Digital meets Culture

Symposium, 2 July 2020 h1.15 PM – 6.15 PM

Which impact do the cultural and creative industries, and in particular the arts, generate for the development of innovations between industry, people and technology?

>> ACCESS HERE: https://kreativ-bund.de/artcreatesindustry
>> Also live on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube!
Registration in advance is not required.

Programme and speakers (PDF)

On July 2nd, Germany’s Federal Government’s Centre of Excellence for the Cultural and Creative Industries (Kompetenzzentrum Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft des Bundes) and the European Commission‘s S+T+ARTS initiative will examine how cultural and creative industries, and in particular the arts, contribute to overcoming urgent societal and environmental challenges. The CCI offer approaches which reshape the relationship between people & digital technologies, recognise empathy as the driving force behind technology development and promote art and creativity as sources of innovation in all industries. The hybrid symposium “Empathic AI – Art creates Industry”, will bring together experts from the creative industries and the arts, technology, policy-makers and industry to discuss, inspire and experiment with art and artificial intelligence (AI).

On the occasion of the 5th anniversary of the S+T+ARTS – innovation at the nexus of Science, Technology, and the Arts initiative of the European Commission (General Direction Connect), the symposium will also be marked by the opening of the exhibition NEAR FUTURES AND QUASI-WORLDS at the STATE Studio Berlin. For this purpose there will be the possibility of a hybrid tour of the exhibition on July 2, and on July 3 there will be an opportunity to attend discussions between artists and scientists.

If you have any questions about the event, please contact us via e-mail: presse@kreativbund.de.

The Programme will be held in English.
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About The German Government’s Centre of Excellence for the Cultural & Creative Industries
The German Government’s Centre of Excellence for the Cultural and Creative Industries (Kompetenzzentrum Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft des Bundes) strives for more visibility for the cultural and creative industries and the farreaching impact these have on economy, society and politics. The Centre aims to increase the dynamics of innovation, especially in the area of non-technical and creative innovations. Further, it shows solutions for challenges of the present and future developed in collaboration with its comprehensive entrepreneur network. The German Government’s Centre of Excellence for the Cultural and Creative Industries is a scheme by the German Cultural and Creative Industry Initiative.

The consultation seeks feedback from citizens, PAs, CHIs, international organisations and networks, the Europeana ecosystem, companies, research organisations, and academia

EC launches public consultation on digital access to European cultural heritage

The Commission has opened a public consultation on the opportunities offered by digital technologies for the cultural heritage sector. Stakeholders and all interested people are invited to provide feedback on the Recommendation of 2011 on digitising cultural material and digital preservation. The aim is to propose a more appropriate policy instrument to support the digital transformation of cultural heritage.

Take the survey here: https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/DIGCULT2020

Advancements in technology are opening up fresh opportunities to digitise cultural heritage for preservation, conservation, restoration, research, as well as for broader online access and re-use by citizens and various sectors, such as tourism. In addition, the tragic fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on 15 April 2019 demonstrates the importance of digitising and preserving culture, for instance, with 3D modelling of buildings, monuments and other heritage sites. More recently, the coronavirus pandemic and the physical distancing measures taken across the Member States have highlighted a practical need for virtually accessible cultural heritage and the advantages of having these digital tools in place.

The consultation seeks feedback from citizens, public administrations, cultural heritage institutions, international organisations and networks, the Europeana ecosystem, companies, research organisations, and academia. It will run from 22 June 2020 until 14 September 2020 at 23:59 CET and the views gathered will feed into the possible revision of the 2011 Recommendation.

PR: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/commission-launches-public-consultation-digital-access-european-cultural-heritage

More than 5,500 art proposals from more than 100 countries around the world will be the source for the ADAF 2020 program selection.

ADAF Athens Digital Arts Festival is launching the ONLINE era

The 16th international festival for digital arts of Greece, Athens Digital Arts Festival (ADAF), the pioneer longest living institution dedicated to digital culture in the country (est.2005), will be implemented also ONLINE, introducing a new digital institution.

