ARCHiVe

Course Typology: Seminar

Maps are too exciting! Digital innovations in Cartography

Celestial Globe by John Senex (1728), Rare Books and Manuscript Reading Room of the Weston Library, Oxford

key details

10 October 2024
On site (Weston Library, Oxford) – Online on Zoom
11am — 5pm (CET)

Reference

about

For the past two years, Factum Foundation has been working with the Bodleian Libraries and Oxford University on ARCHiOx (the Analysis and Recording of Cultural Heritage in Oxford), parallel project to ARCHiVe. Both projects share the vision of making high-resolution 3D and color-recording a regular part of the workflow in libraries, museums, and private collections, with the final goal of improving accessibility and research.

This symposium, dedicated to digital innovation in the field of cartography, is generously funded and co-organised by the Sunderland Collection. Co-organisers are Bodleian Libraries, Oxford University and Factum Foundation in the context of ARCHiOx.

Technologies continuously evolve transforming the representation of space and geography, shaping new forms of consciousness and knowledge. Digital technologies are mediating access to and research into cartographic material. 2D and 3D digital recording and display technologies are being employed to document rare maps, globes, and other cartographic material, enhancing research and playing a crucial role in the decision-making processes focused on both access and preservation. The same GIS being used to map our planet are also mapping the surface of vellum manuscripts, or mapping projected digital images. This material evidence, when combined with machine learning and immersive display technologies, has the potential to cultivate a new intimacy with the physical world.

As the physical world is digitised, the digital world becomes increasingly physical. Maps help us navigate this unfamiliar terrain. The symposium will bring together experts in cartographic history and cartographers of the digital world in a celebration and exploration of the role that maps play to provide access to real and imaginary worlds.

You can attend in person or online: please register here.

More info also on Oculi Mundi – Sunderland Collection.

This event is included in the AOA programme. Students from partner universities requiring CFU credits and attending on Zoom, are kindly requested to sign in and out by sending their name and University in a private chat message to Fondazione Giorgio Cini.

Programme

11am (CET)

Morning Session: The art of cartography and new evidence

  • Richard Ovenden | University of Oxford
  • Judith Siefring | Bodleian Library
  • John Barrett | Bodleian Library
  • Nick Millea | Bodleian Library
  • Yossef Rapoport | Queen Mary University
  • Sanne Frequin | Utrecht University

11–11.15am: Welcome by Richard Ovenden OBE, Bodley’s Librarian, Head of Gardens, Libraries and Museums at the University of Oxford.

11.15am–1pm: Panel and Q&A: The art of cartography and new evidence
Chaired by Judith Siefring, Head of Digital Collections Discovery, Bodleian Libraries

  • Material evidence of the surface of objects (20 minutes)
    John Barrett, Lead Photographer at ARCHiOx and the first person to use the Selene Photometric Stereo System within a major library.
  • Spectacular! A digital exploration of medieval Gough Map of Britain (20 minutes)
    Nick Millea, Map Curator at the Bodleian Libraries
  • The Greatest Medieval Map-Maker: Al-Sharif al-Idrisi and Roger’s Silver Disc (20 minutes)
    Yossef Rapoport, Professor of Islamic History at Queen Mary University, London
  • A Ship’s Globe in the Centraal Museum, Utrecht (20 minutes)
    Sanne Frequin, Assistant Professor of Humanities and Art History, University of Utrecht

1.30pm (CET)

Special presentation – Nesting Globes: visualising the current global situation

  • Bruce Mau | Massive Change Network

1.30pm–2pm: Special presentation – Nesting Globes: visualising the current global situation
Bruce Mau, designer, philosopher, architect, and educator.

3pm (CET)

Afternoon session: Mapping in a digital world

  • Giovanni Pala | University of Oxford
  • Katherine McDonough | Lancaster University
  • Sarah Kenderdine | École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
  • Ed Parsons | Google Earth
  • Adam Lowe | Factum Foundation

3–4.45pm: Panel and Q&A: Mapping in a digital world
Chaired by Giovanni Pala, economic historian of technology and information

  • Map Search: Using AI to explore map content (20 minutes)
    Katherine McDonough, Lecturer in Digital Humanities at Lancaster University; Senior Research Fellow and head of the Machines Reading Maps Project at The Alan Turing Institute.
  • Deep Mapping: from archives to the universe (20 minutes)
    Sarah Kenderdine, Professor of Digital Humanities at École Polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland; Director of the Laboratory of Experimental Museology.
  • Geospatial transformation (20 minutes)
    Ed Parsons, Geospatial Technologist, tech evangelist, and co-founder of Google Earth.

4.50pm–5pm: Conclusions: Adam Lowe, Founder of Factum Foundation and Factum Arte

Digitisation and valorisation of Venetian Music Archives

© Fondazione Giorgio Cini
© Fondazione Giorgio Cini
© Fondazione Giorgio Cini
© Fondazione Giorgio Cini
© Fondazione Giorgio Cini
© Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi

key details

22 November 2023
Onsite at ARCHiVe / Online on Zoom
2pm — 6pm (CET)

Reference

about

A study seminar on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, in collaboration with the Institute for Music and the Intercultural Institute of Comparative Music Studies of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini.

The meeting was created to take stock of the state of the art of projects for the description, digitisation and valorisation of the main sound and music archives belonging to various city institutes actively engaged in this regard. The aim is to share methods and technologies, good practices and virtuous choices adopted by the various institutions called upon to participate, highlighting the peculiarities of each archive and emphasising the links that unite them.

Programme

New IISMC proposals for audiovisual archives in ethnomusicology

  • Giovanni Giuriati | Fondazione Giorgio Cini
  • Marco Lutzu | Università degli Studi di Cagliari
  • Simone Tarsitani | Durham University
  • Costantino Vecchi | Fondazione Giorgio Cini

The IISMC (Istituto Interculturale di Studi Musicali Comparati) archive of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini holds documentation on the Institute’s activities since 1969. In addition to working on the preservation and enhancement of the archival materials (paper, audio, photographic and video), since 2004 the Institute has been systematically documenting its initiatives in audiovisual form.

The talk intends to present recent work carried out using digital technologies for the IISMC archive with particular reference to audiovisual documentation (S. Tarsitani), cataloguing and restitution (C. Vecchi) and the creation of audiovisual materials for educational and dissemination purposes (M. Lutzu).

LeviDigiLab: the digitisation project of the Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi

  • Giulia Clera | Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi

With the LeviDigiLab project, the Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi in 2023 started a digitisation process for the preservation and online consultation of the documentary heritage of the Gianni Milner Library.

The project aims to bring the culture of digitisation into the Fondazione Levi, making the structure and the staff involved capable of dealing with the digital transformation of the holdings for conservation and enhancement and to increase the public’s accessibility through a dedicated platform searchable by the user through a dedicated front-end (Opac).
The foundation has equipped itself with an in-house laboratory that is currently being implemented thanks also to the numerous grants obtained.

Design and development of the digital archive of the Fondazione Archivio Luigi Nono: an interweaving of knowledge between musicology, archivistics and computer science

  • Alessandro Russo | Centro di Sonologia Computazionale (CSC) Università di Padova
  • Michele Patella | Centro di Sonologia Computazionale (CSC) Università di Padova

The Luigi Nono Archive was founded in 1993 on the initiative of Nuria Schoenberg Nono with the aim of collecting, preserving and promoting the composer’s precious legacy. Since 2015 the project of the creation of the Luigi Nono Digital Collection has been launched in collaboration with Paul Sacher Stiftung and funded by the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung. Between 2015 and 2017, a preservation and valorisation project took place, promoted and coordinated by the Soprintendenza archivistica e bibliografica del Veneto e del Trentino Alto Adige, which also involved the magnetic tapes of the Luigi Nono funds. The intervention was entrusted to the Centre for Computational Sonology of the University of Padua. In 2019, the online migration of the Fondazione Archivio Luigi Nono’s database began with the intervention of the company Audio Innova, a spin-off of the University of Padua.

ARMID@Venice: Music and Digital Humanism in Venice. The musical sources of the "Benedetto Marcello" Conservatory

  • Paolo Da Col | Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello di Venezia
  • Alice Martignon | Università Ca' Foscari Venezia
  • Giulio Pojana | Università Ca' Foscari Venezia

On 1 October 2021, thanks to a new scientific collaboration between the “Benedetto Marcello” Conservatory of Music in Venice and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, it was possible to launch ARMID@Venezia (ARchivio Musicale e Iconografico Digitale A Venezia), a research project dedicated to the digitisation, virtual restoration and non-invasive diagnostic study of ancient musical sources (manuscripts and printed books) kept at the lagoon music institute. After a brief excursus on the main digitisation, cataloguing, conservation and valorisation projects currently active at the Conservatory’s “Mario Messinis” Library (Prof. P. Da Col), the technologies adopted and the results achieved within ARMID@Venezia will be described (Dr. A. Martignon, Prof. G. Pojana).

The Archives of the Institute for Music of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini

  • Francisco Rocca | Fondazione Giorgio Cini

The Fondazione Giorgio Cini’s Institute for Music works for the acquisition, preservation, protection, and valorisation of 20th and early 21st centuries archives, with a focus on those produced by prominent personalities from the worlds of music, dance and audiovisual, which can be consulted through digital archives.

The presentation aims to illustrate this archival heritage and the enhancement initiatives implemented in recent years, focusing in particular on digital archives and their huge potential.

Registration

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