Digitisation and valorisation of Venetian Music Archives

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

Hola

Building the Historical Archive of the Future: the case of Heritage Lab

Hitstorical images from the photo archives © Italgas

key details

13 November 2023
Online on Zoom
3pm — 5pm (CET)

Reference

HeritageLab Italgas

about

Online class on the challenges of the Corporate Digital Archive, digital formats, integrated processes and the role of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The seminary is dedicated to the potential of a digital company archive and the methods of preservation and sharing, in particular of the extensive documentation tracing the history of the Italgas company.

Digital transformation and technological innovation — which are Italgas’ main drives in the energy transition — are at the heart of Heritage Lab. The centre is committed to achieving several objectives, including the systematisation of the historical archive and the management of the current archive, the sharing of digitised documents and their conversion into big data, through a highly automated acquisition cycle thanks to the use of artificial intelligence algorithms for post-production and optical character recognition (OCR).

Programme

The Heritage Lab model

Katya Corvino

Heritage Lab is Italgas’ digitisation museum-laboratory, developed entirely in-house with specialised machinery, technologies and skills from the field of cultural heritage and applied to the massive digital acquisition of Corporate and Industrial Heritage. Their heritage consists of 3 linear kilometres of documents, and it is digitised by a team of specialists, composed of 4 archivists in charge of identifying and selecting the documents, 2 palaeographers with expertise in ancient texts, 3 librarians cataloguing the material, and 15 operators, who carry out the digitisation and append metadata.

Digitisation stream

Matteo Allasia

The digital transformation process can be illustrated with a sequence of nine steps, from the premises of the Italgas Historical Archive, to the cataloguing of documents on the xDams platform, and the selection of the most valuable bulks for digitisation.

At the Heritage Lab laboratory-museum, we select the most appropriate digitisation system based on the document’s format and type.
The scanned images are processed through the Time Machine server, which derives the compressed images from the master copies and applies measurement and OCR scripts. The user copies are then imported into xDams and enriched with a set of metadata, which adds meaningful narratives to the material.

Building the Historical Archive of the Future

Daniela Marendino

Building and feeding the Historical Archive, with the creation of a shared procedure for identifying, preserving and substituting paper documents, is essential to the management of the documentation flow of the current archive.

Heritage Lab has established a new procedure for the management of analog documents and is working on the creation of a new classification and record preservation system, and a management manual, together with an internal communication campaign to raise staff awareness.

Managing the digital heritage of business archives

Giovanni Michetti

The speech will cover the topic of the digital heritage of business archives, focusing in particular on the following points:

– Not just paper: digital objects as archival documents;

– The business archive as an integrated system;

– Digital formats;

– Management and preservation processes in the digital environment;

– The role of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Lecturers

Matteo Allasia

A Heritage Lab expert, he was a fellow at the ARCHiVe Centre, and was then a Regesta.exe contributor for Heritage Lab Italgas. Graduated in Classical Literature and Communication, with a Master’s degree in Digital Humanities at Ca’ Foscari University, he is a digital humanist at the service of corporate cultural heritage. He collaborates in the digital transformation process of the Italgas Archive and works on the maintenance and development of digitisation machines and algorithms for automatic post production.

Katya Corvino

Head of Heritage Lab Italgas, she was also responsible for Corporate Social Responsibility at Italgas. Graduated in Political Science with a Master’s degree in Business Administration, for 30 years in the Eni Group, then Snam and finally Italgas, she has gained 20 years’ experience in the field of relations with institutions and the territory. For 7 years she was responsible for Relations with Local Authorities in the Snam group. Over the years she has also dealt with relations with European institutions as Snam’s representative for the European Union in Brussels.

Daniela Marendino

With twenty years of experience as a professional archivist, she has worked in public, private and corporate archives. She is the curator of the collections of the Italgas Historical Archive, where she oversees the preservation of the documentary heritage and the preservation of the company museum collections, the Library and the Emeroteca, as well as the valorisation of the historical heritage of the Italgas Group companies. She monitors and manages the flow of documents in the historical and current archives, preparing preservation lists and procedures for discarding them.

