Digital meets Culture

MediaConch Newsletter #7 – Sept. 2016

What’s new in MediaConch 16.08

Local GUI

New policy editor
minor fixes
Policy Editor: closes messages when user changes the policy/rule
Checker: remove a node is not saved
Checker: fixed hadling of files with special characters
Added ctrl-q shortcut to quit
Better handling of user path

Online GUI

Policy Editor: closes message when user changes policy/rule

CLI

Checker: fixed handling of files with special characters
Better handling of user path

Latest Downloads

Download MediaConch’s latest release or a daily build.

MediaConch now supports plugins including VeraPDF and DPFManager!

Updates

Sign up for our upcoming MediaConch webinar on Thursday, September 15th at 3pm CET / 9am EST / 6am PST (for the early risers!).

MediaArea folks and PREFORMA at large will be hosting a workshop and giving talks at iPRES in Bern, Switzerland on Wednesday, October 5th! Check out the Workshop 3: Quality Standards for Preserving Digital Cultural Heritage as well as Ashley Blewer’s talk on CELLAR and the standardization of digital preservation.

In case you missed it, here is a great synopsis and a review by Erwin Verbruggen of our pre-IETF Berlin Symposium: No Time to Wait!: Standardizing FFV1 & Matroska for Preservation held July 18th – 20th. You can also check out ample documentation and links to videos of the talks.

The MediaConch project and this symposium 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!

Just released: recommendation from W3C on 'Data on the Web'

W3C Data on the Web – Best Practices

The Data on the Web Best Practices Working Group has published its primary document which is now a Candidate Recommendation. The document provides Best Practices related to the publication and usage of data on the Web designed to help support a self-sustaining ecosystem. Data should be discoverable and understandable by humans and machines. Where data is used in some way, whether by the originator of the data or by an external party, such usage should also be discoverable and the efforts of the data publisher recognized. In short, following these Best Practices will facilitate interaction between publishers and consumers.

As a further aid, the Working Group has also published stable versions of its Data Quality and Dataset Usage vocabularies. Taken together, the three documents address the group’s mission as stated in its charter:

to develop the open data ecosystem, facilitating better communication between developers and publishers;
to provide guidance to publishers that will improve consistency in the way data is managed, thus promoting the re-use of data;
to foster trust in the data among developers, whatever technology they choose to use, increasing the potential for genuine innovation.

Finally, it’s worth noting that the closely related Share-PSI project, co-funded by the European Commission, has concluded its work recently with the publication of a set of high level policy-related Best Practices and guides for the sharing of public sector information online. Although targeted at Europe, the advice, which is available in many languages and contexts, is likely to be applicable world wide.

Source: https://twitter.com/w3c/status/770724613026295808

Tallinn (Estonia), 29-30 September 2016

Culture 4D: Digitization, Data, Disruptions, Diversity / 3rd Council of Europe Platform Exchange on Culture and Digitisation

The high-level international digital culture conference “Culture 4D: Digitization, Data, Disruptions, Diversity” is taking place on 29-30 September in Tallinn, Estonia. The event is organised in the framework of the Estonian Chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, in collaboration with Tallinn University Centre of Excellence in Media Innovation and Digital Culture (MEDIT), Estonian Ministry of Culture and Council of Europe.

The conference is also the third in a series of platform meetings “Council of Europe Platform Exchange on Culture and Digitisation” which are designed to inform the policy guidance work of the Council of Europe. A unique aspect of the Tallinn conference is the focus on the future of Big Data management in cultural industries and the new opportunities and challenges for the private and public sectors, concerning digitisation of culture. The meeting features internationally acknowledged experts in the field – scholars, activists, entrepreneurs and policy makers – from more than a dozen European countries.

The conference will take place on 29-30 September, 2016, at Tallinn University. The official languages of conference are English and French.

Partner organisations: the Estonian Ministry of Culture, National Library of Estonia.

Additional information and registration is here.

For further information on the Conference and travel information, please visit the event website at: www.culture4d.net.

