Digital meets Culture

All the project's partners met at Scuola Normale Superiore

PREFORMA partners met in Pisa on 8-9 October 2015 to discuss the current status of the project and to plan the next steps.

The meeting was hosted by the Scuola Normale Superiore and it was held jointly with the Cloud Forward 2015 Conference organised by the H2020 HOLA CLOUD project and in friendship with the Internet Festival 2015.

Several topics were discussed by the consortium, among which:

How to address the recommendations made by the EC reviewers during the first review meeting.
How to evaluate the results of the first prototyping phase, which will finish at the end of October 2015.
How to plan the second design phase which will start on November 1st and last 4 months.
How to plan the evaluation phase, which will involve memory institutions inside and outside the PREFORMA consortium who are interested to test the prototypes that are being developed by the suppliers.
How to address the issues related to the interoperability of the different conformance checkers.
The organisation of the Open Source Workshop, to be held in Stockholm on 7 April 2016.

For further information visit the PREFORMA project’s website and Open Source Portal.

Vienna, 8 October 2015

PREFORMA presented at FIAT/IFTA 2015

Bert Lemmens from PACKED, Peter Bubestinger from the Austrian Mediathek and Tessa Fallon from MediaArea presented the PREFORMA project at the FIAT/IFTA World Conference 2015.

The presentation, which is available for download here, covered th following topics:

PREFORMA challenge brief
Standard specifications selected
FFV1 for preservation
FFV1 features
FFV1 standardisation
MediaConch conformance checker

The 2015 FIAT/IFTA World Conference took place in Vienna from October 7th until October 10th 2015. This year theme was: “Audiovisual Culture, a bridge to the future”.

Audiovisual Culture is in all places and activities; and our society uses and generates an increasing number of content. The more audiovisual archives interact with society and internet, the more questions arise on how to advance, which decisions to take and how to maintain the spirit of archiving in an ever-changing environment.

The 2015 FIAT/IFTA World Conference provided a unique occasion in which archives can discuss & learn about the many challenges and innovations for archives in their quest towards the future. Different aspects of the archives life, use and potential value were presented permitting participants to grasp what has been done and what we will be able to do in the future.

Results of the panel organised by Promoter Srl involving EU projects RICHES, Civic Epistemologies, E-Space, PREFORMA and the international association Photoconsortium

From Digitization to Preservation, Creative Re-Use of Cultural Content, and Citizen Participation

On 1st October 2015, in Granada, the European projects RICHES, E-Space, Civic Epistemologies, PREFORMA and the international association Photoconsortium met in a panel organised by Promoter SRL under the title “From Digitisation to Preservation, Creative Re-use of Cultural Content and Citizen Participation”.

The panel was hosted by Digital Heritage 2015 (28 September-2 October 2015) as part of the conference programme and attracted cultural managers, ICT experts, researchers, service providers from all over Europe as well as and other European projects.

Antonella Fresa, from Promoter srl, introduced the objectives of the panel and the projects involved.

Antonella Fresa from Promoter Srl introduced the objectives of the panel and the projects involved. From the growing amount of digitised cultural heritage, open questions are raised by the change and impact they brought in any field of our society. Therefore there is the need to establish the path towards a more advanced society, that makes use of the full potential of digital technologies to foster cultural and societal progress.

Neil Forbes, from Coventry University, presented the RICHES project. Neil Forbes it the Project Coordinator.

Neil Forbes from Coventry University presented the RICHES project, providing the humanities point of view and giving an introduction about the wide context of change that the cultural sector is facing, with a particular attention to the changes derived from the introduction of the digital technologies.

Sarah Whatley, from Coventry University, is the EUROPEANA SPACE Project Coordinator.

Sarah Whatley from Coventry University talked about EUROPEANA SPACE, looking at the encounter of content providers and creative industry to show experiments and options for a real exploitation of the CH when it is offered in digital form, in various sectors.

Sy Holsinger, from EGI.eu, presented the CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES project.

