Digital meets Culture

The new cultural places and young digital creation event, it takes place every 2 years in Paris

International festival dedicated to electronic cultures and emerging artistic forms, Emergences brings together, every year in Paris, French and international actors in digital creation (cultural centres, art groups, research labs, multimedia production firms…) all gathered around a prolific and international artistic program at the crossroad of performing & visual arts, multimedia, design, architecture and electronic music.

The programme is based on workshops, lectures, shows, installations and performances.

This festival is called Villette Emergences, and takes place every two year as the local part of the Villette Numérique Biennial.

It aims at making the link with the territory and the local and international actors. It marks the outcome of a work of cultural development led all year round (creation, residency, workshops, projects support).

Emergences festival presents innovative projects (hybridization of the artistic forms, new writings, scenography and the relationship to public, way of production) by giving a particular attention to the “emergent” artists ; Work on an artistic programming stemming from collaborations with the cultural actors of the region Ile-de-France (venues, artistic groups, universities, research laboratories and multimedia production companies) ; Register “Emergences” on the heart of an artistic network of international exchange by narrow and followed collaborations with the festivals and the places dedicated to new media abroad.

Official webiste: http://www.festival-emergences.info

Interview to professor Frederik Truyen, Institute for Cultural Studies at Faculty of Arts, KU Leuven

KU Leuven: ancient tradition and modern technologies

Professor Frederik Truyen is a high-profile University teacher and real gentleman, with perfect politeness and a friendly approach. He is the Head of IT Services at the Institute for Cultural Studies, a research and educational unit linked to the Faculty of Arts at the K.U.Leuven, Belgium. He shared with digitalmeetsculture.net a wide overview about the University activities in the field of digitization.

The Institute for Cultural Studies is involved in projects on digitization of Cultural Heritage. Is it really an unavoidable step for the cultural heritage to meet digital technologies? There are nowadays very big efforts and investments on digitization, are they so necessary as they seem to be?

The importance of Digitization amounts to access, representation, preservation and is driven by cost considerations. Let’s take as an example of the unique glass plate photographs we are working on. Through digitization, it is possible to give access to these precious works to researchers, without the risk of damage or wear. It actually opens them up for study from anywhere, whereas in the past only a limited number of researchers had access, and they needed to be on location.

But the digital image is not just a copy. It is always a representation. This means that we can opt to restore the work as it is on its bearer, but also that we can make more analytical representations, where we e.g. restore the light dynamics or the color depth. Depending on the goal of your representation, you get more options with a digital copy. Most interesting in the EuropeanaPhotography consortium are the different needs of professional Photo houses and Archives. We actually learn a lot from each others’ view on the photograph.

Third, we are seeing that in many cases digitization becomes part of a preservation strategy. It is virtually impossible to guarantee the physical integrity of all the works we have in archival deposits. For valuable but less unique or important works, it can be a cheaper option to keep a digital copy than to try to preserve the original. This frees more money for preservation of the physical masterpieces. Of course, it takes time to convince the archival and (art) historic communities that sometimes we have to choose and opt for digital preservation only. The PREMIS model for digital preservation allows you to gather under one “intellectual entity” different files and representations for one object. For the glass plates, e.g., we also take pictures including the frame and the earlier metadata attached or written on the frame.

This last point shows how digitization also is a part of any archival strategy to reduce cost. Limiting physical access reduces hazards, lowers insurance costs, and allows to optimize storage costs. When tough choices have to be made, the digital copy can be a last resort. It better be state-of-the-art then, making sure the digital copy is not facing obsolescence too fast.

KU Leuven is a very prominent partner in EuropeanaPhotography, what are your contributions to the project?

In the case of EuropeanaPhotography, KU Leuven will contribute to the quality control by providing expertise and guidelines as to the criteria on which collections should be selected for incorporation in the database. For this, the fact that the KU Leuven team is embedded in one of the Arts Faculties with the longest European traditions is welcome. Project members are involved in teaching at both the undergraduate and master level of Cultural Studies, Photography, History and the Fine Arts. Expert opinions of colleagues and researchers can be collected first-hand. The ICS works with European top centres in Early Music (Alamire Foundation) and Medieval Art (Illuminare). KU Leuven is also in the possibility, given its involvement in teaching master classes, to assess the usability of the Europeana materials in an educational context.

Apart from its contribution to the quality standards of the selected content, KU Leuven will assist in benchmarking the photographic quality of the digitization, given its expertise in the Alamire Digital Lab, one of Europe’s leading digitizing centres for the Fine Arts.

KU Leuven will also contribute to the collection, with high-end source images from Archaeology, the Fine Arts and Musicology, as well as collections from the University Archive and Library preciosa collection.

Which other EU projects is KU Leuven carrying on, beside EuropeanaPhotography?

KU Leuven, as a traditional and complete university with about 1500 senior academic staff, is of course involved in a myriad of research projects, in Humanities and Social Sciences as well as Science & Technology and Biomedical Sciences.