Since the new era is here, the international festival for digital arts in Greece, Athens Digital Arts Festival has decided that its 16th edition titled Technotribalism, will be presented also online. One exclusively online edition, the first one in Greece, titled ADAF ONLINE | Technotribalism, will take place from the 10 of July till 10 of September and will be accessible to everyone through the internet.

ADAF ONLINE, evolving this year’s thematology “Technotribalism”, will host pieces from Video Art, Animation, VR (360 video), Performances, Web Art, Games, Digital Image, talks, workshops, ADAF Kids for Children & their Parents, and Festivals of the world.

More than 5,500 art proposals from more than 100 countries around the world will be the source for the ADAF 2020 program selection.

With the festival theme “Technotribalism”, more evident than ever in the COVID era, where every biometric and every scientific piece of data is a of vital importance as well as every digital footprint feeds the hunger of social distancing, the Festival with its thematic seeks to promote collectivity and openness towards knowledge, art, science as fundamental pillars upon we shall built our new data driven world.

In addition ADAF, always seeking physical contact with the public, has found the way to connect with safety the physical and the digital space, with the aid of cutting edge technology.

Stay tuned to learn how you will live the phygital ADAF experience in Athens.

Because we are the Technotribal generation!

Be one of the first who will enjoy ADAF 2020, by subscribing to online.adaf.gr

#ADAFgreece #ADAF2020 #Technotribalism #ADAFonline

The 16th Athens Digital Arts Festival is co-financed by the Hellenic Republic and the European Union through the Regional Operational Programme of “Attica” in the framework of NSRF 2014-2020.

9-10 July 2020, online workshop organized by the University of Ljubljana for PAGODE project

The curation of Chinese cultural heritage in Europeana

This Workshop is organized by the PAGODE – Europeana China project team at the Department of Asian Studies, University of Ljubljana. Its aim was to set the common ground for the curation of Chinese cultural heritage in the Europeana Digital Library. The workshop was held as an online event on Zoom on 9-10 July 2020.

Final programme (PDF).

Presentations published at https://photoconsortium.net/pagode/2020/06/16/semantic-workshop-9-10-july-2020/

For any additional information do not hesitate to contact dunja.zorman@ff.uni-lj.si.

The purpose of the PAGODE Semantic Workshop is to discuss the semantic background and the metadata curation methods of the already existing as well as newly added China-related content in Europeana. We used this occasion to review the definition of Chinese cultural heritage as well as discuss the list of keywords and use of thesauri that are developed within the PAGODE Project.

Above all, the workshop gave the participants the opportunity to tackle specific problems arising from the practical application of semantic definitions and of the metadata specifications. The project partners and the associated content owners were invited to present the material that is difficult to categorise or otherwise problematic as related to specifications.

Ultimately, the PAGODE Semantic Workshop provided the means for an improvement of the existing metadata scheme and enable further development of methodological approaches.

[Show as slideshow]

PAGODE – Europeana China is co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility Programme of the European Union, under GA n. INEA/CEF/ICT/A2019/1931839

Amsterdam, 2-4 November 2020

EGI CONFERENCE 2020: “Federated infrastructures for connected communities”

The three-day conference will bring together science, computing, and (international) collaboration with the aim to exchange knowledge and expertise on a very rich and articulated range of topics.
The scientific programme includes:

• Novel technical solutions
Existing and emerging use cases and solutions for Big Data, HTC, HPC, Accelerated Computing integration
• Machine Learning, AI Platforms
Distributed Ml, AI and data analytics in a federated environment
• Hybrid multi-clouds and cloud federations
Cloud federation use cases, business models, architectures and reference implementations for science, e-Government and industry; federated service management approaches at local, national and international level
• Research Community success stories through the EGI Federation
Success stories on how scientific excellence has been enabled through the federation of national, regional and international e-Infrastructures and in particular the EGI Federation
• Federated Access Services for distributed digital infrastructures
Emerging requirements, technical solutions and policies needed to enable federated authentication, authorization, accounting, monitoring, and discoverability of data, software, applications and all research outputs for open science
• Frontiers in scientific computing in Natural Sciences, Health and Medicine, Engineering and Technology, Agricultural Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities
Future directions in technology, infrastructure provisioning and collaboration for exabyte-scale computing in all scientific disciplines, Open Science, Data analytics platforms and virtual research environments for integrated data-compute services
Deadline of the calls for presentations, demonstrations and sessions have been extended to the 15th of July 23.59 CEST
The EGI Federation is an international e-Infrastructure set up to provide advanced computing and data analytics services for research and innovation.
This mission is pursued by coordinating and provisioning an international federated infrastructure that pools together service providers from both the public and private sector in Europe to develop, integrate and deliver digital services for compute- and data-intensive research and innovation. As an open initiative with a global outlook, the EGI Federation also connects service providers beyond Europe following the collaboration needs of the served communities.