A Pop-Up Museum transforms a small of space into an island of art and culture, where passers-by may dwell a while, using their mobile phones to bring the screens to life.

E-Space is developing a new pilot: the Pop-Up Museum

Europeana Space project accomplished its task of creating 6 thematic pilots to showcase creative reuse of digital cultural heritage in various areas (TV, Dance, Photography, Games, Museums and Open & Hybrid Publishing).

Now we want to do more and remix the Pilots’ ideas and outcomes in an innovative product, using multiscreen technology, which can be used to create interactive and integrated virtual exhibitions: the Pop-Up Museum.

As explained by partner Noterik , that is leading the development of this concept together with NTUA and other project partners: “The product will make it easy to build an interactive exhibition, that can be placed anywhere, designed to offer engaging digital cultural experiences to visitors at museums and art galleries, but also at locations such as waiting rooms, entrance halls, offices and classrooms. A Pop Up Museum transforms a small portion of space into an island dedicated to art and culture, where visitors or passers-by may dwell a while, using their mobile phones or tablets to bring the screen or screens to life. The application is very low-cost, uses web-standards and requires hardware (a smart screen) that is often already at hand or can be easily adapted.”

Partners at work. Photo courtesy of Noterik.

Work is progressing with partners and across the summer two workshops were held to finetune ideas and technology development.

“These different types of exhibitions will be demonstrated at the Europeana Space November conference in Berlin, with at least two installations scheduled to be available to the general public, in Hilversum at Sound and Vision and at a museum in Antwerp. Noterik is all set to spend the rest of the summer and beginning of the fall to make these real-life exhibitions a success, and digital cultural exhibitions pop-up in waiting rooms a reality. This technology is not limited to art and cultural heritage alone, but can be applied to a wide range of commercial scenarios as well, including DOOH (Digital Out of Home Advertising) and small or large scale events, using billboards and other public screens”

Read the whole article on Noterik’s website: http://www.noterik.nl/pop-up-museum/

Learn more on Pop-Up Museum:

http://www.europeana-space.eu/pop-up-museum

https://www.mupop.net/

8, 15 and 22 September 2015

Learn more about the conformance checkers

The PREFORMA project is running a webinar series throughout September. The webinars will:

introduce the PREFORMA project
update participants on the current status of the conformance checkers
demonstrate the software
outline future plans
give examples of how the community can contribute, or provide feedback

Dates and times:

Thursday 8 September 15:00 CET: DPF Manager
Thursday 15 September 15:00 CET: MediaConch
Thursday 22 September 15:00 CET: veraPDF

Registration:

For more information about the PREFORMA project visit: http://www.preforma-project.eu/.

PREFORMA webinar: DPF Manager

Sep 8 : 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM

Programme:

DPF Manager introduction
DPF Manager Demo
How to contribute
Future of DPF Manager
Q&A

Outline:

DPF Manager is a multi-platform application and a framework designed to empower end users and developers to gain full control over the technical properties and structure of TIFF images intended for Long Term Preservation. In considering the suitability of particular Data object for the purposes of preserving digital information as an authentic resource for future generations, relies on the use of a stable, open and well documented file format as well as some data object properties acceptance criteria.

The DPF Manager objective is to give memory institutions full control over TIFF images. The DPF Manager main features are:

TIFF file identification based on the TIFF Baseline specifications Revision 6.
Validating the conformance to a specific normative. These normative can be defined by some ISO standard like TIFF/EP or TIFF/IT or specific acceptance criteria based on a locally-defined policy rules
Fixing the TIFF file while preserving the Image Representation, in order to make it more suitable for long term preservation.
User and machine readable report in different formats, including the data object structure and metadata as well as the validation result.

Some Long Term Preservation activities may conflict with goal of raid production and dissemination of digital information. DPF Manager aims to reduce the time and effort required to revise file structure, metadata and the institution acceptance criteria as well as giving advice about image preservability.

For more information about DPF Manager project visit: http://www.dpfmanager.org/.