This challenging multi-disciplinary context is a fertile ground for the work we do at CS Digital (http://www.culturalstudies.be/digitalculture), bridging the boundaries between Humanities and Technology. Currently we are involved in high-end digitization projects such as IDEM (digitization of Early Music Manuscripts) and RICH (using Multispectral and 3D photography techniques to digitize Medieval Manuscripts). Besides these efforts, we are also involved in projects on Open and Distance Learning and E-Learning such as NetCU, OER-HE, OCW Europe.

As a teacher, what are your most interesting experiences as for digital technology applied to education?

For me, that is a quite important question as I was the chairman of the steering committee for E-Learning at the University for about 5 years. E-Learning – or as we call it – the “integrated learning environment” has been a key pedagogical strategy at our University. CS Digital started in 1997 under its former name “Maerlant Centre” with the aim to bring digital innovation to History teaching. Certainly one of the best experiences in my career was to witness first-hand how students got motivated for the History class by being able to access high-resolution digitized source materials such as historical maps and early illuminated manuscripts on a PC at school.

Today, we are heavily involved in the LACE project, building an international master programme on Literature and Change in Europe. Producing Open Courseware and using an online collaborative envirmonment, students from 7 universities throughout Europe jointly take a course by means of weblectures. Being able to discuss the same content with students from different cultural backgrounds gives a true learning advantage.

Of course, our teaching is always tightly intertwined with research. CS Digital produces the international peer-reviewed Journal on visual narratology and word and image studies, Image [&] Narrative (http://www.imageandnarrative.be). Image [&] narrative does not focus on a narrowly defined corpus or theoretical framework, but questions the mutual shaping of literary and visual cultures. Beside tackling theoretical issues, it is a platform for reviews of real life examples. The relation between text and illustration – often in the form of a photo – has been a recurring theme of research.

Just after we planned the interview, Fred was so kind to post about us in his blog (and we are very proud of it!):

http://fredtruyen.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/digital-meets-culture/

United Archives now own the lost treasure of a visionary man, who used photography to show the big world to the people.

The Carl Simon Photo Archive – Discovered After 60 Years

Carl Simon Archive, China mission. Courtesy of Frank Golomb, United Archives

The Carl Simon Archive was a sleeping treasure of photos for 60 years. In 2011 finally the sensational life work of Carl Simon was rediscovered in an old storage room in Unterbilk, part of the city of Düsseldorf, Germany.

Approx. 23.000 wonderful glass slides (9,5 x 8,5 cm and 8,5 x 8,5 cm), for the most part hand-coloured and well-assorted in 200 wood boxes, as well as 2 original projectors, accessories, 15 lenses and a lot of scripts for slide lectures are stored.

Carl Simon (1873-1952) first worked as procurator at the German photo company Liesegang in Düsseldorf and he founded his own company Lichtbild-Anstalt Carl Simon & Co. in 1907, where he offered services for the upcoming photo industry.

He constructed cameras, lent slide projectors and began to collect wonderful hand-coloured glass slides. The most important part of his activities were live slides performances. Carl Simon had the ambition to show the big world to many people and presented about 300 slide performances to amazing spectators in whole Germany.

Carl Simon Archive, China mission. Courtesy of Frank Golomb, United Archives

During these events, whilst showing the photos, an actor read a special text for each image and, last but not least, a small orchestra was playing background music.

Till 1945 Carl Simon collected 80.000 images. Over the years more than 23.000 still has survived. After his death Karl-Heinz Simon (1920-2002), his son curried on with the tradition of slide shows performances till to the 1960s. The End came with the introduction of television.

There are several beautiful photographic trips within this marvelous collection: for example Rome, cities of Germany – Berlin and Munich – The Montblanc, life in East Africa, Asia, a travel through France, earthquakes and volcanic activity, Japan, China mission, Tibet, the sinking of the Titanic and many more “Highlights” of glass slide photography.

End of March 2012 Frank Golomb bought this unique photo archive and United Archives now can proudly present the complete Carl Simon Archive as exceptional content for their clients and partners.

Visit the website: www.united-archives.com

United Archives is one of the most important partners of Europeana Photography project. The company was founded 1956 as Kövesdi Press Agency in Amsterdam and is called United Archives since 2007. In the early days the company was working as a press photo agency with offices in all major cities in Europe and supplied publishers with content linked to Cinema, Actors, Television. The company produced material on sets and acquired archives with images lasting back to the beginning of cinema history.

A huge part of the United Archives is unexplored, in negative roles, glassplates, and only very few images were digitalized from negatives so far. In the lifetime of the Europeana Photography project United Archives will explore these unseen collections and the plan is to produce 40.000 images as a mix coming from all collections.

[Show as slideshow]

The gracious and almost desert town of Leuven hosted the 2nd meeting of EuropeanaPhotography consortium.

