Digital meets Culture

online event series, from 20 March to 30 May

Blend & Bleed – Symposium on Transreality and Pervasive Play

Carina Erdmann, we have become used to magic, 2020.

The series of online workshops conjures synergies between the fields of performance, LARP, game design and media theory. The common inquiry will be the phenomenon of ‘bleed’, wherein the boundaries between fiction and reality, the virtual and physical world dissolve.
The symposium is hosted by the Inter-Actions department of LUCA school of Arts and links to their research on the hybridization of online gaming and performance. What can games teach us about the ways we construct worlds collectively?
We invite you to partake in a series of playful experiments around digital presence, embodiment and relationality. Reflecting on the psychological, social and political implications of distance we will explore virtual commoning practices and ‘conspiratorial bleed’.

Full program: https://0ct0p0s.net/Symposium-Blend-Bleed

Download the announcement with all details: PDF, 165 Kb

All sessions are free and open for participation. Places are limited.
REGISTRATION: https://luca-artoffice.be/project/29604

Get in touch: contact @ 0ct0p0s.net
Facebook: https://fb.me/e/1WZ0lisfz
https://www.luca-arts.be/en/blend-bleed#programme

online event, 6-8 May 2021

Paleography And Diplomatics On The Digital Humanities Route: Pathways And Proposals

Sponsored by CIDEHUS – University of Évora (Portugal), in partnership with the Centro de História – University of Lisbon (Portugal), this event will pose questions and discuss hypotheses for the work of digital humanities in history:
What past and what future?
What are the paths for palaeography and diplomatics and the other sciences that allow historians’ work to continue?
Are we dealing with new practices or new methods of addressing sources and writings?
To what extent is preservation possible without evading historical documents?
How can computer programming create tools for historians and archives?

Submission of proposals for paper is open until 28th March 2021.

Preliminary programme is online at the official website at http://www.pdcongress.uevora.pt/en

Admission to the event is free with a required registry.

An online event organized in collaboration with Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Faculty of Philosophy, and NALIS Foundation

History in Pictures from Bulgaria – participative workshop from CitizenHeritage project

Ekaterina Karavelova with her eldest daughter Viola. Image in PD, NALIS Foundation. Ekaterina Karavelova (1860-1947) is the founder of the Bulgarian Women’s Union, chairwoman of the Bulgarian section of the International Women’s League for Peace and Freedom, founder of the Committee for the Protection of Jews, wife of Petko Karavelov.

Enriching photographic heritage through citizen science.

If it is true that an image is worth a thousand words, the key issue with the mass of digitized photographic heritage that is published in online repositories is allowing users to find the images they’re looking for.

Good metadata, with rich keywords and links to authority files and official thesauri are necessary for search, retrieval and reuse of digital collections of cultural heritage relevance. A growing attention is therefore given to enriching existing digital resources which may have basic metadata, to make them more discoverable, multilingual, and meaningful.

This metadata improving activity can be done in various ways, also with support of Artificial Intelligence – but with photographic heritage the human factor is of the utmost importance to unveil the knowledge that historical images embed. Involving citizens in the loop is the best strategy for letting photography speak for themselves.

In this event, students of digital humanities from the University of Sofia successfully worked on metadata improvement, by annotating and enriching the beautiful digitized collection of early Bulgarian photography published by NALIS Foundation in Europeana.

The result is over 5.000 new tags added to ca. 700 heritage photographs!

DISCOVER THE EVENT:
https://www.citizenheritage.eu/citizen-science-workshops/sofia/

On line meeting: 18 March 2021

ESACH Talks: Communicating Culture

The sixth ESACH Talk, will be centered on communicating culture, with focus on innovative perspectives on the following topics:

Marketing and branding cultural heritage
Youth and community outreach and engagement
Storytelling methods
Communicating uncomfortable history and heritage
The relationship between communication, education, and action
Communicating across cultures
Audience analysis and engagement for effective communication
Media consumption and heritage
The power of public relations in cultural matters

ESACH Talks are interactive, fast-paced events that provide a platform for sharing knowledge amongst students and young professionals working within cultural heritage studies. To make things more interesting, each presentation lasts five minutes and must be accompanied by a slide presentation.
ESACH Talk has a length of 45 minutes and includes presentations by ESACH students and young professionals, as well as some time for discussions and comments. Attendance is open to everybody, not just ESACH Members!
The meeting are organized in partnership with Europa Nostra.

ESACH, “The European Students’ Association for Cultural Heritage”, is a youth-led network of students and young professionals within cultural heritage based on the principles of interdisciplinarity and peer-to-peer learning. It was established in 2017, on the occasion of the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018, to highlight the perspective of the younger generations regarding cultural issues of European and national importance. ESACH aims to establish a mutual exchange of knowledge and experience beyond geopolitical boundaries, through collaborations with cultural institutions and an increased involvement of students, young professionals and future decision-makers.

