BPN 1700: Liberated from Facebook

Just before the end of 2014 I have deactivated my Facebook. I have not done this as I will be 70 years this week. I did not do so in order to get rid of the dog and cat photograhs and stories. If people love pets, fine with me, but do not force them upon me. But the way that Facebook is pushing  the boundaries of privacy and wants to usurp copyrights should be halted. Some FB account holders have made statements of their own arguing that copyright is theirs. That kind of statements do show displeasure, but still Facebook is being used. Besides Facebook will not be impressed. NO, YOU MUST VOTE WITH YOUR FEET AND STEP OUT OF FACEBOOK.

 Yes and then? You can look around for a similar service. I've looked at Ello, but  the site is too arty-farty.I also checked  Brewster but this site does not realise its promise.

Of course it is a pity to lose your contacts. I had about 300 contacts. And yes that's a shame to lose them. No longer you are informed about relatives and friends as well as business acquaintances. In my case I lose the necessary contacts in the World Summit Award (WSA) circuit. So I will now have to put more effort in it in order  to keep up with that circuit. Before Facebook, you had to keep an eye on the relevant sites for information, but now you must keep the social media. Well I still have contacts through the business LinkedIn, where you do not encounter  dogs and cats pictures and stories. And  I can see and communicate through Twitter, nice and short and pointed.

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Talking of liberation. On the occasion of my 70th birthday I received this vase, the so-called liberation vase from 1945. The vase belongs to the series orange vases, made on the occasion of a Dutch royal event. This vase is dated 1945 and designed by AD Copier, master glassblower from the Leerdam Glass Factory to celebrate the liberation of The Netherlands. The vase is not blown with the mouth as opposed to the other orange vases, but machine-produced. The series has a variety of vases orange coloured glass as there was a  limited glass supply in 1945.

 

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I wonder what I will happen without Facebook. Is it a liberation? Will I have free time? Now I can no longer place an announcement for a new blogposting through Facebook; only on LinkedIn and Twitter, and in some cases by special groups on LinkedIn, as Heritage 2.0. Does this affect the reading stats?

So my communication channels for 2015 are LinkedIn and special groups within LinkedIn, Twitter Yjabo) and Skype, but you can also follow me on my blogs:

- Http://buziaulane.blogspot.com  (in English);

- Http://toendigitalemedianognieuwwaren.blogspot.nl (in Dutch).

And of course I also have an email address (the same for 20 years, this year).

What am I going to do with that free time? In early February I go to Abu Dhabi for the World Summit Award Mobile. A series of nifty apps, including the app Touch Van Gogh of the Van Gogh Museum, will receive their awards.

And on July 1 our company Electronic Media Reporting will celebrate its 25 years. It was founded in The Netherlands in 1990 as one of the first consultancies, specializing in content strategy. The anniversary will be commemorated with the launch of an interesting archive, whch is presently under construction.

 

 

 

 

Electronic Media Reporting wishes you a prosperous 2015! 

 

web roi

BPN 1687: Heritage of the digital ice age

On August 17, 1982 the first audio compact disc was pressed, presenting the music album Visitors by Abba. The success of the audio CD would set the development of various data CDs in motion such as the CD-ROM, CD-I electronic book, DVD and Blu-ray. By 2004 CD media were not en vogue any longer as internet had taken over thanks to the growing capacity of broadband.

In 1984 CD-ROM started to battle Pre-internet online on storage capacity, defeating the slow telecom speed and small storage capacity of the PC’s hard disc. But by 2004 this battle was over as internet, broadband capacity and storage capacity were on the rise. The era between 1982 and 2004 had proven to be an ice age in online.

Looking back at this ice age, the question can be asked whether there are still left any worthwhile digital heritage gems of that period. Of course it's not so long ago, so there must be some digital artifacts around. And the next question is whether they are representative for that digital ice age and worthwhile to be saved?

In order to talk about artefacts an inventory will have to be produced. In the ninenties the TFPL CD-ROM and multimedia CD-ROM Directory was published by MacMillan. It gave an international overview of CD Media titles. The directory has not been  available after 1996. Of course a national library and National Archive might have done some inventory work or even collected some artefacts. In the Netherlands the Royal Library has an e-Depot and the National Archive has a small collection, it seems. The question is of course what did they actively collect. In the Netherlands Electronic Media Reporting compiled the List Optical Media  in the beginning of the nineties and published a quarterly report for two years in cooperation with the Dutch Association of Information Service Providers (NVI). These lists are currently being processed for the database of Collection Jak Boumans. In short, there will be a few snapshots available, but not a systematic index to optical media.