EuropeanaPhotography Content Seminar in Belgium

by Valentina Bachi

Just after Easter time, the EuropeanaPhotography people were pleasantly hosted by the ancient Catholic University of Leuven to discuss and agree about the themes and the collections that are going to be digitized and added to Europeana digital library.

Leuven - Oude Markt

When we arrived, the weather was sunny and cloudy at the same time, and occasionally a thin rain occurred for a while; approaching the town from the airport, a glorious full size, deep colored rainbow was shining in front of us: we all thought that Professor Fred Truyen – our host from KU Leuven – really knows how to make people feel welcome!

Leuven was almost desert, we supposed because of Easter holiday that took most of the University students back home. It is a gracious, charming town with an ancient history (the University was founded in 1425!); and the meeting place, an Irish monastery turned into a congress centre, had maintained the fascinating atmosphere of a peaceful place. The inner garden, particularly, is still a poetic view.

But there had been not much time for enjoying the place, as they were 2 very intense days, during which the partners had the possibility to shake hands each other again, to discuss widely about their collections and to define several, important aspects about content themes and technical indexing issues. The meeting was chaired by Professor Truyen.

professor Fred Truyen - KU Leuven

In such a friendly gathering, each partner presented the collections that are going to be digitized within EuropeanaPhotography project, with the aim to represent the richness and value of the content that this project is adding to Europeana.

The partners represent both historical photographic archives and press archives, so that it is indeed evident that Photography as itself comes from the big names (famous photographers) and reporters (who may also remain unknown).

Other partners showed other aspects of photography: in fact the collections own both commercial photos (that were taken to be sold) and personal photos (that were taken by amateurs for their own pleasure and family memories).

Within the EuropeanaPhotography project, the selection process wishes to identify the masterpieces that are the evidence of:

History of photography
History of Europe
History of photographic techniques

Prof. Jan Baetens from the KU Leuven Faculty of Arts, department of Literature and Culture, had offered guidance to the discussion and several stings about the idea of selection – in the sense that a masterpiece should represent the icon of an archive – and the opposite concept of contextualization – that makes difficult to choose a single piece within a large collection.

Andrea de Polo talking to the partners

Other issues for discussion concerned the technology achievements that stung the photographic medium to change accordingly; the real and essential meaning of a photo; the concept of “Great photography”, which is somehow misleading, as it may change as years pass by – and today’s big names could be completely forgotten in 20 years.

The so-called “small” partners had the possibility to show how important and peculiar they are, as they offer a different material from the “big” photographic archives.

Among the others, it is worth to mention the following:

MHF Museum of History of Photography of Poland will provide images that are selected on anthropological basis, coming from amateurs or semiprofessionals. They will provide aerial photography, and photos of travels, leisure time, sports of ordinary people. Also they will provide photos of evolving technologies as for example medicine equipment and tools.

Arbejdermuseet (Workers’ Museum) of Denmark is not providing artistic photography but the evidence of workers’ conditions that changed so radically during that historical period.

Theater Institute of Bratislava is offering visual documents of costumes and scenography. Theater had been an important cultural device for the Slovak society.

KU LEUVEN will provide images that had been used for teaching art history and archaeology. They are important because they are the witness of objects that may not exist anymore, and offer a view about teaching.

Lithuanian Art Museums have very various images and very different contents, dating back from the Russian empire times. They show portrait, city-life architecture and monuments, country landscapes, historical events, and a good witness of the Manor culture (the ancient nobility).

Alamire digital lab

With such a busy time, the 2 days passed swiftly. After the end of the seminar, our hosts took us to visit the beautiful University Library, and the Alamire Digital Lab, provided with PhaseOne technology and other advanced tools. An interesting description of the digitization workflow officially concluded the meeting, but – for those who had to wait the flight schedule – a few time left permitted a nice walk in the town.

Next appointment for EuropeanaPhotography project is end of May in Girona, for the digitization workshop: it is going to be a very technical meeting which will provide the partners tutoring and teaching about the digitization process.

[Show as slideshow]

A Parisian photo agency since 1938 owns the secrets of “eternal” youth

ROGER-VIOLLET

In 1938, Hélène Roger-Viollet and her husband Jean-Victor Fischer, both passionate photographers and travelers, founded the “Documentation Photographique Générale Roger-Viollet” at 6, rue de Seine in Paris. Today, Roger-Viollet, still located in its original premises, is one of France’s oldest photo agencies. Having purchased the rue de Seine store from “picture merchant” Laurent Ollivier, together with his fine arts & geographic collections, Hélène Roger-Viollet and her husband added their family production and, after WWII, started increasing and enriching the archive by continued acquisitions.

Over the years, the agency’s founders built a photographic collection unique in Europe, covering more than a century and a half of Parisian, French and International history: world events and “petits metiers” (small crafts), fine arts, science, politics and everyday life, exotic journeys and streets of Paris, portraits of celebrities as well as snapshots of unknown passers-by…

The Roger-Viollet collections also offers an astonishing journey through the history of photography, from the production of the Second Empire photographical studios to late 20th century photojournalism.