Sy Holsinger from EGI.eu introduced CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES, focusing on the societal aspects and tackling the question of how the civic society can participate and engage with the digital transformation of cultural heritage, not just for fun and entertainment, but also to participate in the research activities.

Fred Truyen, from KU Leuven, presented the PHOTOCONSORTIUM International Association.

Finally, Antonella Fresa, who talked on behalf of Börje Justrell from Riksarkivet, and Fred Truyen from KU Leuven presented PREFORMA and PHOTOCONSORTIUM to touch two technical questions that are at the basis of the whole digital cultural heritage, namely: the digital preservation and the high quality digitisation.

Download here the full presentation.

The Panel will be hosted to the DCDC2015 Discovering Collections, Discovering Communities, in Manchester on 14 October 2015 and to the DISH – Digital Strategies for Heritage conference in Rotterdam on 7 December 2015.

a perfect occasion to present Blinkster as an ‘easy to handle’ app solution.

Museums Pilot at the EDV Tage in Theuern (Bavaria, Germany)

CC BY-SA 3.0 Jacquesverlaeken

by Marlene Scholz, SPK

From the 16^th to the 18^th September 2015 the annual conference “EDV Tage” (EDP Days) took place in Theuern, a picturesque village between Nuremberg and Regensburg. At the 27 years old event German representatives of both the cultural industry and museum professionals such as the State Office for Non-state Museums in Bavaria but also small non-profit associations got together. Under the conference subject “Media (use) in Museums” they presented different exhibition models using applications, web services and electronic devices. Every presentation was followed by intense discussions where costs, durability and extra work played an important role.

The “EDV Tage” were for the E|Space Partner SPK a perfect occasion to present Blinkster as an ‘easy to handle’ app solution. Offering the prospect of an upcoming evaluation of the app in combination with guidelines how to implement the app, SPK got a very positive feedback from the audience. Many of the listeners got interested in following the E|Space activities.

A next event where SPK will present E|Space is the “Berliner Herbsttreffen zur Museumsdokumentation” (Annual Berlin Autumn meeting – museums documentation) (12-14/10/15). The Fachgruppe Museumsdokumentation (Museum Documentation Professional Group) was founded at the general assembly of the German Museum Association in 1994. It organizes conferences at least twice a year, offering a professional forum for information exchange about questions of conventional and IT based museum documentation.

On this occasion, SPK will also start a first evaluation of Blinkster with the working group “Multimedia”. SPK is already excited about the end users’ feedback.

the Coordinator Sarah Whatley will be presenting the project in a panel at Discovering Collections Discovering Communities 2015 RLUK event

E-Space @ Manchester DCDC15 conference

DCDC (Discovering Collections, Discovering Communities) is a collaborative conference hosted by The National Archives and Research Libraries UK that explores inter-disciplinary, cross-sector approaches and opportunities to developing and widening access to the wealth of our collections through partnership and collaborative working, across the heritage, cultural and academic sectors.

E-Space coordinator prof. Sarah Whatley will talk about how digital cultural data need to be re-used at best, to unlock their business potential for fostering economic growth. The creative industry is the key stakeholder to leverage on DCH for creating new tools/services, thus generating new employment and economic rewards; but a bigger dialogue should progress with cultural institutions, for developing mutual benefitting public-private-partnerships.

Sarah’s speech will take place in a panel workshop including E-Space and other projects and initiaves on 14th October.

The renowned Scuola Normale Superiore was the prestigious location for experimenting with promotion of cultural places

E-Space Creative Marketing Workshop – event in Pisa

Organized by Fondazione Sistema Toscana, this Europeana Space Creative Marketing workshop was focused on exploring different ways of communicating cultural contents with the use of new media and will show how a greater audience can be reached by combining the power of social media and storytelling.

It has been an interactive event, preceded by presentations of interesting speakers. Antonella Fresa, the Technical Coordinator, presented the Europeana Space project and framework (download PDF, 1 Mb, video above). Then Costanza Giovannini of FST presented examples of places marketing and territory communication via the projects Play Your Tuscany and Unraveling Jordan (download PDF, 6 Mb and please see the video HERE). Later, Marianna Marcucci and Barbara Marcotulli of Invasioni Digitali presented the co-creation session (download PDF, 2.8 Mb and please see the video HERE).

