Digital meets Culture

online event, 11-13 November 2020

Europeana 2020: Crisis, Change and Culture

2020 is not the year we thought it was going to be. A global pandemic has changed our day-to-day lives. The Covid crisis has brought home how connected our lives are across the globe, while the injustices and societal inequalities that exist between them have been thrown into sharp relief. This demands a response from us. Above all, this year has shown us that we need to build more coherent, coordinated and effective approaches to dealing with the challenges facing society, whether it is a short-lived natural disaster, a pandemic, or the ongoing battle to combat climate change.

This is as true for the cultural heritage sector as it is for our wider society.

In recent months, culture has shown to be a compelling force: people turned to digital technology and communication to share culture and come together as families, in friendship groups and as communities. As we move through and on from these crises, how can digital culture create meaningful and positive change in our society?

Now is the time to look critically at the role of cultural heritage, and reimagine it.

Europeana 2020 builds on that momentum to explore how – together – we can develop an open, knowledgeable and creative society.

Website and registration: https://pro.europeana.eu/page/conference#

Call for proposals is open until 30/9.

The experience of atomic bombing through stories collected in a digital archive

Hiroshima, 6th August 1945: the “Bomb Experience”

text by Caterina Sbrana.

“It was a hot, clear morning. I was getting ready to leave for the Tax Office, near Hatchobori, where I worked as a Mobilization Workforce Student. There was a bright flash and an extremely loud noise and then the house crumbled. For a few minutes I was in darkness. I lay on the floor, covering my ears and eyes, unable to move.

I waited for some light to shine through the rubble and dug myself out. I went and stood in the yard and looked around. All of the houses in the area had collapsed and the roofs were sprawled on the ground. By the time I got to the streetcar tracks, I was completely surrounded by fire. So I took the only way out, which led me in the direction of Yoshijima. There were many people around me escaping the fire, but no one spoke. We all walked with a horrified look across our faces. Many people were swaying as they walked. They were naked apart from rags hanging from their outstretched arms. I was not thinking very clearly and my mind could not comprehend why they would all be naked. I mostly remember the destroyed houses and water squirting out of the broken pipes” […].

This is the beginning of Teru Feruta’s (maiden name, Kawaguchi) tale “My A-Bomb Experience”.

A month has passed since August 6th. A date on which each Japanese, in their own way, remembers the terrible epilogue of the Second World War. As usual, every year, the press dedicates articles or broadcasts to commemorate this terrible page of human history and proposes us testimonies of survivors who, year after year, are always in fewer numbers. The words, written or spoken, remind us that at 8:45 am “Little Boy”, so called the enriched uranium nuclear bomb, was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima bringing with it death and destruction. Three days later it was Nagasaki’s turn. 100 to 200 thousand civilians died. 75 years divide us from that August 6th, 1945, but memory can approach that event and not let it fall into oblivion, browsing the specifically created website.

The home page is gradually enriched with pictures or photographs of places; by clicking on a portrait we receive some informations: Kiyoko Takenaga: tells what happened to his family on that dramatic day. Image from: http://hiroshima.archiving.jp/index_en.html

To deepen our knowledge I suggest to visit the Hiroshima Archive website, as through the stories of survivors we can consolidate our idea of the repudiation of war no ifs, ands, or buts.

Hiroshima Archive is “a pluralistic digital archive using the digital earth to display on it in a multilayered way all the materials gained from such sources as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, the Hiroshima Jogakuin Gaines Association, and the Hachioji Hibakusha (A-bomb Survivors) Association.

All users can get a panoramic view over Hiroshima to browse survivors’ accounts, photos, maps, and other materials as of 1945, together with aerial photos, 3D topographical data, and building models as of 2010. The archive aims to promote multifaceted and comprehensive understanding of the reality of atomic bombing”.

By clicking on Viewing with Digital Earth a series of images appear and each photograph can be enlarged and tells the epilogue and the consequences of the release of atomic bombs. Image from: http://hiroshima.archiving.jp/index_en.html

The “Hiroshima Archive” has been produced in 2011 by melding a large amount of materials accumulated over 66 years with the latest Internet technologies, with a view to passing on the experiences and messages of A-bomb survivors to future generations.

The interactive map on the home page is gradually enriched with pictures or photographs of places. Clicking on the photos of people appears the name of who tells and a description.

Another example of the destruction of bombs is witnessed by this photograph. Image from: http://hiroshima.archiving.jp/index_en.html

If we click on the photos of the environments we can get an idea of the level of destruction of the bomb.