Time:

Please note the start time is 14:00 BST / 15:00 CET

Registration:

http://preforma-webinars.eventbrite.co.uk

PREFORMA webinar: MediaConch

Sep 15 : 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM

Programme:

Background and context of MediaConch project, Dave Rice (5 minutes)
Functionality and usage of MediaConch software, Dinah Handel (10 minutes)
Demonstration of software, Dave Rice and Dinah Handel (10 minutes)
Future directions of the project, Dave Rice (5 minutes)

Outline:

MediaConch is an extensible, open source software project consisting of an implementation checker, policy checker, reporter, and fixer that targets preservation-level audiovisual files (specifically Matroska, Linear Pulse Code Modulation (LPCM) and FF Video Codec 1 (FFV1)) for use in memory institutions, providing detailed and batch-level conformance checking via an adaptable and flexible application program interface accessible by the command line, a graphical user interface, or a web-based shell. The webinar will discuss the background and context of the creation of the software, provide demonstrations of the software’s graphical user interface and command line functionality, and inform participants of the future directions of the project.

MediaConch is currently being developed by the MediaArea team, notable for the creation of open source media checker software, MediaInfo. Furthermore, the MediaArea team is dedicated to the further development of the standardization of the Matroska and FFV1 formats to ensure their longevity as a recommended digital preservation file format.

For more information about MediaConch visit: https://mediaarea.net/MediaConch/

Time:

Please note the start time is 14:00 BST / 15:00 CET

Registration:

http://preforma-webinars.eventbrite.co.uk

PREFORMA webinar: veraPDF

Sep 22 : 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM

Overview:

The PREFORMA project’s prototyping phase finishes at the end of 2016. The veraPDF consortium will be producing a v1.0 release candidate of the software library and applications in December 2016.

This webinar demonstrates the current state of veraPDF development and presents the consortium’s plans for 2017. Webinar attendees will be shown:

the consortium’s current development priorities, i.e. what we’re working on;
the veraPDF software development plan for the 2016 v1.0 release;
how they help to improve veraPDF software through testing;
a demonstration of the software used in some simple, but typical testing scenarios; and
an outline of the consortium’s plans for 2017.

The presentations will be aimed at non-technical veraPDF users and will benefit anyone wishing to make veraPDF validation part of their digital preservation processes.

For more information about veraPDF visit: http://verapdf.org/

Time:

Please note the start time is 14:00 BST / 15:00 CET

Registration:

http://preforma-webinars.eventbrite.co.uk

Beijing (China), 25 September - 9 October 2016

Beijing Media Art Biennale 2016 is opening in September

From our correspondent Elisa Debernardi

The “Beijing Media Art Biennale” aims through an interdisciplinary, cross-cutting artistic and theoretical practice to generate a dialogue and interface between the public and industry. It will be held at the World Art Museum and CAFA Art Museum on September 25 going through to October 9, during the Beijing Design Week 2016. In addition to the show held in the World Art Museum, it will present a “Lab Space” at the CAFA Art Museum, through related activities including forums, workshops, master classes, to combine the resources of the biennale and the teaching of the school, to offer the students and the related communities the opportunities to exchange with artists, thinkers, technological pioneers.

photo form the press conference introducing the event

photo from the press conference introducing the event

During the exhibition, it will also hold some public projects, such as an urban public screen show and audiovisual performances, etc., and the public can learn the related information of the exhibition through the public screens in the elevators of the office buildings, residential buildings and shopping malls, as well as the outdoor public screens, so that the exhibition can be involved in daily life, offering Beijing new urban public cultural landscapes, highlighting its public property and the value of the city. In the exhibition mode, Beijing Media Art Biennale is also innovative, through the form of hyperlinking exhibitions to connect the online and offline exhibitions, extending the display content to a large extent, connecting the artists, philosophers and scientists who are associated to “ethics of technology” around the world, to create a huge data base, or a think-tank.

Learn more about the event HERE

Leuven (Belgium), 7-10 February 2017

European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry

The 1st edition of the European Congress of Qualitative Inquiry is a unique event for sharing knowledge and seeking new collaboration and partnerships. It provides opportunities for addressing the common challenges that qualitative researchers face in their own geographical regions or research disciplines. Most importantly the Congress is a lively event, providing ample opportunities for interacting with friends and colleagues and learning about the latest developments and innovations in qualitative inquiry.