Hélène Roger-Viollet and her future husband Jean-Victor Fisher on a walking tour of France, summer 1936.

At their deaths, in 1985, the founders of the agency bequeathed the business and the collections (nearly four million negatives and about two million prints) to the City of Paris. In 2005, the agency was integrated into the Parisienne de Photographie group, a City controlled public-private partnership in charge of digitizing and distributing the French Capital’s photographic & iconographic heritage. In addition to the Roger-Viollet archive, the material distributed by the agency now includes images from the principal museums and libraries belonging to the City of Paris.

Since 2005, the agency has enhanced its appeal and widened the scope of its offer by distributing foreign historical collections in France, as well as material by independent photographers who have entrusted their archives to its management.

The secrets of “eternal” youth : digitisation, International development and new collections

The digitisation of the archive, undertaken in the late 90s has resulted in a collection of over 400,000 high resolution images, readily available on line through the Agency’s website www.roger-viollet.fr. On demand digitisation is part of the services offered by the Agency as the total collection encompasses close to 6 million documents. Over 70.000 new digital images are added each year as part of the ongoing digitisation effort.

As adding constant new contributions is the key to a “live” photographic archive, the agency’s management’s policy over the past years has been to add new sources to the existing collections so as to emphasize the library’s international dimension and extend its chronological span. Four major sources currently make up the Agency’s stock :

the original Roger-Viollet collections since 1938; from the works of Ferrier-Soulier (French Second Empire’s fine arts), Neurdein & Lévy (historical and geographical reports – 1880 to 1918), Maurice-Louis Branger ( war and everyday life reports – 1900-1930), Pierre Choumoff (Russian immigration in Paris in the 20s and 30s), Jacques Boyer, Albert Harlingue (French and Parisian life, 1910-1950) or Laure Albin-Guillot (one of the first French female photographers, fashion and advertising 1920-1960), to the portraits from the Boris Lipnitzki studio (performing arts from the 20s to the 70s), the unique testimony on the Cuban Revolution by Gilberto Ante or the Lebanon and Iraq reports by war reporter and World Press Françoise de Mulder;

The collections from 15 Parisian museums and cultural institutions, composed of over two million works, belonging to the huge collections of the Carnavalet Museum, the Paris Historical Library, the Petit-Palais (Fine Arts) and the Modern Art Museum, as well as more specialized institutions such as the Cernuschi Museum (Asian art), Galliera (Fashion), Bibliothèque Forney (graphic arts) or various writers and artists’ Parisian residences (Victor Hugo, Balzac, Bourdelle , Zadkine). About 75,000 digital reproductions are already available and compose an outstanding historical and cultural portrait of the French Capital City as well as an extensive panorama of the Arts.

The collection of – so far – a dozen of French photographers who entrusted their archive to the agency: from well known names, such as Janine Niepce a humanist photographer dedicated to women’s history in France from the 1950s, or Pierre Jahan, a member of the “Group des XV” , to French news magazines reporters, such as Jean-Pierre Couderc and Jean-Regis Roustan (both 30 years contributors to l’Express) or Colette Masson and her 40 years of dance and Opera photography;

the material provided by a network of International partner collections, who often represent the agency’s collections in their own territories: Alinari from Italy, Ullstein Bild and Galerie Bilderwelt from Germany, Heritage Images and Topfoto from the UK, Imagno and Antzenberger Agency collections from Austria, Shaw Family Archives, and the Image Works from the USA.

A few milestones

June 6^th 1881: Henri Roger first experiments with photography: he took photos of his family and surroundings all his life, thus creating the agency’s first collection (8000 negatives), including the now famous pictures of the Eiffel Tower’s construction from 1886 to 1889.

October 14^th 1938: Hélène Roger-Viollet, Henri Roger’s daughter, and her husband Jean Fischer buy the collection of Léopold Mercier and Laurent Ollivier as well as Ollivier’s store located 6, rue de Seine in Paris, thus establishing the “Roger-Viollet General Photographic Documentation” (30.000 negatives, 50.000 prints).

1945-1984: The Agency’s founders successively acquire the Branger, Boyer, Harlingue, Albin-Guillot, Martinie, Lipnitzki, Lévy , Neurdein and LAPI collections, as well as many others, establishing Roger-Viollet as one of the leading French photographic archives.

1985: Upon the founder’s death, the collections are bequeathed to the City of Paris.

1997: Digitization and on-line distribution of the collections is initiated by the Agency’s management

In July 2005, Roger-Viollet is integrated to the “Parisienne de Photographie” group, a photographic heritage preservation and development company controlled by the City of Paris.

In 2006, Roger Viollet and Parisienne de Photographie are awarded exclusive worldwide distribution of the City of Paris’Museums photographic & art reproduction collections.

