ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe

The Center for Art and Media ZKM in Karlsruhe extends the original duties of a museum, which it was since 1989 with the mission to perpetuate classical arts in the digital age, becoming a cultural institution unique throughout the world.

It is a house for all media and genre, a house for both spatial arts, such as painting, photography, and sculpture as well as time-based arts, such as film, video, media art, music, dance, theater, and performance.

Digital culture, digital art, digital heritage

By combining archive and collections, exhibitions and events, research and production, the ZKM is able to aptly illustrate art’s development in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; no least due to the symposia and other platforms for theoretical discourse between philosophy, science, art, politics, and the economy that accompany its collection, exhibition, and research activities. The final aim of ZKM is to share knowledge and to improve our understanding of the world, being both a museum and also a center for research and production center.

In facts it was the first museum to exhibit and collect art spanning all media and genres, from painting through to App Art, sculpture to performance, installation to dance, photography through to video, film to computer art, and acousmatic music through to Sound Art. The center remains, to date, the only cultural center to systematically address the interlinking of research and production, exhibitions and events, and archive and collection.

 Through multiple of exhibitions and events held throughout the year, the ZKM provides insights into the range of projects developed at the ZKM, cultural history, and also cutting-edge developments in art, music, culture, politics, economy, and technology.

zkm

The digital annex

Already in 2014, the ZKM introduced its new website, which differs fundamentally from the web presence of cultural institutions. It offers interested visitors from around the world the chance to participate in the scientific research and cultural education at the ZKM and links expert knowledge to the public sphere. zkm.de defines itself as a digital annex and is an independent mode of existence – not an »interactive web brochure,«  which refers only to events in real space. In contrast to pure service sites, it also explicitly addresses the purely virtual visitor. For the on-site museum visitor, it is to be seen as a component of the overall experience.

Learn more on http://zkm.de/en


Museums Pilot outcomes presented at the annual meeting of German Museums Association in Berlin

On 12-14 October 2015 the annual meeting of German Museums Association took place at Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für Informationstechnik. The event was attended by professionals in the museums and museum documentation sector and it was a huge gathering of about 230 attendees; a perfect occasion for partner SPK to present Europeana Space, the Museums Pilot and its outcomes: the Toolbox and the Blinkster app.

spk

An extensive presentation by Marlene Scholz (SPK) and Beatrix Lehmann (Museummedien) discussed E-Space in general, the pilots (with a focus on Museums pilot and TV pilot), the Technical Space and WITH tool and the functionalities of the Blinkster app and of the Toolbox (presentation in German available here).

During the event it was also possible for attendees to test the Toolbox on site and it was a very useful moment of exchange and evaluation with the main target group of the Museums pilot.

 

 


Immersive and Emotional Museum Design – workshop

Immersive and Emotional Museum Design – What is the role of emotions in designing the 21st century museums?

Emotion, involvement and participation:  key issues that are increasingly important and decisive in the context of the new trends related to museums of the twenty-first century.

Museums as generators of “special” educational moments and multiform experiences where new languages ​​are declined with immersive technology solutions, capable to attract, excite and engage different audiences: dynamic social spaces where the new digital media give voice to different stories that explore the collections in a creative, emotional and customized way.

In this context the NEMECH laboratory of the University of Florence aims to address the theme of “emotional museum” in the light of a multi-faceted approach in a concrete multidisciplinary perspective, through highly-qualified innovative courses aimed at public and private operators, responsible for museums and art galleries and professionals in the field of cultural heritage.

Experts will present the theoretical and practical techniques for the design and construction of exhibition spaces, interactive multi-sensory experiences through practices and use cases in interactive and immersive environments.

The workshop will be held from 25 to 27 February 2016 in Firenze in the monumental complex of “Le Murate”.

For further information please visit the event website: http://nemech.unifi.it/portfolio-posts/musei-emotivi/

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Photomediations: a symposium and book launch

photomediations a reader

The Open and Hybrid Publishing pilot of Europeana Space have the pleasure to announce the publication of a book that arises from our work. Photomediations: A Reader (Open Humanities Press, 2016), edited by Kamila Kuc and Joanna Zylinska.