The venue of ECQI 2017 will be KU Leuven, situated near Brussels, the capital of Europe, and a centre of learning for almost six centuries now (founded in 1425).

QUALITY AND REFLEXIVITY IN QUALITATIVE INQUIRY

In order to ensure best practice and to stimulate innovation in qualitative inquiry we permanently judge, evaluate and critique the works of others and try to improve the quality of our own work, through peer review of papers and proposals and through acts of reflexivity and reflections related to our own personal and epistemological stances in qualitative inquiry. The internal compass we develop to assist in such processes is guided by a mixture of knowledge, experience and our personal stance on what we believe constitutes good qualitative research. We ‘live up’ to certain standards and ‘refuse’ others. The different positions we take can be considered both an advantage and a disadvantage. They contribute to the overall richness of our methodological field and allow us to deal with a variety of complex problems. At the same time, they complicate the search for a commonly accepted jargon to speak about quality and qualitative inquiry more generally. In the recognition of the value of flexible, emerging and progressive approaches to qualitative research we permanently negotiate quality frameworks based on our own reflexive research practice. We welcome contributions from all scientific domains and all qualitative research traditions, featuring innovative research methodologies, introducing worked examples that illustrate a reflexive research attitude or pushing the boundries of what we currently perceive as best practice in qualitative inquiry.

For the general conference track at this 1^st edition of ECQI we welcome contributions that answer the following questions:

QUALITY in qualitative inquiry

How has the debate on quality shifted over time and how has it hindered or facilitated progress in the field of qualitative inquiry?
Which quality frameworks are available to us? Do we need them at all, and why?
How do we choose to negotiate quality criteria and frameworks within the current evidence-based discourse? How do we balance methodological flaws against richness of description and the need to experiment with emerging and innovative methodologies and research lenses?
What sort of translations of quality do we support in the multiplicity of qualitative research paradigms and methodological approaches applied?

REFLEXIVITY in qualitative inquiry

What is a reflexive account to inquiry and how do we report on it?
What are the mechanisms by which we can make these processes more transparent for others to learn from?
What is the role of theory in our research? How and where does it manifest itself?

Also, in the general conference track, we further welcome contributions discussing a particular topical area of interest to a multidisciplinary crowd of qualitative researchers.

Please check the event website for further info. Call for abstract closed 15/9 but it is still possible to apply for a poster session.

https://kuleuvencongres.be/ECQI2017

New release of the conformance checker for PDF/A documents now available for download

veraPDF 0.20 released: download and test it!

The latest version of veraPDF is now available. Version 0.20 has the following enhancements:

Application enhancements:

added signature types to features report;
depth of feature reporting now configurable; and
altered log level of some validation methods.

Conformance checker fixes:

fix for validation of character encoding requirements of invisible fonts; and
fix for ICC Profile mluc tag.

Test corpus:

34 new test files for PDF/A-2b.

Download veraPDF 0.20:

http://downloads.verapdf.org/rel/verapdf-installer.zip

Release notes:

https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/releases/latest

Call for testing

veraPDF is building an open source, industry-approved PDF/A validator. Please support our efforts by downloading and testing the software. If you encounter problems, or wish to suggest improvements, please add them to the project’s GitHub issue tracker. Your feedback is very important, it helps to improve the software.

Keep up to date with the latest developments of veraPDF by subscribing to the veraPDF consortium’s newsletter.

veraPDF will be demonstrating the software at the PREFORMA Experience workshop on 23 November in Berlin. Find out more at: http://experienceworkshop.preforma-project.eu/.

a promo video explains all you need to know about this amazing investigation technique, to discover details invisible at human eye

KU Leuven’s Portable Light Dome: a new way of looking at cultural heritage

RICH (REFLECTANCE IMAGING FOR CULTURAL HERITAGE) is a project by Illuminare, Centre for the Study of Medieval Art, KU Leuven, in collaboration with ESAT, and is developing an imaging tool for research, study, and exploration of the material characteristics of graphic materials produced in medieval and early modern times. The tool is called Portable Light Dome.