A 5-minute video with captions in Japanese and English takes us to Japan. A circular tale that begins with the image of a watch dial that marks 8:45 and ends with the same dial that continues to mark the same time. As if time had stopped. In between, starting from the Peace Memorial, the narration tells, through a series of photographs, the life of Hiroshima before the nuclear attack.

We share the goal of the creators of the archive “to make the archive a platform to gather the threads of stories for the future by sharing the past memories and the present messages in both real and web spaces” and “to collect from all over the world messages of hope for peace and nuclear abolition and incorporate them into the digital archive”.

http://hiroshima.archiving.jp/index_en.html

http://hiroshima.mapping.jp/news_en.html

http://hiroshima.mapping.jp/index_en.html

Share your knowledge on digitized archives!

23-24 November 2020: “Collect & Connect International conference”

The conference aims to promote exchange and discussion between researchers and heritage professionals in the field of digital natural and cultural heritage.

It officially concludes the NWO/Brill Creative Industries Project Making Sense of Illustrated Handwritten Archives and it will present the results of finished and original research in the field of digitized archives and natural and cultural heritage collections.

Experts in the field of:

Digital Humanities
Digital, Cultural and Natural Heritage
Digital Collection and Archives Curation
Semantic Data Integration

Are invited to submit their contributions which present, discuss, and reflect upon the technical, social, and institutional challenges digital heritage professionals and researchers encounter when enriching heterogeneous digitized collections with context.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

- Semantic web approaches to interlinking digitized historical archives and collections
- Text and image interpretation in digital collections
- Multimodal collection interpretation and access
- Handwriting recognition and heterogeneous digital collections
- Machine learning and digital collections
- Bias and digital heritage
- Computer vision and digital collections
- Digital collections’ access and inclusivity
- Sharing and visualisation of heterogeneous historical archives and collections
- Citizen science (including crowdsourcing) and digital archives and collections
- Challenges of enriching digitized handwritten archive material
- Digital capture and annotation of heterogeneous collections and artefacts
- Dealing with uncertainty, quality issues, data bias and collection gaps
- Geographical and spatial enrichment of collections
- Application of common vocabularies and data reconciliation

Next to specialized paper presentations, the conference will also entail a variety of interactive formats (e.g., round tables or demos). Six to eight papers presented at the conference are expected to be selected for publication in the ACM Journal of Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH). All positively reviewed papers shall be submitted as proceedings volume to CEUR-WS.org for online publication.

Submission deadline postponed to 18 September 2020.

The conference will be held at Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, from 23-24 November 2020 and will be fully online. Registration will open later this month.

Contact person: Maarten Heerlien, E-mail: m.heerlien@rijksmuseum.nl

For more details see:

Full call for papers
Website international conference Collect & Connect: Archives and Collections in a Digital Age.
Project Making Sense of Illustrated Handwritten Archives

Follow Naturalis Biodiversity Center on Twitter for updates on the conference.

#shareyourknowlegde #collectandconnect

Save the date: 23-24 November 2020

Collect & Connect International conference: paper submission deadline extended to September 18 2020

This conference welcomes papers that present, discuss, and reflect upon the technical, social, and institutional challenges that experts and researchers in the field of digital heritage encounter when enriching heterogeneous digitized collections with context.

Thematic scope of the conference:

Many handwritten archives and collections of physical objects in the realms of natural history, archaeology, history, art history and science entail combinations of textual and visual elements whose interpretation requires a range of different expertise and computational technologies.
In recent years, libraries, archives and museums have spent major efforts on annotating and enriching their digitized collections with contextual information, in order to make them retrievable and interlinked in novel ways. Often institutions aim to enhance their reach and relevance for broader user groups. A major challenge in the field is the heterogeneous character of many such digital archives and collections.

The conference has twofold scopes:

To officially concludes the NWO/Brill Creative Industries Project Making Sense of Illustrated Handwritten Archives and presents the results of finished and original research in the field of digitized archives and natural and cultural heritage collections.
To promote exchange and discussion between researchers and heritage professionals in the field of digital natural and cultural heritage.

It is addressed to all experts in the field of:

Digital Humanities
Digital, Cultural and Natural Heritage
Digital Collection and Archives Curation
Semantic Data Integration

Six to eight papers presented at the conference are expected to be selected for publication in the ACM Journal of Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH)

Submit your paper and join the conference! Collect & Connect will take place fully online. Registration will open later this month.

For more details see:
Full call for papers
Website international conference Collect & Connect: Archives and Collections in a Digital Age.
Project Making Sense of Illustrated Handwritten Archives
Follow Naturalis Biodiversity Center on Twitter for updates on the conference.