May 2010: launch of the new Roger-Viollet website.

February 2012: Parisienne de Photography, Roger-Viollet’s parent company, joins the EuropeanaPhotography project: 30.000 images from the agency’s own collections will be digitised and contributed to Europeana within the next 3 years.

Official website: www.roger-viollet.fr

Lithuanian Museums are working for digitisation and for sharing their collections to Europe

Digitisation centre for Lithuanian Museums

By Giedrė Asin Marco, LM CID LIMIS administrator and responsible for international relations.

Lithuanian museums caught the digitisation train rather late comparing with the rest of Europe. Therefore now they try hard to come up with it and present Europe’s audience with digital images of their collections. The coordinator of museums digitisation activities is the Lithuanian Museums’ Centre for Information, Digitisation and LIMIS (LM CID LIMIS) established as a separate department at the Lithuanian Art Museum in 2009.

It was the 2009–2013 strategic plan of cultural heritage digitisation approved by the Government of the Republic of Lithuania that enabled the Lithuanian Art Museum to become a recognised national training centre for implementing and managing digitisation projects at Lithuanian museums. The museum already had some experience in digitisation processes as part of its visual and applied arts collection had been digitized until then.

Lithuanian Art Museum photographer Antanas Lukšėnas speaks about flat objects photography. Photo by A. Valužis

The new centre LM CID LIMIS was set to also develop the Lithuanian Integral Museum Information System (LIMIS), which is to disseminate information by sharing it through online access to museum collection data. It will provide a crucial tool for the organisation of virtual exhibitions and the presentation of previously hidden cultural treasures.

The qualified specialists – photographers, digitising and museum specialists, system administrators, editors and translators – facilitate digitisation process for all museums throughout the country.

The video will take you to the premises of our centre and will give a deeper look into our everyday activities.

The Lithuanian Art Museum, a member of ICOM, has been a national museum since 1997. Having a public institution established in 1907 marked the beginning of its history. The museum has valuable collections of fine art, applied arts and folk art as well as a rich library, an archive and a photo archive. Since 2009 it has been responsible for organizing and coordinating digitisation activities at Lithuanian museums. It is an approved administrator and a recognized national training centre for implementing and managing digitisation projects at Lithuanian museums. For this purpose, a special branch called the Lithuanian Museums’ Centre for Information, Digitisation and LIMIS was established in 2009.

The Lithuanian Art Museum is one of the content providers of EuropeanaPhotography EU project and will coordinate the digitisation of 20 000 historic photos preserved at various Lithuanian museums. Taken between 1838 and 1939 they depict scenes from village life, Lithuanian ethnography as well as historical images of cities and architectural monuments. Having digitised the photos and negatives at the museums, the Lithuanian Museums’ Centre for Information, Digitisation and LIMIS will take over doing indexing and transforming metadata. It will also collaborate in the development of EuropeanaPhotography Vocabulary and develop its Lithuanian version. A workshop for the specialists of photographic archives, museums and cultural institutions will be held in Vilnius under the project framework.

During the seminar I. Aleliūnaitė demonstrates how A3 scanner can be used to scan different types of exhibits and presents image editing programs. © Photo by D. Sirgedaitė

Official website:

www.emuziejai.lt

www.ldm.lt

Article about Leuven Conten Seminar participation:

English language: http://www.emuziejai.lt/EN/international/EuPh_Belgija_201204_en.html

Lithuanian: http://www.emuziejai.lt/tarptautinis/EuPh_Belgija_201204.html

Six Mediterranean ancient theaters are the focus of a preservation program that makes use of digital technologies.

ATHENA Project for Ancient Theaters

Ancient theaters represent one of the most significant cultural heritage remains of Mediterranean civilizations. A number of these ancient theaters are still being used for various activities. Such current uses of theaters create a continuous impact on theatre structures originally designed for needs very different from contemporary ones. Ancient theaters need to be linked to their urban and human environment and there must be the creation of a strong relationship between the theater and the local community especially those who live near these structures. This is to enliven the cultural role of these theaters that has taken place since thousands of years ago.

Thus, the need for a common strategy seems to arise, involving the design, testing and implementation of a management plan.

The ATHENA Project of Ancient THeaters Enhancement for New Actualities is a Euromed initiative designed to bolster cooperation and ideas between Europe and Arab countries across the Mediterranean, in the field of ancient theater development and their relationship with civil society institutions and communities.

The ATHENA Project is supported and funded under the Euro-Med Heritage IV program by the European Commission and supervised by its Regional Monitoring and Support Unit (RMSU).

ATHENA project aims to minimize the progressive decay of ancient theaters in terms of physical, cultural and socio-economic aspects, to support the revival of theaters as a part of a wider archaeological site or urban context and to establish an overall strategy for dealing with tangible and intangible heritage aspects.

