Digital meets Culture

A workshop held in Brussels for presenting the project’s Technical Space

E-Space develops a cutting-edge technical framework

The E-Space project’s technical workshop took place in Brussels, on the 23^rd of March 2015, at the iMinds – Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) offices; the event, aimed at presenting E-Space’s architecture and implementation choices for the development of its technical structure, was open to the public and attended by over 50 experts from all over Europe.

The workshop venue

The project’s Technical Space is a framework for storing, accessing and processing contents and metadata. The Technical Space is interoperable with complementary services emerging from the Europeana group of projects. Thanks to it and based upon IPR licensing, curators, scholars, professional users and third party developers will be able to search for and manage resources within a safe space, to use and re-use them for the evolution of knowledge and the development of applications.

The Technical Space’s system and implementation choices consist specifically in:

A Data Infrastructure that includes the retrieval and storage layers for content and metadata from available sources.
A Metadata Processing Unit that integrates available services for the management and manipulation of metadata resources.
Access APIs constituting a set of interfaces that will be made available for the delivery of resources and the creation of applications.

During the workshop, discussion and interaction with the invited stakeholders focused on validating and expanding the specification of functional and non-functional requirements of the Technical Space, in order to fulfil the needs of a wide user base. Representatives from the E-Space Consortium (the Technical Coordinator Promoter, the responsible for the development of the technical infrastructure NTUA and the pilot leaders) attended to collect feedbacks on the following topics:

Content – navigate, access, licensing
Metadata – models, serialisations, delivery protocols, cleaning and enrichment services
Datasets – management, analytics, indexing, transformations
Aggregations – combining your data with Europeana & DPLA, interfaces with open media repositories, preservation and sustainability
Semantic web technologies – linked data repository, reasoning, query answering
APIs – authentication, content, metadata, services
Interoperability – development approaches, polyglot storage, processing engines, integration.

The workshop started in the morning of the 23^rd of March.

After the registration and a nice welcome coffee, E-Space Technical Coordinator Antonella Fresa (Promoter SRL) opened the day with an introduction to the project [download Fresa’s presentation]; it was then the turn of James Morley (Europeana Foundation), who delivered a presentation of the Europeana Labs [download Morley’s presentation].

Nasos Drosopoulos (NTUA – National Technical University of Athens) intervened after the coffee break, concluding the morning with a presentation of the E-Space Technical Infrastructure and protected content space [download Drosopoulos’ presentation].

After the lunch, the second part of the day started, devoted to “Tutorial and practical experiments using the Europeana Labs” – session coordinated by Remy Gardien of the Europeana Foundation [download Gardien’s presentation] – and to “Tutorial and practical experiments using the E-Space Technical Infrastructure and its protected content space” – session coordinated by Nasos Drosopoulos. These last sessions helped in particular to show how the two platforms (Europeana Labs – E-Space Technical Infrastructure and protected content space) work from a technical point of view and which are the APIs and Interfaces that the services of the two platforms are based on.

The last part of the event was finally dedicated to conclusive discussions and remarks.

Thanks to this workshop, the E-Space Consortium was able to collect from the attendees a great many feedbacks and inputs, useful to complete the development of the E-Space’s Technical Space. Furthermore, the event gave evidence of the numerous and fruitful possibilities of integration between the services offered by the Europeana Labs and E-Space’s Technical Space.

The morning of the 24^th of March was reserved to an internal meeting among the E-Space pilots’ representatives, who discussed and exchanged ideas about the use of the services illustrated during the previous day and the planning of the next steps.

For further info visit www.europeana-space.eu

Barcelona & Falmouth, 9 April 2015

ULTRAORBISM by Marcel•lí Antúnez Roca

Performance art is at the heart of my work – Marcel·lí Antúnez Roca writes – Ultraorbism is an interactive distributed action between two networked connected spaces in two cities: Barcelona and Falmouth.

Both spaces are open-plan, with a backdrop of a large main screen in the centre and a subsidiary screen: the main screen acts as the central area for the story and it is there where the consequences of the various interactive processes engaged in by those acting in both venues are shown; the small screen shows the details of these interactions. This is explained to the audience as the interactivity takes place.