Which artifacts are worthwhile of collecting as pieces of heritage? There are four criteria to explain:

a Technology: videodisc, CD-ROM, CD-I, electronic book, DVD and Blu-ray;.

b. Environment: scientific / business, consumer, cultural;

c. Language: native, foreign, multilingual;

d. Type of heritage: born digital, digitized heritage.

Ad a. Technology. In technology, all artifacts from videodisc to DVD-ROM interesting. CD-i Video, DVD Video and Blu-ray are not interesting since these media usually optical carriers for film. Most interesting are the productions which can be played out on different machines. Elsevier Science produced Interactive Anatomy as CD-I and CD-ROM versions on one disc.

Ad b. Environment. Would be a minimum in each of the three sectors, a minimum of production need to be in order to show how the media were like in various environments. With a few examples preserved Interestingly, with this criterion, the discs produced for the cultural sector by publishers and museums.

Ad c. Language. Important in the selection is language. In a national language the native languaue will have preference over a foreign language. In some cases combination of the native language with a foreign language can be made. But a CD production can also be classified as national heritage, even when a foreign language has been used on the disc. In the Netherlands for example the discs published by Elsevier Science could be classified as national heritage. 

Ad d. Type heritage. Digitisation started out from copying text productions. For example, the first mini-discs with electronic books produced were mostly directories and dictionaries. Instead of searching through the alphabet, search engines had been built in these productions. This is digitized heritage. Later these text productions were embellished with photographs, drawings, videos and sound clips. Although DVD Video is not so interesting, the 1995 trial production of ODME DVD with the film The Netherlands by Bert Haanstra remains unique as a precursor of DVD and Blu-ray.

(l above) Spectrum Encyclopedia, published by Spectrum Publishers in 1995; (r above) Interactive Encyclopedia, published by Philips Interactive, 1996; (l under) Encarta Encyclopedia, published by Elsevier Winkler Prins in 1998; (© photos Jak Boumans Collection; CDs owned Jak Boumans Collection)

When multimedia came en vogue the number of born-digital heritage artefacts increased. In science multimedia was by Elsevier Science for an interactive approach to anatomy. Moreover, some CD-ROM productions have become precursors of  internet sites like Escher Interactive. Even combinations of online and CD-ROM were made. For the exhibition of Hieronymus Bosch in Museum Boijmans Van Beunigen in Rotterdam in 2001 an online website (www.boschuniverse.com) was developed by ZappWork and on a CD-ROM for schools a game by V2.

(l above) Interactive Anatomy, published by Elsevier Science; (r above) Escher Interactive, published by A. W. Bruna; (l under) Hieronymus Bosch, a school edition issued as part of the exhibition at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in 2001; (© photos Jak Boumans Collection; CDs owned Jak Boumans Collection)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The examples above are CD productions which could qualify according to the criteria above for Dutch heritage artefacts of the digital ice age.

BPN 1444 The close of Scienar (3)

The seminar was held in the monumental building of the Royal Dutch Academy of Science in Amsterdam. It was a small group of consortium partners and invited people from Italy, France, Slovakia, UK and The Netherlands. The seminar delegates received in their documentation The Scienar DVD, produced by Nicholas Mee of Virtual Image Publishing Ltd, with all the documentation and presentations of the two year Scienar project.

The presentations went according to schedule. It was a varied program ranging from an survey of science and art to a presentation about the essence of the Romanian sculptor Brancusi, a presentation of digital photography and two scientific presentations on mathematics and arts. A surprise presentation was one on the Baptisterium of Pisa. The seminar was closed with a digital music performance.

The historical overview of Dr Mauro Francaviglia can be reduced to three scenarios:
- Scenario 1: The Birth of Geometry at the time of Greeks: the role of proportions, the music of Kosmos, Platonic Solids, the Golden Mean.
- Scenario 2: The Role of Symmetry and Prospective in Renaissance: the birth of Perspective and Projective Geometry, Simmetry in Art, the beauty canons in Painting, Architecture and Music.
- Scenario 3: The New Mathematics and Art of XX Century: Curvature, Impressionism, Cubism, Fractalism, Motion and Fourth Dimension, Digital Art.

The presentation on digital photography was by Marcella Lorenzi. Her digital photography had started with a mistake she made making a photograph. These days she exhibits het photographs in Paris at a UNESCO exhibit and at Toronto. She consciously paint with her camera. Her statement about “Photography, and Digital Photography in particular, is uniquely capable of recording a space/time image. Yet to photograph a space/time image is quite complex. For example, the correct shutter speed to depict motion varies considerably depending on the motion of the subject and the artistic intentions of the photographer. In addition there are many other variables to movement. And to record this kind of imagery successfully, the photographer must have a tool that allows instant display of the imagery just taken so that adjustments can be made based on that feedback - which is the very powerful capability provided by Digital Photography.”

