Call for Papers. DMACH 2011 Digital Media and its Applications in Cultural Heritage

Jordan River

Extended Deadline for Paper Submission
September 15, 2010
http://www.csaar-center.org/conference/DMACH2011/ 

Call for Papers
DMACH 2011
Digital Media and its Applications in Cultural Heritage
Organized by
The Center for the Study of Architecture in the Arab Region, Jordan
Al-Turath Foundation, Saudi Arabia
In collaboration with
Queen Rania Institute of Tourism and Heritage, Hashemite University

16-17 March, 2011
Amman -Jordan

 Introduction 

Over the past few years, a remarkable increase has occurred in the use of digital techniques for the documentation, management, and communication of cultural heritage. This has drastically transformed the way we capture, store, process, represent and disseminate information. The techniques employed have evolved from standard surveying and CAD tools and/or traditional photogrammetry into laser scanning virtual reality and fully automated video-based techniques. However, it is often argued that digital media tend to create and compile value-free content and thus are inefficient in capturing and communicating cultural and symbolic meanings. Digital media, as any other medium, tend to amplify or reduce the cultural phenomena as a result of their constraints and limitations. Thus the issue of using digital media for cultural heritage is by no means a simple one and must be examined from different angles. The aim of DMACH2011 is to explore the opportunities and challenges of using 
digital media in the research, preservation, management, interpretation, and representation of cultural heritage. Of particular interest for this year conference are issues related to interactive virtual reality, intelligent and wireless hand-held devices, high speed multi-media, and making virtual reality and augmented reality user-friendly and available resources for the general public.
Building on the successful DMACH 2008 international conference held in Amman, Jordan in 2008 and in order to explore and map the challenges and opportunities of using digital media in cultural heritage, The Center for the Study of Architecture in the Arab Region (CSAAR), Al-Turath Foundation, and Queen Rania Institute of Tourism and Heritage have joined together to organize the second edition of the International Conference on Digital Media and its Applications in Cultural Heritage (DMACH 2011). This conference provides a forum to examine and discuss current practices and future directions in the documentation, representation, and communication of cultural heritage using digital technologies. The conference aims to provide the participants an occasion to share and exchange experiences and research findings, to stimulate more ideas and useful insights regarding the uses of digital media in cultural heritage, and to debate their views on future research and developments.

Topics of Interest
We invite scholars and practitioners in architecture, planning, archaeology, and related fields, as well as administrators of museums, galleries, and archives, to submit papers on any topic related to conference theme. Papers may reflect on a wide spectrum of issues related to digital heritage. The conference is structured around a number of sub-themes that include -but are not limited to:
Virtual realty applications in conservation research and practice
Internet-based applications
E-libraries and e-learning in cultural heritage
Intelligent description of cultural heritage content
Interactive, virtual and augmented environments
wireless hand-held devices
Knowledge systems for heritage management
GIS and spatial information management in cultural heritage
Photogrammetry, laser scanning and scene modeling
Virtual Heritage
Virtual Museums
Data acquisition technologies
3D data capture and processing in cultural heritage
Digital reconstructions and 3D modeling
Reproduction techniques and rapid prototyping in cultural heritage
Multimedia, data management and archiving
Rendering techniques for cultural heritage: photorealistic and non-photorealistic
Innovative graphics applications and techniques
Digital media and commodification of cultural heritage
Authenticity and integrity of data/content
The economics of cultural informatics
Usability and interface design for cultural heritage applications
Methods of and issues related to accessibility and interoperability

Important Dates
Full paper submission for review: September 15, 2010
Notification of acceptance: October 30, 2010
Deadline for final papers: December 15, 2010

Submission and Relevant Information
Abstract submission must be in English with a length of max. 500 words. Full paper submission could be in either English or Arabic. You are asked to identify the research track for your paper.

Abstracts should be e-mailed to scientific committee co-chairs (dmach11@csaar-center.org). Full paper submissions are required to be done online through the conference 

Website: http://www.csaar-center.org/conference/DMACH2011/openconf/ 

Submissions will be peer reviewed.

Full paper format, submission guidelines, registration, accommodation and further information are available at the conference website: http://www.csaar-center.org/conference/DMACH2011/

For further information about submissions, please contact conference secretariat.

Posters, Panel Discussion & Workshops
The conference also welcomes proposals for:
* Poster papers
* Plenary Session/ Panel Discussion
* Workshops
For more details check conference website. 