We’re holding a symposium to celebrate the launch of the book and to discuss the activities of the pilot:  come and join us for a half-day event exploring the relationship between photography and other media, and celebrating the launch of the open access book.

The book is available on an open access basis: it’s free to download in a pdf format HERE, but you can also buy a paper copy.

Also, you can visit here the Photomediations Open Book, the main outcome of the Open and Hybrid Publishing pilot.

Programme of the Symposium:

19 February 2016, 3pm-7pm

Goldsmiths, University of London, Room PSH326.

FREE AND OPEN TO ALL. NO NEED TO REGISTER.

The concept of photomediations brings together the hybrid ontology of ‘light-based media’ and the fluid dynamism of ‘mediation’. The papers presented in the symposium will challenge the traditional classification of photography as suspended between art and social practice in order to capture the dynamism of the photographic medium today. They will also explore photography’s kinship with other media – and with us, humans, as media.

Speakers:

  • Professor Joanna Zylinska (Goldsmiths): Photography Reloaded, or What Are Photomediations?
  • Dr Kamila Kuc (Goldsmiths) and Dr Michael Wamposzyc (University of Portsmouth): Panel on Curating Open Photography
  • Dr Rob Coley (University of Lincoln): Ecological Detection
  • Professor David Bate (University of Westminster): Colour Space
  • Dr Anna Dahlgren (Stockholm University): Magazined Photographs

Launch of Photomediations: A Reader and wine reception

—–

How to get to Goldsmiths and campus maps:

http://www.gold.ac.uk/find-us/

NB. Due to Crossrail works there will be no London Overground service to Goldsmiths on 19.02: you’ll need to take a replacement bus, or travel one stop on the train from London Bridge to New Cross instead.

The Reader and the symposium are part of the activities of Europeana Space, a project funded by the European Union’s ICT Policy Support Programme under GA n° 621037.

CRe-AM final event / ICT & Creative Industries in Europe: current trends and future policies

LOGO_CRe-AM3The event will present CRe-AM’s roadmapping work and results. The day will be divided into two parts to present the main outcomes of the CRe-AM project and to allow networking among participants. The morning plenary session will present roadmaps for each creative sector tackled by the project (Art, Architecture, Design, ePublishing & Media, Games) and discuss future avenues with key experts.

The second part of the event will allow all participants to express their opinion for a collaborative thinking exercise taking the shape of a World Café workshop and encouraging exchanges on all the sectors studied during the lifetime of the CRe-AM project.

You will find the registration and the event agenda at a glance on the CRe-AM website.

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The CRe-AM project aimed at bridging communities of creators with communities of technology providers and innovators, in a collective roadmapping effort to streamline, coordinate and amplify collaborative work. This was achieved through research processes implying the creation and publication of many supporting documents, such as Trends & Weak Signals or Gap Analyses, leading to the project final Roadmaps both on a sectorial (Art, Design, Media & E-Publishing, Games and Architecture) and a cross-disciplinary bases.


“International Surrealism Now” art exhibition goes to US

The next editions of International Surrealism Now will be held in United States, Mississippi at Cullis Wade Depot Art Gallery, MSU Welcome Center; it will be in January and February and in Partícula Coimbra, next February, and Multimedia Poros Museum in Condeixa-a-Nova, Portugal 2016.

The follow artists will exhibit in United States, Mississippi at Cullis Depot Gallery located above the Mississippi State University welcome center:

American: Jay Garfinkle, France Garrido, Joe A. MacGown, K.D. Matheson, Patrick McGrath Muniz, Shahla Rosa, Olga Spiegel.

Portuguese: Santiago Ribeiro, Paula Rosa, Victor Lages, Francisco Urbano.