On January 2021, in cooperation and with the communication support of the European Heritage Tribune, the independent digital news platform for the European heritage community, it was launched the ESACH blog written by ESACH members to share young people’s perspectives on cultural heritage. The first blog posts were written by the speakers of the ESACH Talks.

More information about ESACH talk 18 March 2021 here
ESACH website
ESACH Blog
EHT website

Report

Challenges and opportunities for culture and the sustainable development goals

The report “Culture and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Challenges and Opportunities” is the result of Brainstorming Meetings organized to allow the debate between the European Commission and the cultural sector, represented by a group of experienced professionals in Europe.

The meetings were organised by Voices of Culture on the 2nd and 3rd December 2020 and the report was presented to the European Commission in a dialogue meeting on the 11th February 2021.

The purpose of the report is to explore the challenges and opportunities for the sector of culture within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) identified in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

While insisting that all SDGs are relevant to culture, the report focuses, in particular, on four of the SDGs most relevant to culture:

SDG4 Quality Education,
SDG8 Decent Work, Growth and Employment,
SDG11 Sustainable Cities and Communities,
SDG13 Climate Action.

Recommendations for the European Commission are provided on the individual SDGs presented in the document, as well as, for each of these, short presentations of cases studies are included to exemplify the recommendations.

The report also shows, throught the many case studies and best practices listed, the huge opportunities and achievements offered by recent SDG-related cultural projects and programmes.

You can access the brainstorming report here.

Further information:

Voices Of Culture is the structured dialogue between the EU cultural sector and the European Commission.
This dialogue allows exchanging views and information, and ensures that the voice of civil society representatives of the cultural sector is heard and can give input to the European Commission.

A call is launched for participation in a Brainstorming Meeting on a given topic which is important in the policy making process of the European Commission.

Through this open call participants can propose their candidacies, and successful applicants are invited to a Brainstorming Meeting after which a Report is produced by participants to be presented to and discussed with the European Commission.
Calls for applications are launched regular by Voices Of Culture on different topics.

visitors of the website can discover the sections dedicated to the village of Deir el-Medina and to the Tomb of Kha

A new virtual tour at the heart of Museo Egizio in Turin

A new virtual tour is now available on the website of the Museo Egizio in Turin. It allows the public to remotely visit the most iconic sections of the collection, also including those dedicated to the village of Deir el-Medina and to the tomb of Kha.

Starting from a series of 360-degree panoramic photos in high definition, the virtual tour reconstructs the rooms dedicated to the finds from the intact tomb of the architect Kha and his wife Merit, and from the village of craftsmen and workers of Deir el- Medina. In addition to being able to move around the rooms, the user has access to multiple tools that expand the visit experience: a series of 3D models of the objects on display, that offer the possibility to observe the finds with unprecedented precision and detail.

Among the finds available it is worth mentioning the chapel of Maia, in which it is possible to “enter” for the first time, to closely observe the colorful paintings. By positioning the cursor in the rooms, it is also possible to access 18 videos, to discover more details and stories about the two sections, guided by the words and voices of the curators of the museum. The virtual tour also allows visitors to view some historical photographs and access further content through the Museum databases.

The video contents are available in Italian, English, French and German, as well as the navigation, also available in Arabic.

Click HERE to discover the virtual tour!

Website: https://museoegizio.it/

Stay tuned! Join the ASEM Virtual Celebration Day

Fostering Dialogue and Cooperation between Asia & Europe

The Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) is an intergovernmental process established in 1996 to foster dialogue and cooperation between Asia and Europe. The initial ASEM Partnership consisted of 15 EU Member States, 7 ASEAN Member States, China, Japan, Korea and the European Commission. Today, ASEM comprises 53 Partners: 30 European and 21 Asian countries, the European Union and the ASEAN Secretariat. ASEM addresses political, economic, financial, social, cultural, and educational issues of common interest in a spirit of mutual respect and equal partnership. Through its informal process ASEM facilitates and stimulates progress but does not seek to duplicate bilateral and other multilateral relationships between Asia and Europe.

In occasion of the ASEM Day 2021, The European Union (EU), together with the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) and the Centre for Fine Art Brussels (BOZAR), is organising a special virtual celebration on Sunday 7^th March. The online event will present the launch of digital exhibition, ‘A Passage to Asia: 25 centuries of exchange between Asia & Europe‘, followed by a live dialogue forum on the ‘State of play, perspectives and new forms of cooperation between Asian and European museums’.