Conference Proceedings
All papers accepted for publication will be published inthe conference proceedings, which will be available to delegates at the time of registration. In addition, papers will be published in a volume of CSAAR Transactions on the Built Environment (ISSN 1992-7320). 

Best Paper Award (3 Awards)
The Best Paper Award is presented to the individual(s) judged by a separate awards committee to have written the best paper appearing in DMACH & CSAAR conference proceedings. The Award shall be 300 USD and a certificate. In case there is more than one author for the paper, the award shall be divided equally among all authors and each shall receive a certificate. Judging shall be on the bases of general quality, originality, subject matter, and timeliness.  

Scientific Committee Co-Chairs
Jamal Al-Qawasmi
KFUPM, Saudi Arabia
jamal@csaar-center.org
Yahya Alshawabkeh
Hashemite University, Jordan
yahya.alshawabkeh@hu.edu.jo
Fabio Remondino
Bruno Kessler Foundation - FBK, Italy
remondino@fbk.eu
Conference Secretariat
Sami Kamal
sami@csaar-center.org

Experiencia en Moscú para simular la posible convivencia en Marte

Simulador Mars 500. Foto bajada de La Nación

Siempre me pregunté si la colonización a Marte sería como la ha imaginado Ray Bradbury. Y fundamentalmente, cómo sería la convivencia de los grupos en un nuevo habitat, tal vez aislados de sus familiares o sus entornos conocidos. Convivirán en paz las distintas razas? Para imaginarlo, basta leer el cuento de Ray donde unos pobladores racistas se asombran y desesperan por la migración negra a Marte, que avanzan por las calles para acceder a su cohete ¨como ríos negros¨. Más allá de nuestras elucubraciones, no cabe duda que el aislamiento produciría problemas psicológicos. El programa Mars 500, consiste en aislar 6 voluntarios elegidos entre 3000 postulantes,  en una "cápsula" especialmente construida en Moscú, -en un instituto de la Academia de Ciencias de Rusia., por 17 meses, que sería equivalente al tiempo del viaje a Marte.

Los participantes, han sido capacitados para llevar sus registros de comportamiento social. Y cuál será el alivio psicológico? La realidad virtual. 

Programa Mars 500. Foto bajada de La Nación

¨El sistema Earth of Wellbeing de realidad virtual y tecnología web que diseñó el equipo del LabPsiTec y Labhuman promueve las emociones positivas y regula el estado anímico. "Las condiciones de aislamiento podrían propiciar la aparición de reacciones afectivas disfuncionales y un deterioro del estado de ánimo, así como alteraciones cognitivas, motoras y perceptuales, que podrían influir en el comportamiento individual y la interacción entre los miembros del equipo -sostienen los investigadores-. Ahora bien, esas reacciones pueden tener un impacto negativo en el resultado final de la misión."

El sistema les permite a los voluntarios "escapar" mediante la realidad virtual a la serenidad de un parque en medio de una ciudad o un bosque con un lago. Durante 30 minutos, esos entornos virtuales proporcionan calma, relajación y alegría.

"Pueden salir virtualmente a un ambiente abierto diseñado con procedimientos de inducción emocional. Cuando quieren (....)-, ellos pueden ir a esos ambientes virtuales. La literatura indica que las emociones positivas son un antídoto eficaz para luchar contra la depresión, la tristeza, la rabia y el enfado."

Tendremos que esperar los resultados entonces para hacer proyecciones del futuro habitat de Marte.

REFERENCIA

Aislados en un viaje a Marte simulado. Artículo publicado en la Nación, suplemento Ciencia y Salud. 21 de agosto de 2010.

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1296558&origen=NLCien

The controversy about Louis Kahn´s sinagogue´s expansion

Picture from Architectural Record

From the article by C.J. Huges, for Architectural Record:

A plan to enlarge the only surviving synagogue by Louis Kahn has sparked opposition among some preservationists, who call the alterations insensitive.

Completed in 1972, the 20,000-square-foot spruce-and-concrete home of Temple Beth El of Northern Westchester, in Chappaqua, New York, was intended to host services and classes for 400 families. But in recent years the congregation had swelled to more than 700 families, meaning it needed more space, says senior rabbi Joshua M. Davidson.

