Digital meets Culture

Participatory fieldwork continues to restore and valorize rural areas in the Altiplano de Granada

INCULTUM Pilot: cleaning of the acequia Baja de Pitres

text by Elena Correa Jiménez (University of Granada), photos by Rocco Corselli, MEMOLab researcher.

On the 10th of June, the cleaning of the acequia Baja de Pitres (Granada) took place. This activity was organised by the Laboratory of Biocultural Archaeology (MEMOLab UGR) and the Irrigation Community of the irrigation ditches Baja and Alta de Pitres.

Fifty volunteers, including locals, archaeology students, environmental volunteers, etc., took part in the clean-up. The activity consisted of clearing vegetation and soil from this historic irrigation channel, fundamental in shaping the landscape and life of La Taha. This historic canal is about 12 kilometres long, from its source in the Mulhacén river to the Bermejo river.

This initiative is part of the work carried out by MEMOLab in the context of INCULTUM Pilot project, to revalue historical irrigation channels and the irrigation communities that manage them, in order to preserve a cultural and environmental heritage that is fundamental to our landscapes.

Learn more about INCULTUM Pilot 1 – Altiplano de Granada

UNCHARTE representatives met in Volterra with Mayor and Culture Councilor of the town

UNCHARTED study on strategic planning of cultural policy

The representatives of the European project UNCHARTED met in Volterra with the Mayor Giacomo Santi and the Cultural Councellor Prof. Dario Danti on 13 June 2023.

For the UNCHARTED project the team of Promoter S.r.l. was represented by Pietro Masi Administrator, Dr. Antonella Fresa Director of Implementations and Arch. Giulia Fiorentini responsible of the case study on Volterra, together with Prof. Eszter Gyorgy of the ELTE University of Budapest connected online.

The meeting was the occasion of reviewing the progresses of the main case study of the Experimental Demonstrations of UNCHARTED about cultural strategic planning in Volterra, and the experience of its nomination as City of Culture in Tuscany.

Promoter Srl, as leader of the case study, will report to the UNCHARTED Workshop planned in Barcelona on 15-16 June 2023 about the results of the interviews with the group of stakeholders of Volterra conducted during the period of April-May 2023.

The interviews will be followed by an online questionnaire that will be open to the contribution of all the citizens of Volterra during July-August 2023.

The study will conclude at the end of October 2023 with a public event hosted by the Municipality, where results and outcomes will be presented and discussed with the citizenship.

Picture from the meeting

Actions included the cration of new dissemination materials, a training to local stakeholders in Permet, and the continuation of the efforts to reconstruct the heritage of Vlachs minority

INCULTUM Albania pilot latest activities to support cultural tourism in the Upper Vjosa valley

Article and images courtesy of Eglantina Serjani (CeRPHAAL)

Activity 1 – New visitors’ leaflets launched in the pilot area of the Upper Vjosa valley

In April 2023, INCULTUM partner CeRPHAAL in Albania launched new visitor leaflets about the cultural heritage assets of the Upper Vjosa valley, presenting for the first time to the public some of the lost and neglected heritage of the area, such as the Vlach culture, as well as several landmarks related to the Second World War and the Communist Period.

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Published by PH journal of Andalusian Institute of Historical Heritage (Seville, Spain).

Paper by INCULTUM Portuguese pilot on cultural landscape of Campina de Faro.

The noria as a privileged expression of heritage andwater mastery | photo Desidério Batista

The cultural landscape of the Campina de Faro is characterized by the
presence of vegetable gardens and orchards associated with a historical,
evolving, and adaptable irrigation system, revealing a technological unit
(hydraulic infrastructures) and a social unit (local community).

The paper, “The cultural landscape of Campina de Faro: solutions based on water heritage and cultural tourism”, focuses on INCULTUM’s Portuguese pilot, located in the Algarve region in southern Portugal, and describes the process of research and cooperation carried out in the first two years of the project to fulfil their goals, reflecting and debating around the role and importance of the agrarian landscape and water heritage as a basis for community-based cultural tourism, in a territory subject to a process of disqualification.

To download and read the whole article (PDF, 9,78 MB), follow this link.