EGI website: https://www.egi.eu/
Conference website: https://indico.egi.eu/event/5000/
Call for abstract: https://indico.egi.eu/event/5000/abstracts/
Contact: dimple.sokartara @egi.eu.

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) Libraries work for expanding access and enhancing discovery of resources for everybody

Over 170,000 cultural digital resources available at UWM Libraries

Text by Caterina Sbrana.

The Home page of Digital Collection from which the thematic search can start

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) Libraries established a digitization program since 2001. The objective of the program was providing remote access to unique library resources to the UWM academic community and the general public. Currently, UWM Libraries Digital Collections contain over 170,000 digital objects including photographic images, maps, and books drawn from the holdings of the American Geographical Society Library, the Archives, Special Collections, the Music Library, and the Curriculum Collection. Over sixty digital collections have been created from the beginning of the program. This way it was possible to enable remote access to visual resources on global issues as well as treasures of local cultural heritage.

Search & Retrieval page

The site is very intuitive and searches can take place in different ways by inserting filters to the search or by writing directly the topic on the search bar. On the Home page of Digital collections we can improve our search by clicking, on the left bar, the status or topic you want. In the section of the Digital Photo Archive, there are thousands photographs related to everyday activities and also to landscapes. Each photograph can be selected for further information: Title, Date of Photograph, Photographer’s Note, Subject, Continent, General Region, State/Province, Type of Image and Original Item Medium, Digital Format, Original Collection, Provenance, Rights etc.

Acheng (China), muddy city street; Photographer: Pendleton, Robert Larimore, 1890-1957; date of photograph: between 1931 and 1932; Original collection: Robert L. Pendleton Collection

Photographer’s Note: Macau: Gold runners; Photographer: Forman, Harrison, 1904-1978; date of photograph: 1950;

As we read in the presentation of the archive “There are no restrictions on access, except for one section called Peck School of the Arts Slide Collection. That collection is limited to UWM students, faculty, and staff”. However in the copyright section it is clearly stated that “over 140,000 digital materials drawn from the collections of the Archives, Special Collections, the Curriculum Collection, Music Library, and the American Geographical Society Library. We make these materials available in order to facilitate their use for non-commercial and educational purposes, and to advance the mission of the Libraries and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee”.

Title: Japan, American GI’s getting their shoes shined in Tokyo; date of photograph ca. 1950s; Photographer: Forman, Harrison, 1904-1978

Afghanistan, aerial view of Bamiyan Valley; Photographer: Forman, Harrison, 1904-1978; date of photograph ca. 1969

Among the project information we can read that “Materials for approved projects are carefully selected by collection curators and subject specialists in the libraries and departments housing the source collections. UWM Libraries Department of Digital Collections and Initiatives is responsible for digitizing the selected materials according to established digitization standards and best practices. CONTENTdm digital media management software is used to build online collections. We retain digital master files in a separate storage infrastructure to ensure their integrity and accessibility in the future. High resolution digital images can be ordered using the online Order Images form.”

The digital collections are also selectively available through the World Digital Library, The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), Recollection Wisconsin, Umbra: African American History, the Civil Rights Digital Library, and the Digital Transgender Archive.

For example in the World Digital Library it’s possible to find other collections, interactive maps, timelines etc. An example of this is given by the following photograph:

Uzbekistan, Bukhara, Prokudin-Gorskii, Sergei Mikhailovich, 1911. Prokudin-Gorskii visited on a number of occasions the recently acquired territories of the Russian Empire such as Turkestan (present-day Uzbekistan and neighboring states). He made trips in January 1907 and 1911 to the ancient cities of Bukhara and Samarkand. Prokudin-Gorskii made this and a number of other portraits of Said Mir Mohammed Alim Khan in 1911.