Picture from Architectural Record

Picture from http://northernwestchester.lohudblogs.com/files/2010/05/templebethel.jpg

To alleviate crowding, the synagogue proposed nearly doubling its size with a 23,000-square-foot U-shaped wing by architect Alexander Gorlin, to contain classrooms, which are currently located in the existing building, and an event space. A groundbreaking occurred in May, and the $12 million project is expected to be finished by next summer.

With three low-slung, single-sloped-roof sections framing a courtyard, the wing is meant to evoke European villages like those in Estonia, where Kahn was born, Davidson says. In fact, many consider the existing synagogue’s eight-sided sanctuary to be inspired by those in Kahn’s native land.

But the most controversial part of the plan is what’s already happened: the demolition of the synagogue’s boxy entryway to make way for a wider, taller version, which took place last week.

For opponents, who include architects and Kahn’s son, Nathaniel, a filmmaker, that effort to make access easier ruins a special aspect of the synagogue and a hallmark of Kahn’s works.

“He purposefully made it hard to enter his buildings, to draw distinctions between where you were and where you were going,” says Bill Whitaker, an architect who has curated the Kahn collection at the University of Pennsylvania for 17 years.

But the synagogue is far from a perfect creation, says New York-based Gorlin, who taught courses about Kahn at Yale’s architecture school for a decade.

The main section, which features an airy sanctuary ringed by classrooms, lacks the types of connecting corridors found in similar houses of worship, like Kahn’s First Unitarian Church in Rochester, says Gorlin.

As a result, people have to cut across the sanctuary to get from one classroom to another, “so you could never have two things going on at the same time,” Gorlin says. Plus, he adds, eight of Kahn’s drawings that were discovered in the synagogue’s attic show Kahn intended an adjacent structure to be built on the site.

Still, despite his criticisms, the sanctuary and classrooms won’t be reconfigured; the wooden walls, however, will be refinished. Nothing else is planned for the interiors, according to Gorlin.

While it may be too late to stop the synagogue expansion, opponents at least want care to be taken with the renovation of the walls, says Nathaniel Kahn, whose 2003 film, My Architect, is about his father.

Still, the loss of the entryway is painful, he says, likening it to lopping off the black-and-white introductory portion of the Wizard of Oz. “It would still be entertaining but robbed of its essential meaning,” Kahn says. “You can’t say that you are respecting the original design while taking away a part of it.”

Read the full article:

http://archrecord.construction.com/news/daily/archives/2010/08/100813louis_kahn_synagogue_controversy.asp

Concurso con fotos de vecinos: Imágenes antiguas en la Avenida de Mayo

Foto de Mariana Araujo para La Nación.

"Estas fotos son de la época de mi mamá, así se vestían cuando eran chicos. Ya con eso te digo mi edad", dijo una señora a una de las colaboradoras del Festival de la Luz 2010 que le ofrecía votar por la foto más linda del concurso "Nuestros abuelos inmigrantes".

La señora, que paseaba ayer por la tarde por la Avenida de Mayo casi Perú, estaba parada frente a una foto que, como si se tratara de una prenda que se seca al sol, colgaba de un piolín sujetada con broches en la vereda del Palacio de Gobierno porteño.

Como ésa, otras cerca de 70 fotografías antiguas pendían de ese piolín. La iniciativa, que sorprendió gratamente a los que pasaron ayer entre las 11 y las 16 por esa vereda, fue una de las intervenciones urbanas del Festival de la Luz 2010, organizado por la Fundación Luz Austral y el gobierno porteño, y que mantuvo el tema de la edición de este año "Migraciones. Identidades en tránsito".

Unas mil doscientas personas, que transitaron por allí, miraron las fotos llevadas por vecinos y alumnos de la Escuela Argentina de Fotografía y dejaron su voto. Al finalizar la actividad, luego del debido escrutinio, se asignó el primer premio -un curso de fotografía- a Wanda Heras por la foto de sus bisabuelos que vinieron de Alemania en la época de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. "Me gustó la foto porque se los ve divertidos y que se aman", dijo a LA NACION la propietaria de la foto, en la que se ve a una pareja dentro de una bañera jugando a los dados y tomando vino y Bidú-Cola.

"Vine a la Casa de la Cultura y me sorprendió gratamente encontrar esta iniciativa, de la que no sabía nada, aun cuando soy estudiante de fotografía", dijo Sonia Sanglar, docente jubilada. "Lo bueno es que me llevo el programa y podré participar de otras actividades", concluyó, y se fue sin saber que con su voto ayudó a obtener el segundo premio -una cámara de fotos- al dueño de una imagen tomada en un estudio alemán, en la que se ve a una institutriz con tres niños y dos perros.