A journey is recounted with the overlapping of various levels of images, some of which are produced dynamically during the performance and others come from the image bank: taken together, they make up the iconographic narrative. The music and lighting are also interactive and coincide with the story of the image. The story is a linear interpretation of the first of the two books of True Histories by Lucian of Samosata (a Syrian writer who lived in the second century AD): it is an impossible journey on which everything is invented, with references to the mythology and literature of the era.

#ultraorbism_The sea war

Ultraorbism is a project directed by Marcel·lí Antúnez Roca, based on True Histories by Lucian of Samosata. It is part of the European project SPECIFI and case study of the RICHES European project’s research area. Support is from the Ministry of Culture of the Government of Catalonia, the i2CAT Foundation and live participation by actors and the audience at the University of Falmouth, Cornwall (Great Britain).

Free entrance. All kind of audience.

Concept, drawings and performance: Marcel·lí Antúnez Roca

Live music and performance: Andrea Valle

Text: Julià de Jòdar

Choreography and dancers: Cheap Date Dance Company

Actor: Ciaran Clarke

Video: Joint Effort Studios

Technical direction: Oriol Ibàñez

Programming: Sergi Lario

Animation: David Tangarife, Jesús González and Claudio Marzà

Drawing curtains: Yansy Soler and Wahab Zeghlache

Costumes: Paloma Bomé

Photography: Carles Rodríguez

Researcher: Begoña Egurbide

Sound mix: Paolo Armao and Andrea Valle

Coordination and production in Falmouth: Ian Biscoe and Erik Geelhoed

General coordination and production: Josep Font Sentias and Margherita Bergamo

Assistant: Cristina Llorca

STREAMING

Coordinating technical production, i2CAT Foundation: Sergi Fernández

Technical manager, i2CAT Foundation: Gerard Castillo

Coordinator sociological study, i2CAT Foundation: Marc Aguilar

Documentation and research, i2CAT Foundation: Pau Adelantado

Produced by: Ministry of Culture of the Government of Catalonia and Panspèrmia SL

Organized by: Ministry of Culture of the Government of Catalonia and i2CAT Foundation

With the collaboration of: Falmouth University, Cheap Date Dance Company, Joint Effort Studios, Arts Santa Mònica – Departament de Cultura

Sponsored by: Ministry of Culture of the Government of Catalonia, i2CAT Foundation, SPECIFI Project, RICHES project, European Commission, CIP 2007-2013

SPECIFI is a European project under the CIP program for competitiveness and innovation, that promotes the use of the Internet infrastructures in order to highlight the cultural and creative heritage of the Smart Cities.

RICHES (Renewal, innovation & Change: Heritage and European Society) is a research project about change: about the decentring of culture and cultural heritage away from institutional structures towards the individual and about the questions which the advent of digital technologies is posing in relation to how we understand, collect and make available Europe’s cultural heritage (CH).

The RICHES project has selected ULTRAORBISM as a case study: the two audiences will be given a questionnaire to complete and a discussion will take place between them, to examine how a distributed performance is appreciated and received in the case of this kind of real experience.

Marcel·lí Antúnez Roca is an artist internationally renowned for his mechatronic performances and interactive installations. Since the eighties, his work is concerned about the human condition.

Marcel·lí is a founding member of La Fura dels Baus; he was artistic coordinator until 1990. Since then his solo work is based on technology and it has been shown in more than forty countries. He received the Barcelona City Award for Visual Arts in 2014 for the exhibition Systematurgy, shown in Arts Santa Mònica.

Download the press release on ULTRAORBISM in Catalan language

Visit the Ultraorbism Facebook page

Digital curation and quality standards for memory institutions: PREFORMA research project

Article about PREFORMA published in Archival Science

The article “Digital curation and quality standards for memory institutions: PREFORMA research project“, by Antonella Fresa, Claudio Prandoni and Borje Justrell, has just been published in the Special Issue on Digital Curation of the Archive Science Journal and it is available as ‘Online First’ on SpringerLink at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10502-015-9242-8.