As we might imagine, the photographs come from collections acquired over many decades and the digital collection is under continuing development.

The biggest problem in these cases is related to copyright. On the subject of copyright the information provided by the staff is very comprehensive: “We make every effort to provide factual information about copyright ownership where possible. When rights information is available, we include it in the “Rights” field of the metadata record for an item. Due to the nature of historical collections, it may not be possible to fully determine the copyright ownership of a particular item. The UWM Libraries endeavor to provide as complete a record of the legal status and rights holder as possible. Any copyright owners who are not properly identified on this website should contact UWM Libraries so that we can make any necessary corrections. Upon request, we will remove material from our online collections while we review a copyright claim”. Given the importance of some sections of the archive, we will continue to update you on the interesting historical content.

The collections are available to the public at: https://uwm.edu/lib-collections.

https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/agsphoto/id/9035/rec/3

https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/agsphoto/id/28137/rec/9996

https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/agsphoto/id/24590/rec/44

https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/af/id/1134/rec/8

https://www.wdl.org/en/item/5869/

https://uwm.edu/lib-collections/about/

https://uwm.edu/libraries/digital-collections/copyright-digcoll

The EU research service for EU funding projects

UNCHARTED Project on CORDIS website!

“What is the social value of culture? While culture is increasingly being viewed from an economic perspective, there is much more at stake. Focusing on the valuation practices developed by different actors involved in the cultural sector, the EU-funded UNCHARTED project will identify Europe’s plurality of cultural values attached to specific cultural products, productions, services, activities and sites. It will consider the multiplicity of agents and the diversity of evaluation practices. Led by the University of Barcelona and involving 10 research partners based in France, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom, the project will focus on the valuation practices of the various actors involved in cultural life, from the audience and visitors to the artists to experts and politicians.”
With this presentation the UNCHARTED project is now mentioned in the CORDIS webpage dedicated to EU projects. CORDIS, the Community Research and Development Information Service, is the European Commission’s primary source of results from the projects funded by the EU’s framework programmes for research and innovation.
Its main mission is to bring research results to professionals in the field to foster open science, create innovative products and services and stimulate growth across Europe.
CORDIS has a rich and structured public repository with all project information held by the European Commission such as project factsheets, participants, reports, deliverables and links to open-access publications.
Link to UNCHARTED presentation on CORDIS webpage

Open access is a great resource, and GLAMS are more and more embracing this approach. But sometimes the consequences of allowing free reuse go beyond any immagination.

Public Domain and misuse: some thoughts

image: Rank Badge with Leopard, Wave and Sun Motifs, China, Qing dynasty (1644–1911), late 18th century, silk and metallic thread, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 30.75.1025.

Being so deeply embedded in the Europeana ecosystem, the new CEF project PAGODE – Europeana China (2020-2021) fully embraces the advocacy towards more open access content to be made available online in repositories like Europeana. The effort of cultural heritage institutions in showcasing their gems in digital format goes hand in hand with their mission of sharing this cultural heritage at large, for the benefit and enjoyment of the entire community.

Also, the general trend in Europe about digitization of cultural heritage and associated rights comes from a lenghty discussion that is continuing for years: does the digitization action add new rights to the digitized object? Despite there is not a general consensus on this, the direction is on maintaining the rights status of the physical object and specifically this means that if an artwork is in Public Domain because of copyright’s expiration, also the digital reproduction should be labelled as “Public Domain”.

Irrespectively of the associated rights, however, there is always a problem of possible misuse for this content that is available online and easily downloadable. And while in our minds there is this idea of the “evil” user who breaks copyright on purpose, and stoles the images to e.g. make unlawful money out of them, the problem on the control of what happens to the online content is much deeper.

An example of this, that particularly catched the attention of PAGODE – Europeana China because it relates to a Chinese cultural heritage item, has recently come to the stage: a beautiful image of a Chinese embroidered cloth (a so-called rank-badge) depicting a leopard, in PD from the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, was recently used to illustrate the cover page of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Journal, titled “Emerging infectious diseases”.