The tool is equipped with 228 different LED lamps. Five different spectra are evenly distributed over the dome: UV at 365 nm, Blue at 460 nm, Red at 523 nm, Green at 623 nm and IR at 850 nm. A black and white sensor of 28 Mp with extended sensitivity in UV and IR is mounted on top of the dome.

With the minidome, the topography of medieval book illuminations, stamps, inks, seals and bookbinding stamps is visualized and monitored in +2D. Further developments of the tool are foreseen.

This amazing technology has been used not only on the precious medieval manuscripts preserved at KU Leuven’s library but also on ancient papyrus documents and archaelogical objects; further, a collaboration with University of Amsterdam allowed the RICH team to monitor historic bookbindings (16th – 19th century) with delicate needlework on velvet, silk and satin.

In collaboration with the RICH project and the ESAT labs, the Royal Museums of Art and History coordinates a pioneer project in which the multi-light Portable Light Dome is transformed into a Multi Spectral dome equipped with IR, Red, Green, Blue and UV LED light sources. This short video demonstrates the acquisition process with the fist developed MS microdome prototype of a Fayum mummy portrait (Egypt, Roman era) at the Brussels museum.

Also, between 27th January and 3rd February 2016, the RICH team has been working together with the scientists and conservators of the J.P. Getty Museum and Research Institute in Los Angeles. Various artifacts of the Museum collection have been monitored and studied with Photometric Stereo such as medieval manuscripts, master drawings, bookbindings and daguerreotypes.

Discover more at the Portable Light Dome website

a symposium and a conference in UK call for proposals, deadline is in September 2016

New Calls for Contributions in the area of Dance research

Dance Fields Post-Graduate Research Un-Symposium
Thursday 8th-Friday 9th December 2016
EXTENDED Deadline for proposals: September 19th 2016

The Dance Fields Postgraduate Un-Symposium is designed as an informal event to share research and ideas, ‘network’, and engage in dialogue and discussion through a series of one to two hour sessions. Drawing on the themes of the Dance Fields—Staking A Claim for Dance Studies in the 21st Century conference to be hosted at Roehampton University April 19th-22nd 2017, the un-symposium hopes to open up possibilities for collaborative submissions to the Dance Fields conference as well as spark collaborative working practices, reading groups etc. for the future.

Proposals

We are accepting proposals from Postgraduate Research students for 2hour sessions and 1hour mini sessions. Proposals are welcomed that address the overarching theme of the 2017 Dance Fields conference- read the full call for more information which can be downloaded here

Please send your proposal in one file with following information:

Name
Title of proposal
Format (discussion, workshop etc.)
Possible conference strand
Abstract (max. 300 words)
3-5 key words
Technical requirements
Brief biography (max. 150 words)
Contact details

Please send to Rebecca Stancliffe at stanclir@uni.coventry.ac.uk by September 8th 2016

photo Coventry University

Dance Fields: Staking a Claim for Dance Studies in the 21st Century
19th – 22nd April 2017 University of Roehampton

A Conference convened by Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE), Coventry University; Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Dance (CIRID), De Montfort University and Centre for Dance Research, University of Roehampton

Call for papers, panels, performances and presentations

CFP Deadline Friday 30th September 2016

This conference offers the blurring of boundaries between scholarly, writerly and material based artistic practices; emergent discourses between and across disciplines. New forms of collaborative and collective working will be emphasised and explored via mixed modes of enquiry, presentation, participation and dialogue.

By asking, ‘Where are we now?’ the conference will focus on strategic issues and questions pertaining to the UK socio-political landscape, whilst acknowledging the importance of the European and international dimensions as practices cannot be contained within any specific country-based framework.

To read more about the conference themes and how to make a proposal please download the full call here

All proposals should be sent by email with a subject heading Dance Fields Proposal to: julia.noyce@roehampton.ac.uk