#shareyourknowlegde #collectandconnect

Save the date: 14-15 September 2020, Lublin (Poland)

International Scientific Conference: RUINS II – protection, use, management

Conference-call-Lublin The aim of the conference is to make a broad review of the problems related to the protection, conservation, use and management of historic ruins. The key assumption of the conference is comprehensive discussing the contemporary principles and forms of maintaining historic ruins in the historical, theoretical and practical aspects. The conference also aims to present and critically analyse the most interesting examples of contemporary protection, management and use of historic ruins. The results of RUINS project and the experience gained during project implementation will also be presented during the conference.
Three thematic sessions are planned within the conference:

1.Technical and conservation issues of the protection of ruins.
The topic of the “Protection” session are theoretical, conservation, technical and design issues related to the maintenance of the ruins. The speeches should refer to the principles and forms of maintaining the ruins from the point of view of architectural, conservation and landscape conceptions. The speeches regarding technical problems – methods and technologies – protection of crenelation and faces of walls, structural reinforcements, protection against water and moisture are also expected. The papers making a critical analysis of positive and negative examples of the protection of historic ruins are particularly welcomed.
2. Development of ruins for modern utility functions
The topic of the “Development” session is the critical presentation of the examples and forms of contemporary development, use and display of historic ruins. The speeches are expected to present various forms and aspects of Page 3 contemporary use of historic ruins – tourism, cultural events, exhibitions, commercial use, museum functions, etc. The presentations of the forms of utilisation that use and adapt themselves to the historical character of the ruin without interfering excessively with the historical substance and form are particularly welcomed.
3. Management of historic ruins
The topic of “Management” session is presentation of issues related to the management of ruins – i.a. form of ownership, organisation, financing, tourist traffic, organisation of events, promotion, education. The papers presenting the models and forms of ruins’ management that include all the aspects of such activities are expected. The papers presenting the modern best practice in historic ruins management are particularly welcomed.
Conservators, art and culture historians, employees of conservation services, specialists in the protection of cultural property, designers, representatives of local governments, university employees, owners and users connected with the protection, management and use of historic ruins are invited to participate in the conference.
The conference materials will be published in peer-reviewed periodical “Protection of Cultural Heritage” (in the issue 2/2020).
Contact: ruins@pollub.pl
Venue: Lublin University of Technology, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Architecture
Website: https://www.interreg-central.eu/Content.Node/RUINS/International-Scientific-Conferance-.html
Click here for Registration
Download the Conference programme
More information here

Join the online lecture series: September1-December 8 2020

New pilot project for ERIAC: Barvalipe Roma Online University

Bavarlipe Roma Online University is an online educational platform where Roma and non-Roma can access knowledge about the Roma identity(ies), history(ies) and culture(s) thorough a collection of high-quality lectures delivered by leading Roma scholars on topics ranging from the Roma Holocaust to Roma cultural productions. In partnership with Central European University (CEU), this project is part of ERIAC’s Roma Cultural History Initiative financed by the German Federal Foreign Office (FFO).
The course consists of 15 pre-recorded lectures; Each lecture is live-streamed on facebook and followed by open discussion with lectures, guests and audience members.
The series comprise a complete curriculum of Roma Cultural History that proposes a canon and acts as a reference for Roma cultural history.
The first lecture “Roma Identity, History and Historiography” by dr. Adrian Marsh is already available on Barvalipe Roma Online University’s webpage, on ERIAC’s website together with the list of next lectures.
Rosa Cisneros from C-DaRE of Coventry University (CU is REACH project Partner Coordinator) is involved in the initiative and will release her lecture on Romani Dance History next November.
More information on: https://eriac.org/barvalipe-roma-online-university/
ERIAC Facebook page
ERIAC Website: https://eriac.org/
CEU Website: https://www.ceu.edu/

Join the on line presentations and draw your Heritage!

Last updates from the international project“ Reconnecting with Your Culture”