The Journal and CDC were immediately flooded with expressions of outrage and concern of many from the Asian-American community and beyond, at the inappropriate use of a Chinese work of art on the cover and tweet-posting of a journal issue devoted to scholarly articles on COVID-19 and other respiratory infections.

The power of imaging should not be underestimated, as the choice of this image in such a context may suggest an emphasis on animals in China as carriers of the disease, resulting in an unvoluntary but certainly irresponsible example of using a PD digital item. The sensitivity about associating the COVID-19 crisis straightforward with China is clearly understandable, especially in America in this moment of xenophobia concerns and protests; but the explaination of CDC cuts short, by stating this is all a misunderstanding, and simply confirming that the image was chosen just for decorative purposes, being a striking piece of art – as indeed it is. At the moment, no reaction is known from the Metropolitan Museum of Arts as the content holder of the misused digital image.

The entire story is deepened in an interesting article by Hyperallergic magazine.

But the question about protection against digital content misuses is still very open. It is not always a matter of whom makes money out of the content, but more of what happens to the content once it is freely available for “any” purpose.

While advocating the open access approach, we really must think that the content holder completely loses any control and responsibility on the reuse of this content, and on the possible consequences that may arise. This is one of the many reasons for which some archives still have doubts about embracing the open access tout-court, especially when they deal with potentially-sensitive content.

PAGODE – Europeana China is co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility Programme of the European Union, under GA n. INEA/CEF/ICT/A2019/1931839

28 May -14 June, on the website of the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art

The virtual showcase of UC Davis graduate students for the Arts & Humanities 2020 Graduate Exhibition

The Arts & Humanities 2020 Graduate Exhibition, the annual exhibition of the UC Davis graduate students, is an essential component of the Master of Fine Arts programs in art studio and design and is also open to visual, performing, and literary arts graduates within the College of Letters and Science.

Every year it is held at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, but in the particular situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, for the first time it is taking place digitally on the museum’s website.

From May 28 to June 14, thirty arts and students from the disciplines of art history, art studio, creative writing, cultural studies, design, music, native American studies present their works in a virtual exhibition.

The works include wide range of topics and techniques and each student had used a different approach in creating and presenting their work.
Web galleries include photographs and videos of art as well as audio recordings, and recorded presentations of research and theses and written statements.

As in previous years, most of the participants are from the studio art program and design department.

A virtual opening celebration was held online the 28th May and it included welcome remarks and the announcement of the Keister & Allen Art Purchase Prize for studio art and the Savageau Award for design.

The future of Art market is digital

VORTIC: the new virtual reality app brings art galleries straight to collectors’ homes

The entrepreneur Oliver Miro, with decades of sales experience in the family art gallery, has launched an extended reality platform that offers to private galleries the opportunity to virtually reproduce their spaces, adapting the artworks here displayed. This new tool not only allows galleries to be visited virtually, but represents a new way of conceiving the art market. In fact, collectors can use virtual reality to simulate the effect that the artwork they intend to buy produces inside their own homes. The collector is then able to decide whether to buy or not the artwork without moving it from the art gallery.
The project was started three years ago with the aim of avoiding vain movements of artifacts for commercial purposes, but it certainly represent an attractive resource in a period of crisis such as the one we are currently experiencing with the COVID- 19 pandemic, which obliged a plenty of small-medium art galleries to close, in fact they can use the digital platform for reproducing their exhibitions and be virtually visited by collectors.
The platform is made up of two complementary, augmented and virtual reality apps: the first is called Vortic Curate, it is accessible through subscription and allows galleries to set up virtual exhibitions customized for specific collectors by the use of high resolution 3D scanning technology.
For collectors Vortic offers two apps: Vortic Collect is an AR app available for smartphones and tablets through which collectors can attend to exhibitions, fairs and private views. They can also place works using augmented reality to see how they would look in their own homes.
The second is Vortic VR, the virtual reality version of the app that allows audiences to fully immerse themselves in the digital exhibitions through VR. The app is supported by Oculus headsets, and let audiences explore exhibitions in 3D from any angle.
The full capacity of the platform was showcased through a co-presentation of artists from David Zwirner and Victoria Miro