Video by Steve Smith

“International Surrealism Now” is a project by the surrealist painter Santiago Ribeiro, who has dedicated himself to promoting the surrealism of the 21st century, through exhibitions worldwide. The “International Surrealism Now” began in 2010 in Coimbra, when Santiago Ribeiro conceived a major exhibition organized by Bissaya Barreto Foundation. This event has been in Conímbriga celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Monographic Museum (second most visited museum in Portugal). The show has also been in Paris with the support of GAPP – Art Gallery Portugal Presente and Liba WS, organized once again by the Bissaya Barreto Foundation and Santiago Ribeiro, and in Madrid with the support of Yamal Din. After that it went to Dallas with the support of the American surrealist artist Shahla Rosa. Lately it has been presented at the medieval Castle of Paço da Ega, organized by Rede de Bibliotecas and House Mayor of Condeixa-a-Nova

At present, the “International Surrealism Now” includes artists from 30 countries: Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Spain, USA, Philippines, France, Holland, Indonesia, England, Iran, Iceland , Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Vietnam.

The exhibition consists of a variety of artworks including drawing, painting, photography, digital art and sculpture.

international surrealism now

Artists: Agim Meta, Spain / Ana Neamu, Romania / Ana Pilar Morales, Spain / Anna Plavinskaya, Russia/USA / Andrew Artist Baines, Australia / Asier Guerrero Rico ( Dio ), Spain / Brigid Marlin, UK / Bien Banez, Philippines / Daila Lupo, Italy / Dan Neamu, Romania / Daniel Hanequand, Canada / Daniele Gori, Italy / Domen Lo, Slovenia / Edgar Invoker, Russia / Egill Ibsen, Iceland / Erik Heyninck, Belgium / Ettore Aldo Del Vigo, Italy / Farhad Jafari, Iran / France Garrido, USA / Francisco Urbano, Portugal / Gromyko Padilla Semper, Philippines / Héctor Pineda, Mexico / Hector Toro, Colombia / Hugues Gillet, France / Isabel Meyrelles, Portugal / Keith Wigdor, USA / Leo Wijnhoven, Holland / Leo Plaw, Germany / Liba Waring Stambollion, France / Joe MacGown, USA / Lubomír Štícha, Czech Republic / Ludgero Ludgero Rôlo, Portugal / Lv Shang, China / Maciej Hoffman, Poland / Magi Calhoun, USA / Maria Aristova, Russia / Martina Hoffmann, Germany / Mehriban Efendi, Azerbaijan / Naiker Roman Cespedes, Spain / Nazareno Affonso, Brazil / Nikolina Petolas, Croatia / Octavian Florescu, Canada / Oleg Korolev, Russia / Olga Spiegel, USA / Otto Rapp, Austria / Paula Rosa, Portugal / Paulo Cunha, Canada / Pedro Diaz Cartes, Chile / Philippe Pelletier, France / Rudolf Boelee, New Zealand / Santiago Ribeiro, Portugal / Sergey Tyukanov, Russia / Shahla Rosa, USA / Shoji Tanaka, Japan / Shan Zhulan, China / Sio SandraJaya, Indonesia / Slavko Krunic, Serbia / Sônia Menna Barreto, Brazil/ Steve Smith, USA / Stuart Grigz, UK / Svetlana Kislyachenko, Ukraine / Tatomir Pitariu, USA / Ton Haring, Holland / Victor Lages, Portugal / Vu Huyen Thuong, Vietnam / Yamal Din, Spain / Yuri Tsvetaev, Russia / Zoran Velimanovic, Serbia.


MediaConch Newsletter #3 (January 2016)

New Release

What’s new in MediaConch 15.12?

  • Database support introduced

With an introduction of a database built into the GUI, the most noticeable improvement is speed. Instead of parsing a file every time it is analyzed, it will only be parsed once, with subsequent policies then applied to the pre-analyzed content. Having a database will, in the future, allow users to apply custom policies to the full library content without having to wait a long time. This will also allow for the generation of custom statistics based on collections instead of just individual files. For example, if a percentage of the parsed library has “Error X,” it will be easier to gather similar files and determine which writing library was producing the error. This is one of many ideas other developers could implement with so much data available in the database.