The Project partners belong to six countries in the Mediterranean region, earmarking different archaeological sites with designated authorities and academic institutions responsible for project rehabilitations. The archaeological sites are the followings: Jarash and Petra in Jordan, Cherchell in Algeria, Merida in Spain, Carthage in Tunisia and Siracusa in Italy.

Jordan’s Ministry of Tourism/Department of Antiquities acts as overall coordinator of ATHENA Project, while the other partners are the Institut aux Etudes Litteraires et de Sciences Humaines de Tunis of the University of Tunis, LaboBatiDans l’Environment—University of Science and Technology, Houari Boumediene, Algeria, Universidad Politecnica de Valencia — Instituto de Restauraciondel Patrimonio in Spain and Dipartimento di Rilievo, and Disegno dell’Ambiente e dell’Architettura (RADAAR) of the Sapienza University in Rome.

The project is well disseminated through workshops and seminars, and a very nice and up-to-date website: http://www.athenaproject.eu/

Another nice tool that was implemented for informing and sharing about the project is the monthly newsletter, headed by the Department of Antiquities of Jordan.

The newsletter highlights the latest news, actions, developments of the work relating to ancient theaters not only in Jordan (Petra and Jerash) but also in the member countries taking part in the Program (Tunisia, Algeria, Italy and Spain).

Issue 1 – January 2012 (PDF, 1,64 Mb)

3D Laser Scanner Boosts Sites Enhancement
Work in Progress: Ancient Theaters across Euro-Med Borders
Dipartment of Antiquities Designs a Training Course on Using Cutting Edge Laser Technology
Upcoming ATHENA Week in Jordan: Signifies Success of Activity for all Member Countries
RMSU EuroMed Workshop,Tangiers Focuses on Sustainability and Embedding for Stakeholders
ATHENA Work Action Paper Presented to Virtual Exhibitions Workshop organized by INDICATE
Management Plan Chart Roadmaps in ATHENA Project Countries

Issue 2 – February 2012 (PDF, 2,07 Mb)

Shaking Hands: Cooperation with Royal Jordanian Geographic Center
Ancient theater thesaurus going on-line
Theaters in Education: Educational Event in the Jarash South Theater, 5th May
Training Activity: Design of Surveying Course
Jordan Hosts Regional ATHENA Consortium in May
Building linkages

Milan, 15 March 2012

Metadata management to facilitate access to content

Metadata management to facilitate access to content

By AIE, the Italian Publishers Association

Bibliostar exhibition, Thursday 15th h.2.30 pm-6.00pm – SALA LEONARDO

In the digital era, access to content and information is a key issue to ensure the future economic and cultural development of our society. The publishing industry is increasingly moving toward “virtualisation”, offering more and more digital content, with libraries and cultural institutions moving into the same direction.
However, these efforts alone are not enough. Without effective digital services to support and facilitate access, digital content risks remaining locked in isolated silos. That’s where metadata and standards can help, as we will see throughout this session.
By retrieving and aggregating quality metadata from various data sources the ARROW system supports libraries in their diligent search and in obtaining from rightholders the necessary permission to digitise and make available copyright content.
The “big idea” proposed by the Linked Content Coalition aims at enabling a more effective management of copyright online, by laying the foundations for a more coherent organisation of metadata and rights information through the adoption of cross-media rights communication standards.
And, thanks to effective metadata management along the value chain, the LIA Project will allow blind and visually impaired to find out which e-books on the market meet the accessibility requirements defined at international level.
In Linked Heritage, the inclusion of commercial sector metadata into Europeana aims not only at addressing the problem of the “20th Century Black Hole”, but also making visible relationships previously not explicit between contemporary and historical cultural objects using a Linked Data approach.
To summarise: proper identification of “all parts of speech” throughout the networked value chain is essential to prevent digital communication becoming mere chatter.
These examples demonstrate the value of building synergies between industry and cultural institutions, between publishers and libraries. Without synergies there’s no access, and without access – no success.

———-

Chairman: Piero Attanasio (Associazione Italiana Editori)
Speakers:
• Cristina Mussinelli (AIE, LIA project): Metadata management and accessibility of Italian books*
• Paola Mazzucchi (AIE, Arrow): Metadata, rights management and digital libraries*
• Michael Hopwood (Editeur, Linked Heritage): Interoperability between different data sources towards Europeana: the Linked Heritage project
• Godfrey Rust (Rightscom, Linked Content Coalition): New approach to rights information management in the Internet: the Linked Content Coalition
• Stella Griffith (ISBN International Agency): Identifiers in the digital world
* speech in Italian

Bibliostar is the exhibition of services, technologies and equipment for libraries which takes place in March every year in Milan at Palazzo delle Stelline. It is carried out in cooperation with authoritative institutional and professional partners who have, from the beginning, been a guarantee of a high level of expertise and a continual high level of participation by librarians and operators in the sector.