"Lo que buscamos con estas intervenciones urbanas es acercar el arte con la gente común que, generalmente, no va a galerías o museos", planteó el coordinador de estas actividades, Mariano Manikis. Otras intervenciones, durante este mes, son las gigantografías exhibidas en las plazas Dorrego, San Martín, y Perú.

El Festival de la Luz seguirá hasta el 30 de septiembre y su programa completo se puede consultar en wwww.encuentrosabiertos.com.ar .

REFERENCIA

Artículo de Silvia Premat para La Nación. Sección Cultura. 18 de agosto 2010

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=1295034&origen=NLCult

Enjoying negative emotions

Abkhazia. Picture by Sergei Loiko

Georgian refuges in Abkhazia. Picture by Sergei Loiko.

When I posted the abandoned houses´ pictures, I commented I felt a kind of attraction for them. The same happens to me when I see some pictures of ruins, and this is not that I am not sorry about the situation that caused the ruin. For whoever shares my feelings, here I have some excerpts from the article ¨The paradox of horror¨, by Berys Gaut, published in the book Arguing About Art, edited by Alex Neill and Aaron Ridley.

Ruins of a house. Picture from site.mynet.com

¨One can also enjoy other ¨negative¨ emotions. One can enjoy disgusting stories, and there is a minor genre, poular on college campuses, of ¨disgust¨movies (...)The negative emotion of anger can also be enjoyed: irascible inidivduals sometimes seek out situations in which they will have an opportunity to get angry. Likewise, it is possible to relish a feeling of quite melancholy, dwelling on the sorrows and disappointments of life, and weeping for the sadness of the world.

Phenomena of this sort have been noted by several philosophers in the last decade, and have been seen as key ingredients in the solution of the paradoxes. (....) Two kinds of theories have been advanced to explain how the enjoyment of negative emotions is possible, but neither is entirely satisfactory as it stands. The first is the ¨control thesis¨, develpoed by Marcia Eaton, and refined by John Morreall (...) Morreall holds that one can enjoy negative emotions when one is ¨in control¨ of the situation which produces the emotions, where control is understood in terms of an ability to direct one´s thoughts and actions. (...)

The second, more promising view of how it is possible to enjoy negative emotions has been developed by both Kendall Walton and Alex Neill. They deny that these emotional responses are intrinsically unpleasant. They both speak as if it is a purely contingent matter whether or not people enjoy the emotions themselves. It is not the emotions themselves that are intrinsically unpleasant, they hold, but , rather, it is the objects of the emotions which are unpleasant or disvaluable.¨

A nice story from South Africa

This is a nice story from the blog " In the Trenches". This blog shares the real-life story of community planning and architectural humanitarian work with NextAid in an impoverished and AIDS-affected rural town called Dennilton, in South Africa. Chris Harnish, an Architecture for Humanity Fellow, on sabbatical from Deborah Berke & Partners in New York City, will do a weekly written and photo blog sharing his experiences while living on site for six months with the local partner organization. Posted by Chris Harnish:

There have been neighbors living in my roof since January or so. A family of owls has set up camp in the protected gap between the overhang of the front porch and the main roof. When I mentioned it to Jabu, his first reaction was 'let's get them out of there'. I told him I liked them and he said 'ok, then we will capture them, put them in a cage and make them fat on mice and rats.' When that didn't take he just resigned himself to asking about them regularly. Apparently owls and Zulu culture don't get along very well. 'The owl is a creature of the night' Jabu told me.

With a bit further research I discovered that an owl calling from your roof means there's going to be a death in the house, unless you burn your house down. A friend in Durban knows a woman who has burned her house down twice for fear of the creatures. (Whether I believe the story or not is another matter... .who knows?). I haven't heard the screetching call from my roof. Usually I just hear it when I step outside to brush my teeth at night. One too many steps from the front porch and a loud, spooky screetch gets me shuffling back inside, laughing and cursing a bit.