  • New logo

MediaConch finally has its own logo, never to be confused with MediaInfo again! More details about the logo can be found in this blog post about the design.

  • More explicit licences

MediaConch and MediaInfo library are licensed as GPLv3+ and MPLv2+, as stated in the software. Additionally, a list of third party libraries and their licences are available on our Github readme page.

  • Implementation test improvements

Implementation tests now load logic from an XML representation of the Matroska EBML Schema. The XML tests on valid parent elements, element multiplicity, and mandated child elements, among other things.

  • EBML

As part of our goal to standardize and clarify the formats, Matroska/EBML draft specifications are being regularly updated. These changes are reflected in MediaConch 15.12.

  • Other bug resolutions

Support for negative timecodes in Matroska files

Better support of non-English filenames

Display format is now also applied on invalid files

MediaTrace now documents the parser used for raw streams within Matroska.

MediaConch releases updated software on a monthly basis. Nightly builds are also available for testing the most recent development.

 

Homebrew

For Mac users, MediaConchCLI can now be downloaded via Homebrew. brew install mediaconch will install the latest version of the software. Moving forward, brew upgrade mediaconch will upgrade the package to the latest release.

 

Artefactual Collaboration

MediaConch will be working with the Artefactual team to integrate into their Archivematica software during the upcoming year. Artefactual will provide testing and feedback on software tools being developed by MediaArea as part of the PreForma project. Artefactual will also integrate select MediaConch tools into Archivematica and provide associated documentation and support for those features.

 

CELLAR

Ongoing work towards the standardization of Matroska and FFV1 can be followed via the recently-founded IETF working group, CELLAR (Codec Encoding for LossLess Archiving and Realtime transmission).

More information on CELLAR and opportunities to join in the discussion via mailing list are available on their website: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/cellar/charter/

 

FOSDEM

Project lead Jérôme Martinez will be presenting on our work at the upcoming FOSDEM conference in Brussels (30-31 January, 2016). FOSDEM is a conference held annually for open source software developers. The title of his talk is “CELLAR, Status report on an IETF Working Group for Matroska, FFV1, and FLAC.”

Conference website: https://fosdem.org/2016/

Event page: https://fosdem.org/2016/schedule/event/mediaconch/

 

Past and future events

In case you missed it, MediaConch was represented at the Association of Moving Image Archivists in Portland (20 November) and Fédération Internationale des Archives de Télévision / The International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT/IFTA) World Conference in Vienna (8 October). If you weren’t able to make it, we covered the events on our blog.

AMIA: https://mediaarea.net/MediaConch/2015/12/02/MediaArea-presents-at-AMIA/

FIAT/IFTA: https://mediaarea.net/MediaConch/2015/12/02/MediaArea-presents-at-AMIA/

MediaConch will be holding a webinar in January or February. More details to come soon.

Team member Ashley Blewer will be speaking at Code4lib (7-10 March, Philadelphia, PA, USA) about community-driven audiovisual archiving microservices, including MediaConch development. Project lead Dave Rice will also be attending.

MediaConch will be presenting at the PREFORMA Open Source Preservation Workshop in Stockholm on 7 April, 2016 at the National Library of Sweden. Registration is free and open until 31 March: http://www.digitalmeetsculture.net/article/preforma-open-source-preservation-workshop/

In July, MediaConch will be attending the IETF conference held in Berlin (17-22 July) and plans to hold an open source workshop for MediaConch users at that time.

 

Feedback

MediaArea is eager to build a community of collaborators and testers to participate in and use the results of the project. You can contact us here for more information.