Abstract

Memory institutions are facing increasing transfers of electronic documents and other media content for long-term preservation. Preservation models are often inspired by standards, such as the Open Archival Information System reference model, where transfers and preservation are built on information packages containing both data and metadata. Data are normally stored in specific file formats for documents, images, sound, video, etc., that are produced by software from different vendors. Even if the transferred files are in standard formats, the implementation of standards cannot be guaranteed and results may be different depending on the software used. The software implementing standards for the production of the electronic files are not controlled either by the institutions that produce them or by the memory institutions. Conformance tests of transfers are done, but their results cannot be further processed by the memory institution autonomously, unless it contacts the same provider of the conformance test again. This poses problems in curation and preservation. Data objects meant for preservation, passing through an uncontrolled generative process, can jeopardise the whole preservation exercise. The overall intention of PREFORMA project (PREservation FORMAts for culture information/e-archives) is to research critical factors in the quality of standard implementation in order to establish a long-term sustainable ecosystem around a range of practical tools, together with a variety of stakeholder groups. The tools should be innovative and provide a reference implementation of the most common file format standards for the assessment of the collections to be archived and for the correction of the digital archive. PREFORMA will target a wide digital curation and preservation community, by providing specifications and feedback to developers, standard bodies and memory institutions.

The final publication is available at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10502-015-9242-8 and it is fully accessible to all users at libraries and institutions that have purchased a SpringerLink license.

An interactive installation telling of emancipation, self-determination and violence

Ballade of Women for women’s right

Ballade of Women, an interactive installation exploring perspectives on women’s rights, was hosted by Palazzo Sansedoni in Siena, as result of an international collaboration between the University of Siena, Interactive Institute Swedish ICT, Fondazione Monte dei Paschi di Siena and the Eindhoven University of Technology.

from the left: Lucia da Siracusa – Cleopatra – Maria Maddalena

The title, which in full says “Ballade of Women – as woman is not sky, she is earth, flesh of earth that wants no war”, quotes a verse by Edoardo Sanguineti of one of the poems that constitute the soundscape of the installation.
Through the lens of the personal experience of three women, the exhibition offered an interactive narration on three fundamental themes: emancipation, self-determination and violence.
Starting points of the exhibition were three paintings of the private collection of the Fondazione Monte dei Paschi di Siena. They illustrate three historical characters: Cleopatra (by Marco Pino, XVI century) who supports the theme of emancipation, Maria Maddalena (by Rutilio Manetti, XVII century) who embodies the theme of self-determination and Lucia from Siracusa (by Maestro dell’Osservanza, XV century) who recalls the theme of violence.

The installation is a dynamic space constituted by floating and mobile fragments, whose behaviour is influenced by the physical presence of the observer as well as by the virtual presence of online discussion groups debating the themes of the exhibition. The dynamics of the fragments redefines the contours of the three paintings from specific viewpoints in the space.

The experience suggests that each of us can contribute to compose a harmonious picture of the complex and controversial world of women’s rights, by approaching it and by being confronted with points of view of other people, facing the same topics from different perspectives all over the world. Our presence and our ideas can change the world.

Read Patrizia Marti’s article and visit her website

The Mosul Museum collections are in danger and need the support of the GLAM community.

Project Mosul: Protecting Iraq’s Cultural Heritage

by Dr. Marinos Ioannides, Cyprus University of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering and Informatics, Digital Heritage Research Laboratory

Neville Chamberlain famously said “In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers.” Lives are lost, homes and livelihoods are damaged and culture is erased.

In Iraq, a country devastated by invasions and divided by civil war, destruction of cultural artefacts has become common-place. The last few months have seen Islamic State militants burning books from libraries, destroying ancient artefacts housed in the Mosul Museum and more recently bulldozing the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud.

While it has since transpired that many of the Mosul Museum artefacts destroyed were replicas, some of the larger objects were indeed real. This wanton destruction of cultural heritage has resulted in an outcry from the digital heritage community and beyond. The historically important city of Mosul holds artefacts of huge cultural and historical importance and the Mosul Museum is the second largest museum in Iraq after the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad. The museum was first looted during the Iraq war in 2003 and millions of pounds of sculptures and images taken. The Mosul Museum has had a rough ride and needs the support of the GLAM community.

