the online platform; as an added value for the attendees and all the Museum’s visitors, a station with the Pop-Up Museum was set up for trying the Man Meets World exhibition.

The MuPop multiscreen technology allows any smartphone or mobile device to ionteract with a screen and enjoy virtual exhibitions with captivating storytelling. Digitized early photography is very good and suitable material for user engagement via this quick and brilliant tool, as it is demonstrated with the Man Meets World exhibition focused on Belle Epoque, about travels and must-see places of the time.

Man Meets World basically consists of a slide show of a selection of photographs illustrating the main themes (places and travelling) accompanied by audio fragments describing the narratives behind the images on screen and placing them in their historical context. This exhibition was produced in the context of E-Space project and was on show in Leuven in early 2017.

More info: