Transcript EPOCH presentation

EPOCH
The European Network of Excellence
on ICT Applications to Cultural
Heritage
contract no. IST-2002-507382
EPOCH is funded by the European Commission under the Community´s Sixth Framework Programme, contract no.
IST−2002−507382. However, the content of this presentation reflects only the authors´ (WP4) views and the
Community is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herein
What is EPOCH
EPOCH is a Network of Excellence under FP6
dealing with ICT (Information & Communication
Technologies) Applications to Cultural Heritage
• Kick-Off: April 2004
• End of EC funding: March 2008
• Partners: more than 80, from most of the
European countries, but also from USA,
South Africa, Australia, and the Far East
• Mission:
Foster Integration at a European Level
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EPOCH goals
• Foster integration
 Stimulate cross-fertilization between humanities
and technology
 Integrate research teams at a European level
 Create an integrated toolkit
• Create a joint research infrastructure
 Define research and dissemination standards
 Create a holistic approach to CH dissemination
• Spread excellence
• Provide a training framework
• Raise citizen’s awareness towards CH
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Why it matters
Cultural Heritage is an important factor:
• in determining tourists decisions on destination:
 Heritage is an important motivation factor
 Cultural tourism may be a pathway to economic
development of less favoured areas
• for education of the citizen and appreciation of
cultural diversity
 Education takes a large portion of national budgets
 Understanding each other’s culture will be one of the main
challenges of the next generation of EU citizens
• ICT (“Intelligent Heritage”) can significantly
enhance both sectors
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Council of Europe report
Forward planning: the function of cultural heritage in a
changing Europe
Today, one of heritage's major roles is to strengthen cohesion and social ties
in societies disrupted by all kinds of changes.
The cultural and environmental spheres are becoming a preferred terrain for
experimentation with citizenship, voluntary work and partnership." Technology has
a part in delivering the potential benefits of increased understanding of the forces
that have shaped our society, but the way the message is communicated is
likely to determine whether the effects are positive or negative.
UNESCO report 2001
“…Tourism has become a complex phenomenon …UNESCO’s objective is to help
Member States to devise strategies for the long-term preservation of the
cultural heritage, for better promotion and knowledge of the cultural heritage
… thereby contributing to economic, social and cultural development." This
recognises a clear inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural motivation…heritage
and cultural tourism has the potential to add to quality of life - a motivation well
beyond a simplistic economic return of individual visitor centres.
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Challenges
and tensions
• Access vs Preservation
 Physical access threatens preservation through wear and tear and
environmental exposure
 Access at some level is a prerequisite for interpretation and to realising
potential
• Facts vs Interpretation
 Our “knowledge” is almost always interpretation of fragile evidence, and
interpretation is normally ambiguous
 Events even more uncertain than artefacts
 Accuracy requires uncertainty to be shown, but too much uncertainty
and/or too many alternatives lead to confused messages
• Culture vs Culture
 Interpretation needs context for both original circumstance and viewed
 Much tangible heritage relates to e.g. religion or war – both emotive
and multi-faceted (one culture’s heroic victory may be another’s
dictatorial oppression)
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Technological
challenges
• Cultural heritage presents very challenging
“real-user” requirements
• The challenge of mixing features which are
still difficult to achieve in isolation is
substantial.
• Example: data acquisition systems
 very low cost
 rugged for effective work under harsh conditions
(the desert, the North, a dig)
 portable for use with pieces in museum
 suitable for fast deployment in emergency digs.
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Obtaining
recognition
Unless action is taken:
•
Assessment of interdisciplinary research will be in charge of
professionals central to the individual disciplines.

Proposals will often “fall between two stools”.

Substantial evidence for this happening in national programs.
•
Research teams likely to form around core values of the
independent disciplines and not their synthesis.
•
Project teams that pass the assessments likely to become
less interdisciplinary and more focused on the independent
criteria of the disciplines.
•
Cultural Heritage as a sector likely to suffer more than most
in this respect since it shares less of its traditional values and
skill sets with IST than many other important usage bases
(e.g. medicine, chemistry, biology).
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Grand
Challenges
1. To use technology to enhance preservation and
scholarship in cultural heritage
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Accuracy and preservation v data volume
Ontologies and searches (organising and representing
knowledge)
Digital preservation of CH
2. To bring history to life for the citizen
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Digital reconstruction
Story telling
Visitor experiences
Internet applications
Education and Tourism benefit
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Epoch Domains of Activity
• Field recording and data capture
• Data organization and standards
• Reconstruction and visualization
• Heritage education and communication
• Sustainability of heritage projects
in order to produce
• A joint research infrastructure
• A complete toolkit to create ICT applications
for CH
• A training framework
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The pipeline
The key concept is the pipeline:
• An integrated system of CH research and
dissemination using ICT
• Produce valuable cultural communication by
processing data with ICT
INFORMATION
Acquisition
Documentation
Processing
Archiving
Management
Curatorship
Preservation
Image proc.
Enhancing
Reconstruct. Communication
Story-telling
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Activities
WP1=Management
• WP1 = coordination is
provided by the University of
Brighton
• Four core partners
• Task forces working on
activities
• Stakeholders input and
feedback
• Review college formed by
experts
• Open, cross-culture
community with permeable
borders
Executive Committee
Brighton
PIN, Ename, KU-Leuven
Board of Directors
18 members
representing expertise,
constituencies, etc.
General Assembly
85 partners
+ affiliates
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Activities
WP2=Integration
• Co-ordinate partners’
work
• Collect stakeholders
needs and feedback
• Watch the technology
market and assess the
potential impact of
forthcoming ones
• Undertake the
implementation of
showcases
Images from EPOCH’s showcases 1 and 2
ENAME
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Activities
WP3=Joint research
• Define and create the
common infrastructure
• Lead research activity
on “missing rings” in
the production chain
• Integrate existing
components with new,
targeted tools
KU-Leuven
Images from EPOCH showcases 3 and 4
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Activities
WP4=Spreading excellence
• Manage a one-stop
portal for ICT
applications to CH
• Foster standardization
• Publish authoritative
reports
• Ensure mobility and
training framework
• Organize events &
dissemination
PIN
Images from
EPOCH
showcases
7 and 8
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Activities in 2004
• Establish the network, setup the
infrastructure and provide services
• Create a website offering various services
• Produce showcases using existing
technology
• Start dissemination
• Produce reports
 Brokerage
 Stakeholder needs
 Training needs and offer
• VAST2004 conference
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www.epoch-net.org
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Showcases list
1. On Site Reconstruction Experience
2. Multimodal Interface Safe Presentation of Valuable
Objects
3. Tools for Stratigraphic Data Recording
4. Multilingual Avatars
5. E-tourism through Cultural Routes
6. Avatar-based Interactive Storytelling
7. Archaeological Documentation for the Semantic Web
8. Image-based Modeling
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Dissemination report
see next slide
…
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#
Name
Date
Kind of event
Place
State
1
Euroindia2004
24-26/3/2004
Exhibition
New Delhi
IN
2
EVA Florence
29/3/2004 –
2/4/2004
Scientific Conf.
Firenze
3
Minerva meeting
(within EVA
Florence)
2/4/2004
Minerva project
meeting
4
Presentation of
CAA2004
6/4/2004
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CAA2004
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Est. contacts
Follow-up
Stand +
presentation
500+
Contacts local
researchers
IT
Presentation
100+
Firenze
IT
Presentation &
activity
organization
50
CLUSTER
initiative
Press
Conference
Prato
IT
Presentation of
the project
Local press
Quotation on
newspapers
13-17/4/2004
Scientific Conf.
Prato
IT
Presentation +
Cocktail
400
HEREIN meeting
2-5/6/2004
HEREIN
meeting
Berlin
DE
Presentation
50
Co-operation
for SOTU report
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Presentation of
VAST2004
June 2004
Press
Conference
Bruxelles
BE
Presentation of
the project
Local press
Quotation on
newspapers
8
Int. Conference
on Museology
26-28/6/2004
Scientific Conf.
Mytilene
GR
Presentation
100
9
EVA London
26-30/7/2004
Scientific Conf.
London
UK
Presentation
100
10
EAA
6-10/9/2004
Scientific Conf.