It's a married couple of owls, and they have just become parents of triplets. The young ones are very well behaved, except when a parent returns in the evenings with food. Then the squeeling and shuffling of feet on the corrugated metal becomes quite the event. My guide book says it takes three months after hatching for an owl to fly. By my calculations the should be airborn in late June. That's gonna be awesome.

http://archrecord.construction.com/community/blogs/AFHBlog.asp?plckController=Blog&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&newspaperUserId=ac0a0e62-a16e-41cc-8758-4a55156da728&plckPostId=Blog:ac0a0e62-a16e-41cc-8758-4a55156da728Post:0ab77249-1e2b-4ae3-b5bd-9d86e2ee5d27&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest

New York officials sue Christie's to regain British architect's drawings

Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image from inetours.com

From guardian.co.uk,by Ed Pikington, New York,Thursday 12 August 2010:

At some point in the 1950s a craftsman called Buckley was working on a site in lower Manhattan when he came across a stash of papers dumped in a skip. They were a set of architectural drawings in watercolours of plans for city parks including details of fountains, clocks, terraces and other structures.

What probably caught Buckley's eye was the stately nature of the designs and their elaborate colouring. Recognising their innate value, he took a pile of more than 100 of the drawings home and filed them away for safe keeping.

More than 50 years later they have become the subject of a $1m (£640,000) lawsuit lodged at the New York supreme court. The legal action was brought by the city's authorities against the late craftsman's son, Sam Buckley, and Christie's, the auctioneers through whom he tried to sell the drawings.

They were the work of Jacob Wrey Mould, a British architect who came to New York in 1853 to design a Unitarian church in Fourth Avenue and 20th Street. Though the building has long been pulled down, in its day it was quite a sensation with its striped facade of red and cream stone earning it the nickname Church of the Holy Zebra.

Mould, an irascible man who was not much liked but greatly admired, went on to collaborate with Calvert Vaux, co-designer of Central Park. Together they planned the original buildings of the American Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, while Mould also had a large hand in Belvedere Castle and the carvings of the Bethesda Terrace, both in Central Park. Later, he was seminal in the creation of other quintessential New York features such as Morningside and Riverside Parks.

Most of the drawings were signed by Mould. They display his love of vibrant colours as a student of the designer and polychrome theorist Owen Jones with whom he designed a room in Buckingham Palace. They include plans for structures that were built, such as Bethesda Fountain, as well as ones that were not – a set of street lamps for Park Avenue, for instance.

Every one was stamped with the badge of the New York Parks Department, for whom Mould worked from 1857 to shortly before his death in 1886.

When Christie's was commissioned by the younger Buckley to sell 86 of the 127 drawings in his late father's possession, the auction house contacted the city authorities for help with valuing the works and to ask whether New York wanted the first chance to buy them.

But the city saw an invaluable historic collection that should never have left its public ownership.

"They are the kind of thing we would never throw away, but for whatever reason they were erroneously discarded or lost," said Gerald Singleton, the lawyer representing the city. "Once we looked at them we realised that the city remains the owner of these drawings."

It has persuaded the New York court to put a preliminary restraining order that prevents Buckley or Christie's from selling any of the drawings.

In return, the city has promised to back off from its legal threats and to attempt to reach a settlement.

"We're confident this will end amicably," Singleton said.

If New York regains the drawings, it has pledged to use them when renovating historic parts of the city.

Lucille Gordon, Mould's biographer, said the documents were also hugely important in the understanding of the architect himself. "He is a piece of our history – his work is scattered all over New York state. Yet so few papers of any kind have been left behind, and any scrap that Mould touched has a value."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/12/new-york-architect-drawings-mould

An English man in New York

Simon Doonan, Creative director, Barneys. Photograph: Jason Bell. Interviews by Guy Harrington

Photographs from Jason Bell's series An Englishman in New York will be exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery from 24 August until 17 April 2011. His book of the same title, which contains the portraits and interviews, is published by Dewi Lewis on 15 September

"There’s a tremendous sense of freedom living in Manhattan. I remember when we were opening a small Barney’s outpost in Soho; in a cavalier way I told everyone that I would get a Queen Elizabeth II lookalike to come and cut the ribbon. We didn’t have a huge budget and I couldn’t find one so I decided to do it myself. I dressed up with butt pads, crown, sash, gloves, purse and jewels. I braced myself for the catcalls and the insults, and as I exited the lift into the lobby of my building the doorman said, “Mr Doonan, do you want your mail now or when you come back?” I often think what would I be doing if I’d stayed in England? I’m sure I’d still be on the scarf counter at John Lewis where I started. I failed the eleven plus in England and I always thought of myself as really stupid. Nobody knows that here, so I’ve written four books and a column for the New York Observer"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2010/aug/15/photography-new-york-expats#/?picture=365723393&index=7