The digital music performance shook the Academy offices for half an hour as their floors are wooden floors. However it was an interesting performance. Leonello Tarabella had brought his own installation and connected this to an movie theatre amplifier. But standing between a type of beamer and a screen, on which for example a piano was projected. Then Mr Tarabella started to play the piano without touching a physical piano.

The whole seminar has been taped and filmed for a DVD production. Eventually the presentations in powerpoint and pdf as well as the filmed presentations will go online. One of the participants, Peter Heijens made his movie summary of the day and put it on YouTube.


Also Carek Kuitenbrouwer produced a movie on the Amsterdam SCIENAR seminar and specifically on the music performance by Leonello Tarabella.



BPN 1444

BPN 1443 The close of Scienar (2)

For the public meeting on Friday we had set up a program for the day.

9:30h Registration

9:45h Welcome by Dr Mauro Francaviglia, chairman
10:00h Dr Mauro Francaviglia, Universities of Calabria and Torino (Italy): Overview project SCIENAR
10.45h Gheorghe Samoila, ITC (Romania): Brancusi-A life quest for the essence

11:15h – 11:45h Coffee

11:45h – 12:30h Dr Marcella Lorenzi, University of Calabria: Mathematics, arts and photography

12:30h Lunch

14:00h – 14:30h Monika Kovacova, Slovak Technical University (Slovakia): webMathematica - on the border between Science and Art
14:30h – 15:00h Daniela Richtarikova Slovak Technical University (Slovakia): Captivating Symmetry
15:00h- 15:30h Leonello Tarabella, computerART Lab of Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologia dell'Informazione Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Italy): The Baptisterium of Pisa

15:30 -15:45h Tea

15:45h – 16:15h Jak Boumans, Electronic Media Reporting (The Netherlands): Will the computer become the artist of the future
16:15h – 16:45h Leonello Tarabella, IST/CNR (Italy): Informatics and Music
16:45 – 17:00h formal closing of the project by Dr Mauro Francaviglia, chairman

17:00h Drinks

BPN 1443

BPN 1442 The close of Scienar (1)

The EU project Scienar is about to end. By the November 2, 2010 the two-year project will come to a legal and administrative stop. For the occasion Amsterdam has been chosen to have the final consortium meeting. And as the consortium members will be there, it looked a good idea to tell the world about the results of the project.

Scienar was started up as an EU project in 2008. The project has been divised by dr Mauro Francaviglia for the scientific side and dr. Marcella Lorenzi for the artistic side. The project takes into account the links existing between Science and Art; it has used the innovative possibilities that new media and ICT offer for a better Visualization and Communication. Visualizing and Communicating theoretical achievements of present Culture is by no means simple; moreover, presenting them in an innovative way is a fascinating challenge dictated by new trends of Society. ICT allow us to explore and represent these fruitful relationships in a way unthinkable before.

All the consortium members were present. There were two representatives of the University of Calabria in Italy, two representatives of the Slovak Technical University in Slovakia, a representative of ITC in Romenia and a representative of the UK company Virtual Image and myself on behalf Electronic Media Reporting from the Netherlands. Today we have a closed meeting to talk through the last details of project administration, a look back at the project achievements and the future of the project. Project administration is dull, but it has to be done, filling out forms and excel sheets and account for the costs.

Looking back at the results is more interesting. The project started during November 2008. Since that time happenings have passed: the conference for mathematician, Aplimat 2009 and 2010 in Bratislava, where every year a special session was held on science and art. An exhibition was held in Bucharest (Romenia). And also an exhibition and conference was held in Cambridge (UK). Next week an exhibition will be held at the university of Calabria in Consenza/Rende (Italy). But in Amsterdam seminar, consortium members will report on their contribution in the project.

With this Amsterdam meeting the project is closed. But in principle the project Scienar is dead, long live Science and Art. So we discussed about the future and how the consortium would continue their co-operation. Easy points of reference are of course the Aplimat conferences in Bratislava (Slovakia). But on the other hand the consortium should be seen as a movement which promotes the study of science and art. So participation should not be limited to a few people, but open to other interested people, as we believe the study of science and art is interesting for teachers and students, artists and interested people. So the consortium will continue after the project to co-operate. An open site is foreseen.

BPN 1442