Methodology and workflow of virtual reconstruction

Time Machine Academy: LILLO 1640

Time Machine Academy shows how a virtual reconstruction of a historical site is made, based upon the example of the 17^th century fortress of Lillo, Belgium. This fortress was reconstructed by Visual Dimension bvba, in close cooperation with the Centre for Urban History at the University of Antwerp and the European ‘Recapture the Fortress Cities’ (RCF) project.

Just north of Antwerp (Belgium) lies Fort Lillo, one of the oldest forts around Antwerp. The villages around the area have disappeared during recent harbour expansions in the 1960s, but Fort Lillo has been preserved as a heritage site. In the coming years, Fort Lillo will go through a process of intensive spatial replanning, mainly initiated from the need for more substantial levees protecting the inland area from flooding.

To facilitate this process, a true ‘Time Machine’, allowing to virtually travel between past, present, and future of Fort Lillo was designed. To build this Local Time Machine, researchers from the Antwerp Time Machine and the specialised digital heritage company Visual Dimension teamed up with Regionaal Landschap de Voorkempen in a pilot action VirtuaFort within the project RFC (Recapture the Fortress Cities), funded by Interreg Europe and the City of Antwerp. While historical sources tend to be fragmented and incomplete, a 3D reconstruction asks for filling in all missing information to visualise every part of the given study area.

VirtuaFort consists of 3D virtual reconstructions of the historical fortress and its immediate surroundings in 1640 (past), panoramic visualisation of the current situation (present) and 3D visualisation of the masterplan for the future fortress in a Time Machine application that allows to interactively explore these three time periods and switching interactively from one period to another.

The results of VirtuaFort are in the first place aimed towards the general public, consisting of local inhabitants, tourists and guided groups, making heritage more visible through virtual reality. It also proves to be an excellent tool for more sustainable conservation and as a tourist attraction.

Dates of the Academy:

Friday, 16 June 2023 – 14:00 to 16:00 CEST
Friday, 23 June 2023 – 14:00 to 16:00 CEST
Friday, 30 June 2023 – 14:00 to 16:00 CEST

Prerequisites to participate in this Academy:

A working computer with an internet connection and a recent web browser
An intermediate level of English

Follow these links to register and to learn more about the Academy.

Barcelona, 15-16 June 2023

2nd UNCHARTED Co-creation workshop

The second co-creation workshop of the UNCHARTED project is held in Barcelona, at Centre d’Estudis i Recursos Culturales, on 15-16 June 2023.

This workshop is gathering members of the Advisory Board, invited stakeholders from the various fields related to cultural policy and cultural institutions, and partners of the consortium who are part of the research process.

The aim is to debate with actors about the central issues investigated during the UNCHARTED research, in order to deepen our understanding and, at the same time, to generate new hypothesis and research questions in the run up to the comparative analysis to be completed afterwards, and to look forward to the production of final project’s outcomes.

The workshop is led by UB, the project coordinator, in collaboration with CNRS, lead partner of WP4, and ELTE, lead partner of WP5.

15 stakeholders have been involved in dedicated interviews A questionnaire will soon be launched for all citizens A public event is scheduled in autumn 2023

Volterra: the fieldwork of the case study continues

The UNCHARTED project includes as part of its Work Package 5 (WP5) the main case study about cultural strategic planning in Volterra and the experience of its nomination as City of Culture in Tuscany.

The first phase of the investigation on the case of Volterra ended in May with a campaign of interviews involving about 15 stakeholders of the territory. Promoter Srl, as leader of the case study, is reconstructing the first results in a report and developing an online public questionnaire to collect the contributions of citizens.

The questionnaire is going to be published at the end of June 2023 and remains open until September 2023 to intercept the highest number of people, thanks to the support of the city administration and their contacts.

In parallel, a public event is planned to take place in Volterra in autumn 2023 to present the results of the survey.

The next appointment is scheduled for Tuesday 13 of June 2023 in Volterra for a meeting with ELTE, the University of Budapest, lead partner of UNCHARTED WP5, and with the participation of institutional actors.

Some picuters about fieldwork

Programme of Small-scale partnerships in school education of the Erasmus+ Project: Turkey-Italy-Bulgaria

“From Intangible Expression to Digital Cultural Heritage”: update on Erasmus+ Project

text and images in this post courtesy of the project “From Intangible Expression to Digital Cultural Heritage”.