Giovanni Michetti

Associate Professor of Archivistics at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’, he has also taught at the University of Urbino and the University of British Columbia. An expert in digital archives, he deals with document management, descriptive models, digital preservation and new technologies applied to archives. He is chairman of the ‘Archives and document management’ sub-committee in UNI (the Italian standards body) and represents Italy in some ISO working groups on archives and document management. He is a member of the executive committee of the International Council on Archives.

Giacomo Verde (1956-2020). From the techno-artist’s archive to book, exhibition and movie

Renzo Boldrini with Giacomo Verde and a friend © Giallo Mare Minimal Teatro Archive

Scene from "Il gatto con gli stivali. Un racconto per il digitale" © Campsirago Residenza

Giacomo Verde/Giallo Mare Minimal Teatro, "Hansel & Gretel Tv" © Giuseppe Murador and Giacomo Verde Archive

key details

9, 16, 23, 30 November 2022
Online on Zoom
4pm — 6pm (CET)

lecturers

Anna Maria Monteverdi | Università Statale, Milano
Tommaso Verde | Game Designer
Flavia Dalila D’Amico | Università di Roma La Sapienza
Vincenzo Sansone | Università Statale, Milano
Raffaella Rivi | Videomaker

the course

Giacomo Verde (Cimitile 1956 – Lucca 2020) in forty years of artistic activity has dealt with different languages such as street theatre, video art, painting, drawing, performance, Net Art with the idea of investigating contaminations between media to create works in which different artistic techniques coexist in an “artivist” spirit.

Programme

The course, curated by Anna Maria Monteverdi, is structured in 4 meetings and is held in Italian.

November 9, 2022

L’archivio di un artivista. Giacomo Verde (1956-2020)

Anna Maria Monteverdi
Tommaso Verde

November 16, 2022

Attraversamenti: le ultrascene di Giacomo Verde

Flavia Dalila D'Amico

November 23, 2022

Giacomo Verde: il teleracconto e i suoi doppi. La reinvenzione di una tecnica videoteatrale per bambini.

Vincenzo Sansone

November 23, 2022

Dall'archivio al film

Raffaella Rivi

1/4 L’archivio di un artivista. Giacomo Verde (1956-2020)

2/4 Attraversamenti: le ultrascene di Giacomo Verde

3/4 Giacomo Verde: il teleracconto e i suoi doppi. La reinvenzione di una tecnica videoteatrale per bambini.

4/4 Dall'archivio al film

ARCHiOx. Exploring the potential of photometric stereo 3D capture

Heatmap render of the Aršāma Sigil © ARCHiOx

Render highlighting the conservation state of an object © ARCHiOx

Copper printing plate recorded with Selene © ARCHiOx

key details

24 May, 7 June 2023
Online on Zoom
3pm — 5pm (CET)

about

Funded by the Helen Hamlyn Trust, ARCHiOx – Analysis and Recording of Cultural Heritage in Oxford – is a collaborative project, bringing together Oxford University’s Bodleian Libraries and the Factum Foundation. Based in Madrid, the Factum Foundation specialise in high-resolution 3D imaging and have worked in cultural heritage institutions throughout the world, producing exceptional, three-dimensional facsimiles of artworks and artefacts. The very latest 3D recording technology conceived and developed by the Factum Foundation is being piloted at the Bodleian and has been used to reveal near-invisible text and artwork from originals in the Bodleian’s collections. The ARCHiOx recordings serve two purposes: data can be used to create renders which show the 3D surface of an original in order to reveal what is difficult or impossible to record through conventional photography, or for the purposes of creating incredibly accurate 3D facsimiles. Working closely with researchers and experts, the project has been responsible for making and documenting multiple exciting discoveries.

curator

John Barrett | Senior Photographer for the Bodleian Libraries

Programme

Class 1 May 24, 2023

Recording and dissemination of 3D data, captured using the Selene Photometric Stereo Recording System