 

Best,

The MediaConch Team

Follow us on Twitter: @MediaConch


The new Roadmap poster @ “Creative reuse of cultural heritage and contemporary practices: challenges and opportunities in the digital world” International Conference, Tallinn 10-11 December 2015

audienceThis event, organized by the Estonian Ministry of Culture, in the framework of the EC funded Europeana Space project, intended to generate new perspectives for the wider re-use of cultural heritage and contemporary practices within a framework of creative experimentation and novel dialogue between multidisciplinary sectors. Next to interesting keynote speakers and round tables, the conference focused on the lessons learnt in the development of the project’s outputs and on moving towards sustainable results.

Roadmpa-poster-@TallinnThe CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES project, represented by the Technical Coordinator, Antonella Fresa, had presented the new Roadmap’s poster, that the Consortium has developed to continue the dissemination of the project also after the end of the funded life.

The conference was hosted at the astonishing location of the Niguliste Church in the Old Town of Tallinn. The Church was turned in a museum and also used for  conferences and as a concert hall.


Dance Hackathon, from Prague to London

by Hetty Blades, Coventry University

The EuropeanaSpace Dance Hackathon took place in Prague on the 21st and 22nd November.  Organised by CIANT, in collaboration with Coventry University and the Dance Pilot team, the event brought together dancers, choreographers, hackers, coders, scientists and artists to explore the creative reuse of Europeana and dance content.

2015-11-20 15.45.53-2The Dance Pilot tools, DanceSpaces and DancePro, were introduced to the participants to inspire new ideas and show the potentials of digital media in the transmission, analysis and remixing of dance.  Participants were invited to develop new tools and ideas, competing to advance to the next round of the competition and attend – a business development workshop with Remix in London.

Eighteen participants worked in five teams, over an intense two-day period to develop a wide range of unique and exciting projects. Each group pitched regularly and received feedback from Simon Cronshaw, as well as the other hackathon ambassadors and participants. All of the groups responded well to the feedback and the ideas developed very quickly. The atmosphere was highly creative and focussed, with some participants working throughout the night!

The three winning teams proposed a range of ideas, involving measuring brain waves, the construction of virtual realities, and the use of interactive performance technologies. Each of these projects responded creatively to content on Europeana, highlighting the potential for creative reuse, and showed great scope for further development in the commercial and cultural sectors. We are all very excited to see what happens when the ideas are further developed in the new year!

Overall, this was a stimulating two days, which demonstrated the creative interactions that can arise from cross-disciplinary collaboration, and the exciting potentials of fusing dancing bodies, cultural content and digital media.


veraPDF 0.8 now available

veraPDF-logo-600-300x149We are pleased to announce the latest release of veraPDF. Version 0.8 features a re-designed command line interface (CLI) for validation and feature extraction.

 

Highlights of this release are:

  • Refactored plug-in architecture;
  • Re-designed CLI for PDF/A validation and feature reporting;
  • Supporting install scripts;
  • Updated validation profile syntax;
  • Simplified machine-readable report format;
  • Synchronization with PDFBox 2.0 RC1 library.

The most important bugs fixed in this release are:

  • Comparison of Info dictionary and XMP metadata (PDF/A-1);
  • Support for missing resources and resource inheritance mechanism (PDF/A-1); and
  • Parsing TrueType fonts with zero-length tables.

 

Download veraPDF 0.8 at: http://www.preforma-project.eu/pdfa-conformance-checker.html

Release notes are published at: https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/blob/release-0.8/RELEASENOTES.md

veraPDF will deliver the definitive PDF/A validator. Please download and test the software. If you encounter problems, or wish to make suggestions, please add them to the project’s GitHub issue tracker. Your feedback is important, it will contribute to improving the software.

 

About

Led by the Open Preservation Foundation and the PDF Association, the veraPDF consortium is developing the definitive open source, file-format validator for all parts and conformance levels of ISO 19005 (PDF/A). The software is designed to meet the needs of memory institutions responsible for preserving digital content for the long term.

The veraPDF consortium is funded by the PREFORMA project. PREFORMA (PREservation FORMAts for culture information/e-archives) is a Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) project co-funded by the European Commission under its FP7-ICT Programme.