After our first virtual meeting in Italy, this time we were welcomed by the “St. St. Cyril and Methodius” Primary School from 7th to 13th May in Razlog, Bulgaria. It was again attended by 6 students and 2 teachers from each partner schools. Razlog is a town in Blagoevgrad Province in the southwestern of Bulgaria. This visit we made to Bulgaria was an experience for us where we nearly witnessed history. It is a town which is rich in traditions and customs.

On the first day of our visit we had a tour in Razlog and visited the Nicola Parapunov History Museum. It has many valuable collections of traditional local clothing and works of local craftsmen. In Bacheco village, our students had the experience of riding horse and tasted very delicious traditional foods of Bulgaria.

On the second day, we were in Bansko which is full of traditional houses. The Pririn National Park is located here and this park is included in the convention for the Preservation of World Natural and Cultural Heritage Sites. Here in Bansko, having experienced the Bulgarian folk dances and local hand crafts made our students get together and communicate in foreign language. They also shared cultural heritages by exposing to them.

On the third day we were in the secon biggest city of Bulgaria called Plovdiv. It is one of the most historical cities there. The history of the city dates back to a thousand years Before Christ. In 2019 it became the European Capital of Culture. It is a city that contains colours.

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In the end of our meeting we noticed again that we should respect and accept other people’s culture, history and traditions and also save them for the next generations. All the cultures are worth to be shared and made more visible. Beside this, we had the opportunity tu use our foreign language to communicate. We ensure the intercultural dialogue among people. Our Project encourages us to do all those things. And that’s why we love Erasmus+ projects!

Find out about the aftermath of the event.

3D in Cultural Heritage Event in Rome was a success

img. courtesy of Piero Masi

The first public event of EU funded project EUreka3D is organized by project coordinator Photoconsortium in Rome on 6th June 2023. The conference 3D in Cultural Heritage is integral part of the DHCH 2023 initiative on Data Science, and is realized by EUreka3D project in collaboration with University of Basel Digital Humanities Lab and Istituto Svizzero.

The event is realized under the auspices of the Italian Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy.

The event was a success with ca. 50 participants in the room and over 120 connected online. The post-event survey reported that 100% of respondents agree the event was useful in their work or for personal knowledge.

Few comments collected from the audience:

– The exhibition of practical cases are always to useful to understand the use of 3D digitization in various fields.
– The most useful part of the webinar were technicalities behind 3D imaging and would love to hear more about technical part of photogrammetry.
– I 100% agree with Valentina about the European Viewer Platform and I would like learn more about archives, storage and digital preservation. Thank you for everything, it was a great event.

It’s possible to view and download all the presentations of the various speakers by going to the Agenda section below.

3D in Cultural Heritage is an event of the training and capacity building programme of EUreka3D project, to support cultural heritage institutions in the process of digital transformation and in the effort of advancing with 3D digitization of cultural collections.

>>> DOWNLOAD PROGRAMME (PDF)

The event aimed to help understanding the challenges and needs for creating 3D content in good quality and reusable, and it brought together experts and specialists on 3D digitization and holistic documentation of 3D cultural content. It was the best occasion for institutions, researchers, cultural professionals and students in cultural heritage to improve their skills, knowledge and capacity for the current scenario of digital transformation in the cultural sector.

After the welcome messages from the Istituto Svizzero, the University of Basel and Dr. Mauro Fazio, from the Italian Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy, the event opened with an introduction on EUreka3D project by Dr. Antonella Fresa (Photoconsortium), the project coordinator.

Then, the event was organized in two sessions.

During Session 1, the current scenario of development in the cultural sector was discussed, and why reusable 3D content in good quality is needed: keynote speeches from Valentine Charles (Europeana Foudation), Marinos Ioannides (Cyprus University of Technology) and Frederik Temmermans (VUB/imec) provided the most recent information on the trends of the cultural heritage sector, and best practices and technological insights on the matter of 3D digitization of heritage sites and collections.