Lyon
FR
Stand + material
+ presentation
800+
Cooperation for
Training Report
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EAHTR
9-10/9/2004
Meeting of the
Association
Norwich
UK
Stand + material
+ presentation
100
Cooperation
with city of
Verona
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WTFC
12/9/2004
Meeting of the
walled towns
Chichester
UK
Printed material
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Project
proposals
(INTERREG)
Total First semester
Activity
~1850 (15% est. duplication)
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Training and
Mobility
• Bursaries & mobility
• Training (interim):
 Assign money to prepare new courses
 Fund preparation – not teaching
 Support less-favoured areas
• Perform surveys and produce reports
 Training needs and offer in Europe
 State of the Union: policies, practices & research
• Organize/support/attend events
• Publications
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Epoch Publications
See next slides…
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Training needs
& offer
• Identify training needs
 Evaluate statistics
 Perform a survey
 Interview stakeholders
• Identify training offer
 Perform a survey
 Detail relevant courses
 Promote good practices
• Propose strategies & actions
 CHIRON
 EST MARIE-CURIE Project
 Training project on Cultural Heritage Informatics
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EPOCH’s Activity
(beyond project deliverables…)
• Europe-wide integration of teams
• Implementation of results (showcases)
• Incubator of new projects
• Stakeholders awareness and needs
• Common standards
• Economic sustainability & management
and decision tools
• Training framework
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Success stories 1
Integration of teams and brokerage
An UK team is collaborating
with the University of Cape
Town on a 3D scanning
campaign on endangered
rock carvings in South
Africa. An Israeli researcher
realized that problems are
similar to those he is facing
in the Negev desert and is
going to apply similar
methods.
Judy Brown - Past President of ACM SIGGRAPH in front of the rock art
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Success stories 2
Implementation of results/showcases
The nymphaeum at Sagalassos –
EPOCH’s showcase 1
EPOCH showcases are quickly
becoming a “marketing” tool
for additional implementations.
We have been spontaneously
contacted by cultural
institutions (towns, museums)
to verify the feasibility of
similar applications in their
case. This witnesses the need
of such work and the fair
correspondence of our proposal
to user needs.
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Success stories 3
Incubator for new projects
To develop specific issues, EPOCH is nursing spinoff targeted projects, involving institutions from
inside and outside the Network:
 CHIRON, a successful Marie-Curie EST project
CHIRON is due to start on next 1 December, joining 7
universities and research centres to provide a joint training
framework for Early Stage Researchers on Cultural Heritage
Informatics
 ITER, an INTERREG 3C project
The CHIRON logo
ITER, to be submitted in short, joins three EPOCH partners as
technology providers; six cities (Verona and Firenze, IT; Piran,
SI; Valletta, MT; Pécs, HU; Chester, UK) as content providers,
and two European institutions (Marco Polo System EEIG and
Institut Européen des Itinéraires Culturels). ITER aims at
developing IT applications to military architecture and its
exploitation for cultural tourism, together with guidelines for
implementation/sustainability
 CHIMERA, a Marie-Curie RTN proposal
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Success stories 4
• Creating an interdisciplinary
training framework
 Four courses with 100+ participants
o Busteni, RO
o Szazsalombatta, HU
o York, UK (2)
 12 scholarships granted (7 women) in
Eastern Europe
 Over 3000 person/h of training
The logo of the Busteni course
 Manuals will be available in English and
national languages (Hungarian,
Romanian)
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VAST 2004
Interdisciplinarity or “The Best of Both Worlds”:
The Grand Challenge for Cultural Heritage Informatics in the 21st Century
The 5th International Symposium on Virtual Reality, Archaeology and Cultural Heritage.
- December 6, 2004 Tutorials and EPOCH meetings
- December 7-10, 2004 The 5th International Symposium on Virtual Reality,
Archaeology and Cultural Heritage.
Incorporating:
Second Eurographics Workshop on Graphics and Cultural Heritage (www.eg.org)
EPOCH General Assembly
EPOCH SME meeting
Location
Conscience-auditorium, Brussels and Ename Center, Oudenaarde - Belgium
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VAST 2004
VAST 2004
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Acknowledgement
EPOCH is funded by the European Commission under the
Community’s Sixth Framework Programme, contract no. 507382.
However, this presentation reflects only the authors’ views and
the European Community is not liable for any use that may be
made of the information contained herein.
For further informations please contact us at the EPOCH’s info
mail address:
[email protected]
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