The Lion of Mosul by neshmi
on Sketchfab

Positive action has now been taken by the Initial Training Network for Digital Cultural Heritage (ITN-DCH), a Marie Curie Actions training project that is part of the EC Seventh Framework Programme, through the instigation of a volunteer project. Project Mosul is seeking volunteers to help virtually restore the Mosul Museum. This includes finding photos, processing data, contributing to the website and generally helping out with organising the effort to identify the museum artefacts.

Other EU projects such as the Europeana Space and the 4D-CH-WORLD are joining their forces to help and support this volunteer effort of the young Marie-Curie researchers.

The main volunteer activities that support is needed for are:

Uploading pictures of the artefacts found in the Mosul Museum
Developing the Web platform
Mask images using photoshop
Spreading the word about the project
Get the word out
Processing an artefact using automated photogrammetry to create three-dimensional models

To find out more about how you can support the volunteer activities see the Project Mosul website or join the Google Group.

Some of the artefacts already added to the site.

The project will run so long as it is needed until the destroyed artefacts can be completely reconstructed and re-produced by using latest novel technologies like the 3D printing. All the reconstructed objects will be available under Open Access licenses and will be ‘exhibited virtually’ on the Cloud under the project’s web portal.

Project Mosul is aligned with the scopes of Europeana Space Project. Europeana Space has received funding from the European Union’s ICT Policy Support Programme as part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme, under GA n° 621037.

This article has been collected by Marieke Guy from Open Knowledge Foundation, a consultant on the Europeana Space project supporting activities related to open licensing, and it appeared orginally in OKF blog.

Presenting the outcome of Open and Hybrid Publishing Pilot of EuropeanaSpace project

Photomediations: An Open Book

by Kamila Kuc, Goldsmiths

A collaboration between academics from Goldsmiths, University of London, and Coventry University, Photomediations: An Open Book is the outcome of the Open and Hybrid Publishing pilot – which is one of six Europeana Space pilots. The pilot redesigns a coffee-table book as an online experience to produce a creative multi-platform resource that explores the dynamic relationship between photography and other media.

Photomediations: An Open Book uses open content, drawn from Europeana and other online repositories (Wikipedia Commons, Flickr Commons) and tagged with the CC-BY licence and other open licences. In this way, the book showcases the possibility of the creative reuse of image-based digital resources.

Through a comprehensive introduction and four specially commissioned chapters on light, movement, hybridity and networks that include over 200 images, Photomediations: An Open Book tells a unique story about the relationship between photography and other media. These main chapters are followed by three ‘open’ chapters, which will be populated with further content over the next 18 months: an open reader (featuring academic and curatorial texts), a social space and an online exhibition.

Photomediations: An Open Book’s online form allows for easy sharing of its content with educators, students, publishers, museums and galleries, as well as any other interested parties. Promoting the socially significant issues of ‘open scholarship’, ‘open education’ and ‘open access’, the pilot plays an important social and cultural role. It also explores an alternative low-cost publishing business model under the heading of ‘open and hybrid publishing’, as a viable response to the increasingly threatened traditional publishing structures.

http://photomediationsopenbook.net/

Confronting (non) participation and the socio-political in art works

The Museum of Non Participation

The Museum of Non Participation embeds its institutional critique in its very title, yet it releases itself from being an actual museum. Instead, it travels as a place, a slogan, a banner, a performance, a newspaper, a film, an intervention, an occupation: situations that enable this museum to “act.” The Museum of Non Participation is one aspect of Karen Mirza and Brad Butler’s wider artistic practice, an investigation of the terms and conditions of images, objects, collaboration, dialogue and the social.

Museums interrelate hierarchy and exclusion, social critique and (post) colonization. The “Museum of Non Participation” confronts (non) participation and the socio-political in art works. ‘Non Participation’ is not a negation, it is a threshold—a political plastic that expands and contracts, that is both unstable and malleable. “The Museum of Non Participation” does not disavow art objects, but it is driven to dislodge them from their central position within the field of art.