More info about the Bibliostar exhibition: http://www.argentovivo.it/bstare.html

Interview to Mr. de Polo, manager of well-known company Alinari 24 Ore and coordinator of the EuropeanaPhotography project

Photography since its beginning

by Valentina Bachi

Update for the Reader: Starting from the 1st of December 2012 the coordination of the EuropeanaPhotography project is transferred to the University of Leuven. Alinari 24 Ore withdrew from the project. The photographic images of Alinari Archives remain nevertheless part of the project content.

Mr. Andrea de Polo, Head of the Digital Imaging Department of Alinari 24 Ore and coordinator of the EuropeanaPhotography project, joins the controlled self-confidence of the businessman with a touch of human warmth that makes you feel immediately at ease. We had a pleasant talk about EuropeanaPhotography (www.europeana-photography.eu) and Alinari 24 Ore (www.alinari.it).

EuropeanaPhotography is about to begin: we know about the project, but what’s mostly remarkable in it?

While Europeana’s collections of images and text items are very impressive, these images are generally photographs of cultural artifacts, rather than being culturally important in their own right – photography as a cultural medium and an art form is rather under-represented.

EuropeanaPhotography is the first feeder project with a focus on old photography. In addition to large amounts of exciting images, it will also deliver some of earliest of all photographs, and the materials needed to trace the development of this new art form from its inception in the late 1830’s to the middle of the 20th century.

And then we have a nice group of partners.

Yes, the content providers of EuropeanaPhotography come also from countries that are still very much under-represented in Europeana, such as Bulgaria, Slovakia, Lithuania and Denmark – just think that these countries are not even accounted in the last “content by country” details of Europeana, but just aggregated as “Europe”.

Another innovative aspect of the project is the fact that 6 partners – among which, us of Alinari 24 Ore – are from the private sector. They are absolutely new characters to explore, with specific complexity and needs, which will bring into this project challenging issues and exciting opportunities.

They will also demonstrate how private companies can derive commercial value from participation in Europeana, and how private sector will generate benefits to public partners thanks to the mutual cooperation.

Alinari Archive is known as the oldest photographic archive in the world.

Yes, the archive is very old.. it was founded in Florence in 1852 by a family of photographs,
the Alinari brothers, specialized in photographic portraiture and views of works of art and historical monuments: actually it was a pioneer atelier, for studio shootings and photographic campaigns. Time passed and people changed but we kept the same spirit of our founders.

We are proud to say that Alinari is the oldest firm in the world working in the field of photography, image and communication. The main business of the company is related to licensing the use of our photos for books, exhibitions, research purposes. And its Art Printworks is the only one in the world still using the artisan technique of collotype on paper and on silver plate from photographic images.

Sounds quite traditional, Andrea…

In facts I must admit we are a little bit traditional, and it is good for us. Once an American journalist asked me what Alinari is doing so special: we are able to join the technological state of art with photographic tradition of our forefathers. Look to our base: it is an ancient palace in the centre of Florence, it is indeed much more expensive than to run a modern building in the country, in Prato, for example… but we prefer to keep it and preserve it as it is an expression of our roots. No matter if our electricity bills are a little bit higher compared to a modern plant!

I see, but I also would say that you are very open to innovation: in EuropeanaPhotography you will provide about 120.000 items to be digitized.

It is clear that photographic digitization and new technologies in general will help us to restore and preserve our archive, and also to easily share it with colleague companies and users. In EuropeanaPhotography 4 partners out of 19 will use the same technology from Leaf/PhaseOne for professional digitazion, thus allowing an harmonized process and an easier sharing of the files.

And it is so natural that the digital copies permit us to use our most fragile pieces without repeated handlings, and to improve our business.

Who are your target consumers?

A good 40% is represented by publishers and organizations from the publishing field; then we can say that the education channel (teachers, researchers, undergraduate students) is well represented too, about 25%, then we have end-users, professionals, and also institutions.

And what about your Museum?

The Museum is our background, the umbilical cord to Alinari 24 Ore, and a showroom for the Alinari’s Archive. The Alinari National Museum of Photography MNAF currently has in its custody 900.000 vintage prints, and an extraordinary collection of glass plate negatives, color images, stereoscopic images, antique cameras, lenses and lab instruments besides a collection of containers and period frames for a total of around 5.5 million items.

It provides a dedicated service on photographic exhibitions, and educational services for historians, photographic lovers, artists, students and also impaired people.

Yes, I know about the project for the visually impaired, but please tell us more about it.

It was an exciting idea to allow blind people to somehow understand photography, further the Braille. We chose 20 masterpieces from our archive, and we commissioned to skilled artisans a 3D reconstruction of the images, choosing proper materials according to the picture that has to be represented. For example, if the picture is a country landscape, in the reconstruction we used pieces of bark, dry leaves, grass and so on: the user will not only understand the structure of the image, but also will feel the atmosphere of the photo. It would be amazing to launch a research project about this in Europe! But I am afraid it would be very difficult.