The online webinar in Lima, Peru, last 31th July, has been a success with many people from different countries of Asia, Africa, Europe, and America.
The presentation is now available in Spanish, but very soon it will be published also the version in English and French.
Tomorrow, September the 2^nd , the promoters are expected for a new webinar in Colombia: https://meet.google.com/qdq-osza-sth
As already announced, the initiative is addressed to children and teenagers from 5 to 17 years old and aims at promoting the active participation of young citizen to the cultural heritage of their towns and cities with the goal to foster dialogue and social cohesion within the world.
What they have to do is to walk around the town, armed by a travel log, compass and drawing tools and draft an itinerary, taking notes and drawing what they see and what, in their opinion, is interesting and noteworthy.
The challenge is to turn themselves into explorers and to look for uncharted treasures. Once they have concluded with their research they will have the possibility to publish their discover: the map they build, the notes they take and their drawings will be the toolkit for sharing knowledge and culture with people around the world.
More information: https://www.digitalmeetsculture.net/article/the-new-international-project-reconnecting-with-your-culture/
Link to the presentation in Lima: http://esempidiarchitettura.it/sito/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Recon%C3%A9ctate-con-tu-cultura-Lima.pdf
FB page: https://www.facebook.com/Reconnecting-with-Your-Culture-104395944694441
Here you can read an article in Italian, published after the presentation in Lima:
https://www.giornalediplomatico.it/Dal-Peru-il-futuro-riparte-da-cultura-e-giovani.htm
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/reconnectingwithyourculture/
EDA Webpage: http://esempidiarchitettura.it/sito/edakids-reconnecting-with-your-culture/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Reconnecting-with-Your-Culture-104395944694441/?modal=admin_todo_tour
Official contact: edakidsproject@gmail.com

online on 4 and 10 Septmebr 2020 h. 21 (Athens Greece time)

CENTAUR, one more premiere for ADAF ONLINE

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), is launching the Online era and continues its daily activities presenting even more world premieres at ADAF ONLINE. It is the first Digital Art Online Streaming Festival held in Greece, and is announcing another premiere.

On September 4 and 10, 2020, ADAF ONLINE will present for the first time in Greece the show “Centaur” where artificial intelligence becomes part and actively participates in a kinetic show.

CENTAUR | A thought-provoking encounter between dancers and artificial intelligence.

Centaur examines the consequences of using artificial intelligence and the power of technology. The title ‘Centaur’, inspired by the half-horse half-human creature from Greek mythology, is also the name of a computer-science concept that elevates human qualities by combining artificial and human intelligence.

Great names as Pontus Lidberg (Dansk Danseteaters new artistic leader), Ryoji Ikeda (Japan’s leading electronic composer and visual artist), Cecilie Waagner-Falkenstrøm (expert artist of Artificial Intelligence), and the Royal Danish Ballet create Centaur – a visually appealing dance performance about the human tendency to project feelings onto machines. The purpose-designed artificial intelligence that can simulate a conscience, emotions and intentions, are both co-creators and the cast of the show.

To book your ticket for the Performance at September 4 press HERE
To book your ticket for the Performance at September 10 press HERE
The tickets are limited

Artificial Intelligence as Co-Creator and Participant

The AI called ‘David’, programmed exclusively for the performance, is both co-creator and participant in the performance. He influences choreographic composition based on different data sets such as planetary movements, swarm technology and the dancers’ movements that have been tracked and collected throughout the creative process. As a performer, he can simulate consciousness, emotion and intention and interacts with the dancers on stage. This means that each performance is a unique unpredictable event.

Man versus machine, creators versus their creation

Modern technology such as AI is everywhere in society. We are exposed to advertisements, feeds and news on social media that, through targeted algorithms, tailor content specifically for us. But how will an increasing use of AI affect our future? Will artists develop into hybrids – into centaurs?

Does artificial intelligence have feelings, consciousness and longing? Not yet. But it can already manipulate and seduce us by decoding feelings and moods. Centaur is a work full of strong imagery about the human consequences of artificial intelligence.

Could artificial intelligence abuse us in the future? And what consequences will that have for our compassion? Will we have to develop into hybrids – centaurs?

Live use of Artificial Intelligence as a ‘partner’ of the dancers, investing with the creation of a total work of art. Its participation will influence the dramaturgical structure, the choreography and the selection of the music.

ARTISTIC TEAM

Choreography / Direction: Pontus Lidberg
Audio and visual design: Ryoji Ikeda
Artificial Intelligence installation: Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm
Light Design: Raphael Frisenvænge Solholm
Writing / Dramaturgy: Adrian Guo Silver
Costume design: Rachel Quarmby-Spadaccini
Original Music: Ryoji Ikeda
Music: Franz Schubert, Giacomo Puccini & music created by Articifial Intelligence
Development: The Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University
Co-Production: Danish Dance Theater co-produced with Oriente Occidente (IT), Théâtre National de Chaillot (FR), and The Royal Danish Theatre (DK).

Thank you for the generous support: Augustinusfonden, Overretssagfører L. Zeuthens Mindelegat, William Demant Fonden, Knud Højgaards Fond, Beckett-Fonden, Jyllands-Postens Fond.

Thank you Danish Institute at Athens

When : 4 & 10 September 2020, 21:00 pm
Length: 60’