This Museum explores obicere through multiple, ephemeral processes: artworks as well as events and actions that neither the founding artists nor museums possess through sole authorship. In a similar vein, “The Museum of Non Participation” approaches “collecting” as not merely assembling objects, but as an act that assembles and ushers forth action and agency and does so through disruption. It asks how withdrawal can be made visible? How can ‘non participation’ be active and critical?

Karen Mirza and Brad Butler’s work spans filmmaking, installation, drawing, publishing and curating. The artists draw influence from critical moments of change, protest and debate. This includes an accumulation of works entitled The Museum of Non Participation (2009-present). The term “non participation” for the duo is a device for questioning and challenging current conditions of political involvement and resistance.

Karen Mirza and Brad Butler are also the founders of the artist film and video space: no.w.here.

The partners pointed out how they can benefit from each other, and how such a cooperation can support the goals of the Europeana Space project.

TV Pilot meets Museums Pilot: cooperation and link between two E-Space pilots

by Beatrix Lehmann, Museummedien

Institute for Museum Research photo by Stefan Rohde-Enslin

On Monday the 16th March 2015, the German partners of the E-Space TV Pilot (Doreen Ritter and Jennifer Mueller from RBB) and the E-Space Museums Pilot (Monika Hagedorn-Saupe from SPK, Sarah Wassermann from MEK and Beatrix Lehmann from Museumsmedien) had a meeting concerning their cooperation, at the Institute for Museums Research in Berlin.

It was the first meeting to strengthen a cooperation. The partners pointed out how they can benefit from each other, and how such a cooperation can support the goals of the Europeana Space project.

An interesting and useful link could be the use of RBB contents for the two Museums subpilots Toolbox and Blinkster App. Requests concerning topics and contents (television, radio or online broadcasts) will be prepared. Vice versa the use and potential use cases of the Toolbox for the RBB were discussed.

With regard to the Museums hackathon in March 2016, the partners will discuss different scenarios of a cooperation.

Sarah Wassermann (MEK), Monika Hagedorn-Saupe (IfM) Doreen Ritter (RBB) Jenifer Mueller (RBB) by Beatrix Lehmann (Museumsmedien)

The partners proposed to visit or to present the pilots and the project itself, on the following events:

IFA – Consumer Electronics Unlimited
Date: 4-9 September 2015, in Berlin, Germany
http://www.ifa-berlin.de/ (only in German available)

Annual autumn conference working group “Documentation” of the German Museums Association
Date: 12/14 October 2015, in Berlin, Germany

“Zugang gestalten! – Mehr Verantwortung für das kulturelle Erbe”
Make “access! – More responsibility for the cultural heritage ”
Date: 5/6 November 2015, in Hamburg
www.zugang-gestalten.de (only in German available)

CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES – Final Conference
Date: 12/13 November 2015, in Berlin, Germany
http://www.civic-epistemologies.eu/

RICHES project -Workshop in the role of Cultural Heritage for Social and Economic development
Berlin, Germany
http://www.riches-project.eu

Next meeting between TV and Museums pilots is scheduled for November 2015.

Brussels (Belgium), 23 March 2015

E-Space technical workshop

Europeana Space is establishing a Technical Space as a framework for storing, accessing and processing cultural heritage content and metadata. Based upon IPR licensing, curators, scholars, professional users and developers will be able to search for and manage resources within a safe space, to use and re-use them for the evolution of knowledge and the development of applications.

photo courtesy by Waag

In this technical workshop it will be presented the architecture and implementation choices for the Technical Space of Europeana Space project, specifically:

The Data Infrastructure that includes the retrieval and storage layers for content and metadata from available sources.
The Metadata Processing Unit that integrates available services for the management and manipulation of metadata resources.
The Access APIs that constitute a set of interfaces that will be made available for the delivery of resources and the creation of applications.

Registration is still open and a live streaming of the event is provided by the hosting partner iMinds, starting from Monday 23rd h. 9.30.

www.europeana-space.eu/technical-workshop/

Discussion and interaction with invited stakeholders will focus on validating and expanding the specification of functional and non functional requirements of the Technical Space in order to fulfil the needs of a wide user base. Moreover, the workshop will allow participants to learn more and experiment with the Europeana Labs, presented and coordinated by Europeana Foundation representatives.

