Bueno, me he pasado los últimos días escuchando la música de este cantante finlandés, Rauli Badding (1947-1987) que era fantástico y el cual desgraciadamente murió jovencito. Buscando en la red, me he encontrado esta versión en inglés de su canción Valot (Luces). ¡Gozenla!
What a week! On Wednesday, Dec 10, I attended Paul Kahn’s lecture on Managing Everything: a new vision of the Digital Library. The lecture dealt with how the emergence of music – video – photo sharing sites, growing collections of digital books, national media archives and collaborative work spaces offer us a vision of a Digital Library in search of a user interface.
The lecture was part of Paul’s application for a docentureship at the Media Lab Helsinki. For the past few years Paul, who is An American Living in Paris, has been teaching information architecture at the University of Art and Design Helsinki.
On Thursday evening I had the good fortune, through the kindness of my colleague Mika Tuomola, to be invited to a performance of Kristiina Elstela and Juusi Tuurna’s cabaret act at Manari. You can see more information About the Performance here. It is a wonderful act and I thoroughly recommend it to everybody. You do not need to know Finnish to appreciate the talent of these two performers.
On Friday, the Media Lab Helsinki hosted the public defense of Koray Tahiroglu’s dissertation on Interactive Music Systems. The event, the featured Prof. Robert Rowe from the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University as Opponent. Here is a picture from our gathering after the karonkka at Belge’s kabinetti.
“Dissertation karonkka is an old academic tradition. It is organized in honor of the Opponent. In karonkka, the Respondent also has the opportunity to thank her/his teachers, instructor and supporters for the help in different stages of the dissertation work. Karonkka is not a family festivity, although in addition to spouse, some close adult friends or relatives may be invited…” Read more
Here are a couple of photos from Paula Bello Aragana’s karonkka. Paula was awarded a Doctor of Arts (In Art and Design) for her thesis on the topic of globalization. For more information about her work see: Paula Bello’s dissertation, Goodscapes: Global Design Processes.
Or “A song to end one and begin a new year”. Rock and roll has had a profound influence in different cultures throughout the world. The Latin American continent is no exception. Here is a live recording of the hit song, De pies a cabeza, by the legendary Mexican group, Maná. The song became quite famous, as it was used in the Spanish trailer of the Brazilian soap opera, Vampi. Dating to around 1993, this soap might be considered a precursor of the North American TV production of Buffy the Vampire. Here is a clip from an episode with the main character, Natasha, in Venice.
A clip from the great Venezuelan rock group, Desorden público: Truena, truena… In its simple but original use of editing and special effects, the video is a wonderful example of creative elegance.
Such were the words of Jorma Olilla, CEO of Nokia when speaking about the current global crisis and its effects on corporate revenue. According to Olilla this is the time to invest and develop new research ideas into innovations that can capture the market.
Citing from the experience of the recession in Finland during the early 1990’s Olilla pointed out that when the time came, Nokia was ready to take advantage and decisively deploy devices based on the new GSM standard.
Mr. Olilla spoke during the annual event of the Nokia Foundation. The event, that was held in the Vanha Ylioppilastalo was hosted by Mr. Henri Tirri, Head of Nokia Research Center. Approximately 250,000 Euros were distributed, mostly to young researchers.
Sampo Karjalainen, former colleague at the Media Lab and and his partner Aapo Kyrölä were given the Nokia Foundation Award for 2008 for their work as founders of Sulake and creators of Habbo Hotel.
Lily in Teotihuacan, Mexico, 1968.
Call for Papers
International Journal of Digital Cultural Heritage and Electronic Tourism
Special Issue
Editors: Prof. Lily Díaz-Kommonen
Maurizio Forte, PhD
Deadline for submitting abstracts: August 17, 2007
All final papers are due: September 28, 2007
In recent years, partly through the development of the Information Society with its associated trends of globalization, growing interconnectedness, and instant multi-modal communications that erode the boundaries of traditional societies, the concept of cultural heritage has evolved to encompass qualities that go beyond the original definitions pertaining the mere recording and preservation of cultural objects. Within the scope of UNESCO’s activities for example, the agency now recognizes cultural heritage as an irreplaceable source of knowledge with a significant role to play in the present as part of the goal towards a sustainable future.