After that, during Session 2, the event focused on important experiences of international projects dedicated to 3D digitization and the use of 3D in cultural heritage, with the contributions of Timothy Naessens (meemoo), Ismo Malinen (Museovirasto), Peter Fornaro and Vera Chiquet (University of Basel), and Ana Busom Arruebo and Albert Sierra (GENCAT).

Question and answer time allowed the participants onsite and onlineto interact with the speakers and join the conversation.

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AGENDA AND PRESENTATIONS FOR DOWNLOAD

3D in Cultural Heritage – EUreka3D public event

Istituto Svizzero, Villa Maraini, Via Liguria 20, 00187 Roma

6th June 2023 h. 9.30-13.15

h. 9.30 Opening

Welcome messages by Istituto Svizzero and University of Basel
Welcome message by Dr. Mauro Fazio, Ministero delle Imprese e del Made in Italy
Introduction on EUreka3D project and scope of the event, by Dr. Antonella Fresa, Photoconsortium (PDF)

Session 1 – Current scenario in the cultural sector: the need for 3D content in good quality and reusable

h.10.00 Valentine Charles (Europeana Foundation, NL): The new Data Space for Cultural Heritage (PDF)
h. 10.20 Marinos Ioannides and Petros Siegkas (Cyprus University of Technology, CY): The VIGIE Study for high quality 3D digitization (PDF)
h. 10.40 Frederik Temmermans (imec, BE): Standardisation activities for 3D modalities (PDF)

Question and answer time

Coffee break

Session 2 – Experiences with projects for 3D in cultural heritage

h. 11.40 Vera Chiquet (University of Basel, CH): Facilitating small CHIs in digitization for 3D Models, a case study with the Museum of Learning (PDF)
h. 12.00 Ismo Malinen (Museovirasto, FI): 3D digitization of World Heritage Sites in Finland (PDF)
h. 12.20 Timothy Naessens (meemoo, BE): 3D digitization of sculptures in the context of GIVE Flemish masterpieces project (PDF)
h. 12.40 Ana Busom Arruebo, Albert Sierra (GENCAT, ES): Giravolt, the National project for 3D digitization of Catalan heritage (PDF)

Question and answer time

h. 13.15 Conclusion

Attend in Rome, register here.
Follow the conference online on Zoom here.

image of Villa Maraini, Istituto Svizzero di Roma

After recreating a traditional hut in the Upper Vjosa Valley, the CeRPHAAL team was engaged with the arrangements of the interiors in collaboration withlocal stakeholders, particularly the elderly Vlachs

Reconstructing a Vlach dwelling hut – the ‘kalive’, with interiors

Article and images courtesy of Eglantina Serjani (CeRPHAAL)

The INCULTUM partner CeRPHAAL in Albania has identified the cultural heritage of the Vlach minority as the main product of their project’s innovative actions. This initiative aimed at recording, revitalizing and promoting the currently menaced cultural heritage values of the Vlach people. An important part of this enterprise was the reconstruction of a Vlach authentic dwelling – the kalive.

It was reconstructed in July of 2022, in a camping site, just outside the town of Përmet, a destination highly frequented by foreign and domestic tourists. The location is significant as it corresponds with one of Vlach’s temporary daily camps set during their seasonal transhumance movements towards summer and winter pastures. The dwelling is an open-air museum that exemplifies the living history of the Vlach people that survive due to the detailed memory retained by those individuals who once lived in pastoral transhumant societies across the landscape of the Upper Vjosa valley. It was constructed using the same techniques and materials that Vlach builders used in the past, acquired in the surroundings of the area.

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During the first half of May 2023, the CeRPHAAL team was engaged with the arrangements of the interiors of the dwelling hut and prepared a display of domestic objects used by local society in the past. This is an ongoing process that necessitated a broad collaboration with local stakeholders, particularly the elderly Vlach. Some of the objects displayed include old tools used for wool processing, such as the manual spinning instruments for yarn making and other domestic utensils, including a wooden decorated cradle, a wood butter churn, etc.

The objects attracted the attention of visitors to the site, propelling the organization of a dynamic cross-cultural activity that is programmed to take place at the dwelling site during July. It will allow the students and visitors to interact with the elderly Vlach and learn ancient forgotten domestic processes that took place within a Vlach dwelling.

This event is part of Vlach’s open days program of activities scheduled to take place during the first week of July.