More information and programme available at: https://www.aseminfoboard.org/events/asem-day-virtual-celebration
ASEMInfoBoard webpage
Link to the registration: https://www.tmabevents.be/ASEM_Day_Virtual_Celebration.php
Registration will be followed by an email with a link and password in advance of the event to access the virtual celebration.

A brief review of regulation for creative and cultural industries: the latest report of the CICERONE project

CICERONE (Creative Industries Cultural Economy Production Network, Grant No.: 822778) is a H2020 funded interdisciplinary research project focusing on Europe’s cultural and creative industries (CCI). The research team consists of sociologists, human, cultural and economic geographers, cultural study specialists, economist and historians, all of which bringing in extensive expertise on the cultural and creative industries.
CICERONE main goal is to provide an innovative way to understanding how these industries function and a new foundation for effective supportive policies at EU, national and local levels.
The project is divided into six work packages designed to produce a set of reports on distinctive research aspects; in addition, a range of case studies covering different CCIs in different countries has the goal to provide a broad empirically informed view.
In the framework of of Work Package 3 (Policy, regulatory and governance matrix of the CCI in Europe) research activity, the CICERONE-members Thomas Borén and Dominic Power (both from Stockholm University) have finished the third in a series of papers which explores whether and to what extent the existing European, national and regional policy frameworks concerning cultural industries (and the wider economy) are appropriate for addressing the challenges of new and emergent organisational and governance forms of the creative economy.
This 3rd report, entitled “A brief review of regulation for creative and cultural industries” examines key elements of the European regulatory environment for the cultural and creative industries and their production networks.

Six key areas are discussed by the report:

1) policy hierarchies and scalar and sectorial complexity
2) regulation of work and contracts, with a focus on small actors and protected designations
3) content and production regulation, including notions of quotas, arm-length’s distance and the new political landscape in Europe
4) intellectual property rights regulation
5) competition regulation, monopolies, and platform economies
6) regulation for the digital single market

Throughout the report, possibilities are highlighted that may be considered in policy to further support the CCIs.
More information about the 3rd CICERONE report here
To download the report click here
CICERONE project website

a documentary series exploring online communities and games that are no more in use

The abandoned spaces of the Internet

Preserving Worlds is a documentary travelogue through aging but beloved virtual worlds. Join us as we explore dated chat environments, appreciate player-created art, and meet people working against obsolescence to keep the communities they care about alive and accessible.

Virtual worlds are delicate things, and they can vanish with hardly a trace. Under Capitalism, preservation is often the last priority. But even if you manage to archive the offline software, a dead world can only tell you so much. It’s just as important to document how people spent their time within it.

With this series, filmmakers Derek Murphy and Mitchell Zemil offer an entertaining glimpse into these worlds and created historical records of them that may someday be of use.

Access the episodes: https://means.tv/programs/preservingworlds

Preserving Worlds website at: www.preservingworlds.net

organized as a virtual tour by University Art Galleries at the University of California Irvine.

online art exhibition The Black Index

Titus Kaphar, “Redaction (San Francisco),” 2020. Etching and silkscreen on paper. Courtesy of Titus Kaphar and Reginald Dwayne Betts. Photo by Christopher Gardener.

The artists featured in The Black Index—Dennis Delgado, Alicia Henry, Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, Titus Kaphar, Whitfield Lovell, and Lava Thomas—build upon the tradition of Black self-representation as an antidote to colonialist images. Using drawing, performance, printmaking, sculpture, and digital technology to transform the recorded image, these artists question our reliance on photography as a privileged source for documentary objectivity and understanding. Their works offer an alternative practice—a Black index—that still serves as a finding aid for information about Black subjects, but also challenges viewers’ desire for classification.

Visit the virtual tour: https://uag.arts.uci.edu/exhibit/black-index

The works in The Black Index make viewers aware of their own expectations of Black figuration by interrupting traditional epistemologies of portraiture through unexpected and unconventional depictions. These works image the Black body through a conceptual lens that acknowledges the legacy of Black containment that is always present in viewing strategies. The approaches used by Delgado, Henry, Hinkle, Kaphar, Lovell, and Thomas suggest understandings of Blackness and the racial terms of our neo-liberal condition that counter legal and popular interpretations and, in turn, offer a paradigmatic shift within Black visual culture.

Curator Bridget R. Cooks is Associate Professor, Department of African American Studies and the Department of Art History, University of California, Irvine. Exhibition and tour organized by Sarah Watson, Chief Curator, Hunter College Art Galleries, New York in collaboration with the University Art Galleries at UC Irvine, Palo Alto Art Center, and Art Galleries at Black Studies, University of Texas at Austin.

This exhibition is dedicated to David C. Driskell.