From a knowledge management perspective UNESCO’s work has also expanded to include the two major classes of tangible and intangible heritage. Whereas tangible heritage includes the multiple physical expressions created by diverse human cultures in the past, intangible heritage-also referred to as living heritage-is used to designate present “practices, representations, expressions, as well as the knowledge and skills, that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage.”
The objective of this special issue will be to explore the notion of intangible heritage and its relationship with the digital media. From this perspective, we seek contributions related to the following topics:
1. Definition, analysis and examples about the notion of intangible digital cultural heritage from the artistic, scientific, and economic perspectives.
2. Ecological and systemic approaches that make use of digital cultural heritage-and specifically intangible heritage-for economic revitalization and development.
3. Design and implementation of digital applications for intangible heritage such as digital and multimedia archives dealing with oral traditions, narratives and myths from different regions throughout the planet.
4. Research into digital genres and how these might support and enable the transmission of diverse forms of intangible heritage as well as promote the creation of new ones.
5. The representation of space and cultural heritage through the use of digital media, including but not limited to the combined use of GIS and mobile devices.
6. Ontology design and implementation in digital cultural heritage applications from a cross-cultural and multiplatform application perspectives.
7. Explorations into the notion of heritage commodities and how these are being used, or can be used in the digital environment.
8. Application design, including but not limited to portals dealing with the commercial development of heritage commodities such as cuisine, knowledge, music, etc.
9. The use of peer-to-peer networks in the creation of virtual cultural heritage communities.
10. New applications of digitally born cultural heritage objects in within tangible public exhibition spaces.
Dr. Lily Diaz-Kommonen
Professor, Systems of Representation
& Digital Cultural Heritage
UNIVERSITY OF ART & DESIGN HELSINKI, MEDIA LAB
135C Hämeentie SF 00560
Helsinki, Finland
Tel. + 358 9 75630 338
Fax + 358 9 75630 555
e-mail: diaz@uiah.fi
Maurizio Forte, PhD., Senior Scientist, Coordinator of Virtual
Heritage lab
CNR – ITABC, ISTITUTO PER LE TECNOLOGIE APPLICATE AI BENI CULTURALI
Area della Ricerca Roma 1 – Montelibretti
Via Salaria Km. 29,300 – C.P. 10
00016 Monterotondo St. (ROMA)
Tel. ++39 06 90625274
Fax ++39 06 90672373
e-mail: maurizio.forte@itabc.cnr.it
To read more about the Journal.
To see the submission guidelines.
I was asked to develop a position statement for a design network that will investigate the topic of material culture.
Here are some initial thoughts:materiality_diaz.pdf
Lily
The new viaduct connecting city of Caracas with the port of la Guaira will be ready by June of 2007, just in time for the celebration of the America Cup in Venezuela.
Here is a computer visualization of the new viaduct from Aragorn Sirius, a self-described engineering student in Caracas.
t. Lily
Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity of attending the Alpine-Rendevouz held at the village of Villars in Switzerland. The meeting was a combination of workshops and doctoral schools organized by the Kaleidscope network of excellence.
My attendance was motivated by an invitation to participate in a workshop about the Classroom of the Future, led by Kati Mäkitalo-Siegel and Frederick Kaplan. Aside from giving presentations on our topics–mine was about Cultural Heritage in the Curriculum, Case Study Exploring Carta Marina–we had an opportunity to work on a design for the Classroom of the Future.
I proposed to my colleagues that we should design a space for the sole purpose of telling stories. Here is a picture of our final design, or Storytelling Room (the second from top), as reported in the Kaleidoscope network news. I would love to continue working on this project, so if there is anybody out there interested… Let me know!
– Lily