Actually this initiative is very innovative, although non-digital: it confirms that Alinari group is still a pioneer company. But let’s go back to EuropeanaPhotography, what would you add about it?

I would like to underline that this project is focused on photography, as a medium for contents and as a source of contents. In this moment, while a considerable company as Kodak is going through big troubles, EuropeanaPhotography can represent a bright sign of attention to classical photography.

In the end, Andrea, your opinion to the debate: is digital technology improving or damaging photography?

As I told you before, Alinari is a little bit traditionalist and honestly we think that digital technologies including editing software are making the gap between professional photographers and amateurs thinner. Almost anyone today can make good photos, thus Art is still something different.

On the other hand, digital technologies represent the future and they offer opportunities any company have to care about. Therefore, it is not possible to drop them: we have to accept the challenge and keep up with modern times at our best!

Andrea de Polo, Head of the Digital Imaging Department of Alinari 24 Ore, holds a BFA in Fine Art Photography from Rochester Institute of Technology, USA (1994) and a certificate in Museum studies from the Internal Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, USA. Mr. de Polo has successfully coordinated the ORPHEUS EU project and worked as assistant to the coordinator in the ERMIONE and EURIDICE projects. Mr. de Polo is coordinator of the EuropeanaPhotography project.

Fratelli Alinari Archive merged in the year 2007 with the Sole 24 Ore (www.ilsole24ore.com) and it created a new company called Alinari 24 Ore (www.alinari.it). The archive was founded in Florence in 1852 and Alinari is the oldest picture archive in the world still active in the field of photography. Today Alinari is the guardian of a photographic ‘corpus’ with a patrimony of over 5.500.000 pictures, historical and contemporary, ranging from 19th century vintage prints, glass plate negatives, ambrotypes, slat prints, daguerreotypes, silver prints, autochromes, and modern slides and digital files. Alinari has an on-line search system for its photographic archive, employing a system of iconographic classification produced in collaboration with the University of Florence. Alinari has currently 330.000 images available online. In 1994 the firm began numerous initiatives for collaboration in technological and cultural projects in Europe. Among the most important are Aquarelle, Artline, Victor, Imprimatur, aceMedia, Euridice, 2Kan, Orpheus, Ermione, RegNet, TNT, Migrator 2000, eCHASE, aceMedia, Multimatch, MILE, Tripod, Eurogene, Fotomemoria, CITER and today GLOCAL, PATHS, DECIPHER and Convergence. Memberships: CEPIC, BAPLA, I3A, TAUVISUAL, JPEG consortium, IPTC Photo Metadata group

More info at www.europeana-photography.eu or contact Andrea de Polo directly by email: andrea [at] alinari.it

*Photos: courtesy of Alinari 24 Ore*

Petrozavodsk, 19 - 22 June 2012

Cultural Heritage and Information Technologies. Museum as an information system

The annual conference ADIT that has been held since 1997 is one of the key All-Russian activities on promotion of information technologies among museums and other cultural institutions that facilitates the development of museums and exchange of regional experience.

Conferences ADIT have been held in different regions of the country since 1998. The Republic of Karelia has been chosen as the Conference ADIT- 2012 venue, the Conference Coordination Center is the Kizhi State Open Air Museum.

It is a modern and developing museum that extensively uses information technologies in its work and does a great job of promoting historical and cultural heritage of Karelia and the Russian North as a whole both in Russia and abroad. A large number of foreign experts are expected to participate in the conference 2012, and it will be also the occasion to present European best-practice projects like Linked Heritage, Europeana and others.

Conference Objectives:
– Experience exchange in the sphere of informatization of museums, discussion of issues concerning preservation and interpretation of cultural heritage through the use of digital technologies.
– Promotion of mobility among workers in the cultural sector, exchange of experience between Russian and foreign specialists in the field of new information technologies in culture, arts and education
– Development of modern interactive museum activities for attracting young audiences to historical and cultural heritage.

The conference is structured with sections, seminars and “the Museum computer festival”.

Conference languages are Russian, English
Note: English translation will be carried out at the plenary session and of the sections “IT technologies for cultural tourism” and “Global tendencies. Foreign practices in the use of IT for preservation, study and presentation of cultural heritage” (translation of other sections of the conference will be carried out as and when necessary and possible).

Registration for the conference and reports:
Registration starts on February 6, 2012. Please register at the ADIT web site.
Registration deadline is April 30, 2012.

Conference Coordinators:

The Kizhi State Open Air Museum

Kassianow Sergey, kassianow@kizhi.karelia.ru,

Babushkina Galina, babushkina@kizhi.karelia.ru,

tel/fax +7 (8142) 76-70-91

Non-commercial partnership “ADIT”

Tolstaya Natalia, President, n_tolstaya@mail.ru

ADIT website: http://www.adit.ru/eng/default.asp#