Speakers at the workshop are the Technical Coordinator Antonella Fresa (Promoter); Nasos Drosopoulos (NTUA); James Morley (Europeana Foundation).

The workshop opens with a public session including lunch/networking, on the 23rd March 2015 h. 9.30 – 17.00. The second day is a plenary of the Pilots reserved to the project partners.

PDF flyer of the event

Learn More about Europeana Space: www.europeana-space.eu

Media studies and film direction at Università degli Studi di Firenze

Audiovisual Experimental Documentaries “to make visible what is not”

The CSA (Audiovisual Experimental Center) is a workshop for cine-audiovisual shooting, which was established during the academic year 2013-14, as part of the “Prosmart” master’s degree (in Prato), promoted by University of Florence in partnership with PIN (the University Center of Prato).

CSA is headed by the renowned Italian director Dr. Paolo Benvenuti and it is intended for students of Progeas (BA) and Prosmart (MA), hosted by the University Center of Prato. The overall workshop lasted about 300 hours. The final outcome are some professional quality documentaries, filmed by the students, under the leadership of Dr. Benvenuti. Based on the conviction that the main purpose of cinema is “to make visible what is not”, the short films shot document some of the craft activities which take place in Prato.

Some shooting equipment were available for the students and the workshop was articulated in different sections: in addition to the lessons of film documentary direction by Dr. Paolo Benvenuti, there were lessons of digital editing (software “Final Cut”) given by Dr. Mirco Rocchi and lessons of theory and history of film documentary given by Dr. Luigi Nepi. Therefore, students were provided with the theoretical, linguistic and practical knowledge, necessary to complete their works. At the end of this training course, the students were led by Dr. Grazia Vitelli along the post-production, mixing and finalization work (using “Première” software).

Since they illustrate and enhance with special care and effectiveness some specific production activities in Prato’s area, seven among the short documentaries filmed (see the filmography below), have been selected and delivered to the artists and craftsmen who contributed to the realization of the films. The delivery took place during an official ceremony, which was held January 9, 2015, at Auditorium Camera di Commercio di Prato, thus marking the beginning of an ongoing dialogue between the University and the artistic and productive manufacturing of the territory.

For further information: http://www.progeas.unifi.it/vp-140-laboratorio-didattico-csa.html

Filmography:

Mostodolce, by Andrea Ragghianti (2014, HD, colour, 7’28’’)

(about the first traditional brewery in Prato).

Neon, by Velesjana Rustemi (2014, HD, colour, 6’37”)

(about the work of Sergio Baldanzi, who realizes “old fashioned” neon light).

Anomalia, by Gabriele Masi (2014, HD, B/W, 4’40’’)

(about the creations by the artist Rudy Pulcinelli, whose style is based on the use of the seven main alphabets in the world).

La Filanda, by Tommaso Capecchi (2014, HD, colour, 5’25’’)

(about Gabriele Stanzani’s spinning company, which was born at the end of XVIII^th century and which is still using ancient machinery for the production of Italian fabrics).

Chapeau, by Irene Sonnati e Marco Fedele (2014, HD, colour, 6’53’’)

(about the work of Ilaria Innocenti who, since 2005, creates hats in her Atelier, located in Prato).

Centoscale, by Velesjana Rustemi (2014, HD, colour, 2’58”)

(about the creations by Ignazio Fresu, an artist who creates in Prato works and installations that testify the transformation of the objects surrounding us).

Nuovo Mondo, by Yingfang Cai e Agnese Polifroni (2014, HD, colour, 5’35’’)

(about the processing of the so called “Pesche di Prato”, the traditional Italian pastries, that Paolo Sacchetti has been making for years in the laboratory “Il Nuovo Mondo”, which is located in Prato).

Moreover, thanks to the regional funding obtained by Provincia di Prato through the POR (Operational Program) of the FSE (European Social Fund) 2007-2013, the PIN is now able to offer “MultiVisioni”, a free course of 600 hours (of which 180 internship) concerning image shooting and editing, for the production of television programs, documentaries and feature films.

For further information: http://www.poloprato.unifi.it/it/alta-formazione/offerta-formativa/multivisioni/home.html