[Show as slideshow]

After the presentations, participants were divided in groups. Each group was assigned a tutor and a specific theme to develop. The groups then got out the conference room and went around in Pisa centre, to collect materials (pictures, video, ..) with their smartphones around the city. The collected contents was then elaborated by each group and presented to the others. The event closed with a conclusion speech on audience engagement by Jasper Visser (dowload PDF, 11 Mb and please see the video HERE).

The workshop was realized in cooperation with Invasioni Digitali, and took place in the framework of the Internet Festival in Pisa. Digital Meets Culture was the official media partner of the workshop.

Agenda

09:00 – Europeana Space – creative re-use perspectives for cultural heritage – Antonella Fresa, Promoter srl: download PDF, 1 Mb, video above

09:30 – Communicating a territory through new media: Play Your Tuscany and Unraveling Jordan – Costanza Giovannini, Fondazione Sistema Toscana: download PDF, 6 Mb and video HERE

10:00 – Co-creation, co-design and storytelling in the digital world – Marianna Marcucci, Fabrizio Todisco, Invasioni Digitali: download PDF, 2.8 Mb and video HERE).

10:30 – Hands-on session – Elaborating creative strategies for audience development

14:00 – Co-creation session

15:30 – Presentation of the projects developed in the hands-on session and discussion

16:30 – Online marketing and audience development for cultural sector – Jasper Visser, Inspired by Coffee: dowload PDF, 11 Mb and video HERE)

17:00 – End of event

a dissemination and networking occasion to present the project to a wide audience

Civic Epistemologies in Granada

Granada recently hosted DH15, a huge event in the field of cultural heritage and digital technology, and Civic Epistemologies could not miss the occasion to be present and to network with other projects.

In the framework of a panel workshop entitled From Digitisation to Preservation, Creative Re-use of Cultural Content and Citizen Participation, the project was presented by Sy Holsinger from EGI.eu who introduced Civic Epistemologies particularly focusing on the societal aspects and tackling the question of how the civic society can participate and engage with the digital transformation of cultural heritage, not just for fun and entertainment, but also to participate in the research activities.

Learn about the results of the workshop here

30 October - 31 October 2015 in Brussels

Symposium: Preservation and Access to Born-digital Art and Culture

In the continuation of their collaborative program on Cultural Heritage in the Digital Age which started beginning of 2015, iMAL and Packed organise the first international symposium in Brussels on the issues of preservation of born-digital art and culture and their public access.

In the last decade, digital technologies have invaded on a global scale all realms of our daily life, both private and professional.  A large part of today’s cultural and artistic creations are produced with digital technologies, using them as their native medium of expression as well as their medium of distribution on which the users’ experience strongly relies.  Born-digital culture is expanding as fast as the progress and availability of digital technologies and infrastructures, and most probably will soon represent the vast majority of all contemporary cultural production. At the same time its fragility is increasing proportionally to the accelerated pace of technological innovations and its obsolescence, with new issues – or highly amplified old issues – appearing that are specific to its digital nature such as acquisition policies, software and hardware obsolescence, preservation workflows, rights management, re-interpretation,…

Facing this rising and overwhelming wave of digital artefacts that they need to archive, preserve and give access to, facing this Digital Dark Age, artistic and cultural institutions are slowly reacting and becoming aware of the new problems to solve. They require new tools and new strategies that can only be the result of substantial R&D effort in preservation methodologies and technologies as well as a profound analysis of the roles of memory institutions and of the way the challenges posed by the long-term availability of born-digital content are addressed.

This symposium proposes to share with professionals from the broad cultural and artistic sector the views, practice, vision and experience of some of the most advanced professionals working in the fields of conservation and access to digital culture. During these two days, state-of-the-art methodologies and technologies will be presented and discussed.   The symposium offers a unique panel of thinkers and doers, archivists, curators, media theorists & artists, conservators and researchers from Europe and the US working in universities, research labs, art organisations and heritage institutions.