John Barrett | Senior Photographer for the Bodleian Libraries
Jorge Cano | Head of Technology at Factum Arte and Factum Foundation
Richard Allen | Software Engineer for BDLSS

In this session John Barrett presents a collection of incredible new recordings made using the Factum Foundation’s latest 3D recording system, the Selene. The recordings have been made from originals from broad range of the Bodleian Libraries’ world-class collections. Jorge Cano, designer of the Selene, explains the philosophy behind the Selene and discuss the technology and specifications of the system. Richard Allen demonstrates online viewers for dissemination of 3D recordings, and newly developed tools which will allow users to interact with them.

Class 2 June 7, 2023

Analysis and interpretation: How 3D recordings and other technological innovations are supporting research

John Barrett | Senior Photographer for the Bodleian Libraries
Jo Story | Professor of Early Medieval History at the University of Leicester
Jessica Hodgkinson | PhD candidate at the University of Leicester
Alessandro Bianchi | Manager of the Bodleian Japanese Library
Elaine Anstee | Head of Imaging for the Bodleian Libraries

In this session John Barrett introduces a panel of experts who will explain how 3D recording and other technological innovations have assisted with their research. Jo Story and Jessica Hodgkinson discuss how photometric stereo recordings and other technologies have aided their research into Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and medieval book culture. Alessandro Bianchi explores how 3D recording may hold the key to understanding how Japanese prints were made, and how 3D renders can be used for assessing their condition. The session begins with a description of how ARCHiOx was established and structured, by Elaine Anstee.

contributors

John Barrett

John Barrett is a Senior Photographer for the Bodleian Libraries. Since 2005, John has provided photographs of Bodleian originals for numerous publications. His work involves the development of new methods of recording special collections material. He is the author of Imaging Guidelines for the Digitization of Rare and Special Materials, a document commissioned by the Bodleian Library.

Jorge Cano

Jorge Cano is currently Head of Technological Research & Development at Factum Arte and Factum Foundation. He has developed a multidisciplinary career working in the intersections of art and technology. Cano is an expert in 3D recording, image filtering and Geographical Information Systems. For Factum he has developed several scanners and numerous tools for data processing. His latest design, the Selene Scanner, has been used by the Bodleian Library allowing imaging specialists and researchers to look at ancient objects with new eyes.

Richard Allen

Richard Allen is a Software Engineer for BDLSS (Bodleian Digital Library Systems and Services) where he works primarily supporting Digital Bodleian and the Imaging Studio DAMS. He is also CEO of an Oxford University spinout company that specialises in photogrammetry.

Jessica Hodgkinson

Jessica Hodgkinson is a PhD candidate at the University of Leicester funded by the Midlands4Cities doctoral training partnership. Her research explores the participation of women in early medieval book culture in Western Europe through the analysis of surviving manuscripts commissioned, copied, owned and/or used by them.

Jo Story

Jo Story is professor of Early Medieval History at the University of Leicester. Interdisciplinary methodologies and approaches to evidence are central to her research and publications. Her current research centres on ‘Insular Manuscripts’ that were made in Ireland or the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms or in monasteries founded by Irish or Anglo-Saxon missionaries on the Continent in the period between c. 600–900 CE.

Alessandro Bianchi

Alessandro Bianchi is the manager of the Bodleian Japanese Library and curator of the Bodleian collection of Japanese rare books and manuscripts. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, he worked at the British Library, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, and taught at Haverford College. Alessandro is also a Visiting Researcher (2022/23) at the Art Research Centre of Ritsumeikan University.

Elaine Anstee

Elaine Anstee has been Head of Imaging for the Bodleian Libraries since October 2021. With a background in Administration and Finance she focuses on the policies and procedures supporting the ARCHiOx project in addition to the business as usual work in the Imaging department

1/2 ARCHiOx. Exploring the potential of photometric stereo 3D capture

2/2 ARCHiOx. Exploring the potential of photometric stereo 3D capture