With: Erkki Huhtamo (FI), Baruch Gottlieb & Philipp Tögel (DE, Vilem Flusser Archive), Emmanuel Guez (FR, pamal.org), Gaby Wijers (NL, Lima), Valérie Perrin (FR, Espace Gantner), Jon Ippolito (US, re-collection), Ben Fino-Radin (US, MoMA), John Langdon & Anna Henry (UK, Tate Modern), Céline Thomas & Chu Yin Chen (FR, BnF – Univ.Paris 8), Geoffrey Brown (US, indiana.edu), Clarisse Bardiot (FR/BE,rekall.fr), Olia Lialina (DE), Dragan Espenschied (US/DE, Rhizome.org), Klaus Rechert (DE, Univ.Freiburg – bwFLA), Jason Scott (US, Internet Arcade – archive.org).

Please visit the links below for:

IETF 93 in Prague, VideoLAN Dev Days in Paris and much more

Further standardisation of Matroska and FFv1

Here are a few updates about the efforts that PREFORMA is conduction towards the standardisation of Matroska and FFv1 thanks to MediaArea, one of the PREFORMA suppliers that is working in the prototyping phase.

Tessa Fallon and Jerome Martinez, members of MediaArea’s team, facilitated much of the interaction between the project and the IETF, which was determined as the most appropriate standards body to collaborate with. This interaction led to Tessa chairing 35 minutes of conference time at IETF 93 in Prague on the subject of whether the IETF should proceed with efforts to further standardize Matroska and FFV1. Attendance at IETF allowed MediaArea and PREFORMA to establish relationships with IETF members/directors who could assist in coordination of standardization efforts within IETF guidelines and procedures. Representatives from both formats participate in the meeting and subsequent online discussion were carried out with the IETF DISPATCH working group.

Representatives of cultural heritage organizations that use Matroska and FFV1, such as the Austrian Mediathek and the UK National Archives also participated in discussions on these formats directly with IETF representatives. Tessa Fallon has worked with Matroska, FFV1, and Flac (at the request of IETF) communities to draft and propose a working group charter which is currently under consideration by the IETF’s IESG. Prior to the approval and establishment of the working group, much of the work is focused on building relationships and offline coordination and planning.

Dave Rice gave a presentation in Bern, Switzerland discussing the PREFORMA project and discussed it at VideoLAN Dev Days , an “unconference” held in Paris, France. The discussion at VDD included many Matroska users such as representatives from YouTube, Obencoder, and other open media groups on the standardization effort and there was a productive conservation on merging the standardization efforts from Google/YouTube on webM (a Matroska derivative) with the PREFORMA-facilitated IETF work on the Matroska specification. This has led to itemized listserv discussions of proposals to advance the container towards making it more selfdescriptive and futureready, see: http://lists.matroska.org/pipermail/matroskadevel/2015September/thread.html.

Riksarkivet presents PREFORMA at three National events

Updates about the National Working Group in Sweden

Here is an update of the next appointment where you can learn more about PREFORMA in Sweden:

20 October 2015: Börje Justrell and Magnus Geber (Riksarkivet) will give a presentation at a conference arranged by FAI, the largest archival association in Sweden: http://fai.nu/wp-content/uploads/FAI_konferensprogram_www_2015_final.pdf. This will be a general presentation of the project and of how external stakeholders can participate in testing the PREFORMA prototypes.

3 November 2015: Benjamin Yousefi and Magnus Geber (Riksarkivet) will give a presentation at a conference on PDF/A: http://dokumentinfo.se/konferenser/pdfa/. The focus will be on the role of PDF/A at the National Archives of Sweden and in PREFORMA.

4 November 2015: Magnus Geber (Riksarkivet) will give a presentation at a meeting of the network of “Forum iFörvaltning”(information administration): http://www.sis.se/tema/iforvaltning/Forum-iforvaltning-verksamhet/. The network is administered by the Swedish Standardisation body. The presentation will focus on use of standardised file formats for preservation and on how PREFORMA aims to interact with the official standardisation organisations, providing them with useful feedback.