South-Eastern European Digitization Initiative

SECOND ANNOUNCEMENT

The First South-Eastern European Digitization Initiative (SEEDI) Conference
DIGITAL (re-)DISCOVERY of CULTURE (PHYSICALITY OF SOUL)
- Playing. Digital -
11 - 14 September 2005, Ohrid, Macedonia


CONFERENCE TOPICS

Suggested Conference topics include, but need not be limited to:

Digital re-Discovery of Dance

  • computer graphics -- modelling the movements of dancers;
  • dance notation languages (e.g., Labanotation), user interfaces for choreographers, editors, etc. ;
  • content-based image retrieval (CBIR);
  • digitization of 3D and 2D archival dance materials.

Digital re-Discovery of Music

  • audio heritage preservation: folklore, music, and oral history collections;
  • digitization of printed musical materials;
  • digital musical libraries;
  • music information retrieval systems.

Manuscripts

  • digitization of manuscripts and presentation of their digital copies;
  • usage of complex metadata formats for structuring manuscripts as electronic documents incl. their texts;
  • building digital libraries for works with manuscripts;
  • creation of virtual research environment for work with manuscripts;
  • communication between digital library applications for enhancement of access to manuscript-related information;
  • digital added-value to study of manuscripts in virtual environment.

Edutainment (playing digital)

  • ludology; playing to learn: games in education and putting play to work in multicultural environments;
  • virtual walks (e.g., museums, libraries, archives);
  • supportive learning experiences; WWW alternative reality gaming; play & games as cultural narratives/environment.
  • play ethics; the rhetorics of play as the "imaginary" and as "adaptive variability",

General Areas Covering All Aspects of - Playing. Digital. -

  • repositories of digital cultural and scientific heritage objects (libraries, archives, museums, etc.) and their management
  • preservation of dance/music heritage
  • metadata issues (cataloguing, indexing and classification of dance/music/ edutainment/manuscripts objects) and metadata standards
  • search and retrieval of digital cultural and scientific heritage objects
  • copyright issues
  • technical issues, e-publication and new technologies etc.

INVITED SPEAKERS

Prof. Dr.Kozaburo HACHIMURA
Department of Media Information
College of Information Science and Engineering
Ritsumeikan University, Japan

Prof. Dr. Kiril Ribarov
Center for Computational Linguistics
Faculty of Mathematics and Physics
Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

Ms. Carol Strohecker
Media Lab Europe
Dublin, Ireland

Dr. Lubomir Kavaldjiev
Institute for Art Studies
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria

CONTRIBUTIONS

Contributions are invited for the categories of papers and posters. Authors are invited to submit extended abstracts of their contributions as attachments in PDF via email to ncd@matf.bg.ac.yu and cdnn@ii.edu.mk (subject line: Ohrid 2005, submission). Authors of the accepted papers and/or posters are expected to send the final full versions of their contributions and to attend the conference and make oral presentations.

Extended Abstracts Submission

The extended abstract should contain title, name(s) of author(s), address(es), and e-mail address(es), a few keywords describing the topic, and a description of the major theme of the paper or poster in English. The length of abstracts should be 1000 to 1500 words.

IMPORTANT DATES

Submission of extended abstracts: June 15th, 2005
Acceptance notification: June 25th, 2005
Camera ready copy due: August 15th, 2005
Registration: July 15th, 2005

PRESENTATIONS AND CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

The invited speakers will be given 60 minutes and the author(s) of accepted papers will be given 30 minutes for their presentation including a 10-minute Q/A period.

Extended abstracts will be published in the Conference Book of Abstracts. Presented papers, selected after a review by the international editorial board, will be published in the Conference Proceedings as a separate volume of the Review of the National Center for Digitization, Serbia and Montenegro (http://www.ncd.matf.bg.ac.yu/?page=publications&lang=en).

Posters selected by the Program Committee will be displayed in a special area at the Conference and discussed immediately after the respective session.

The official conference language is English.

CONFERENCE LOCATION

Ohrid, Macedonia, is a jewel of the South Eastern "European" region. < http://www.ohrid.com.mk/angliska verzija/Macedonia.htm>. It is centrally situated with respect to the peoples of the Balkan region concerning history, culture and art and also to the neighboring peoples in all points of the compass with whom it has been engaged over centuries. Ohrid is a regional multicultural centre, an ideal place in which to (re)start a re-discovery process of the Other. It is therefore a fitting place to launch the first International Conference on the DIGITAL (re-)DISCOVERY of CULTURE (PHYSICALITY OF SOUL).

All of the Conference activities will be in Hotel "Inex-Gorica"-Ohird http://www.inexgorica.com. The Hotel "InexGorica" is in a walking distance from the City of Ohrid (about 3 km, 40 minutes). The full board prices are: 40 euro one bed room, 33 euro two beds room. The hotel can be rich from the Ohrid Bus Station by taxi (the faire price is 2-3 euro, bargain with the taxi driver). For room reservation and other possible accommodations refer to "Biser Travel" agency, BISERTR@hotmail.com or BISERTR@hotmail.com (subject line: SEEDI Conference Ohrid).

One can arrive in Ohrid by plane, the Ohrid Airport is about 15 km from the hotel, by bus or by car. Since the flies to/from Ohrid are not so often, one can fly (or take a train) to Skopje Airport (Skopje Railway Station) and then continue by bus. There will be organized a bus transportation from Skopje to Ohrid on September 10, and from Ohrid to Skopje on September 15. More details will be given on the third announcement, or refer to cdnn@ii.edu.mk (subject line: SEEDI travel).

THE CONFERENCE FEE AND FINANCIAL SUPPORT

The conference fee is 100 euro. It includes: Conference Book of Abstracts, Conference Proceedings, Conference excursion, Conference dinner, tickets for visiting cultural monuments and museums, local transportation in Ohrid, other cultural venues.

The organizer applied for financial support and if the answer is positive, the reduction of the hotel prices, the conference fee and traveling support is possible. If you need any kind of support please refer to cdnn@ii.edu.mk (subject line: SEEDI support). The possible support will be distributed by the FIFO principal (first-in-first-out).

REGISTRATION FORM

Please, send the registration form by e-mail to cdnn@ii.edu.mk (subject line:SEEDI registration) or by regular mail to:
   Prof. Smile Markovski
   SEEDI Conference
   Institute of Informatics, p.f. 162
   Skopje, Macedonia
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REGISTRATION FORM

Name:
Affiliation:
Address:
e-mail:
Do you intend to give a talk:
Tentative title:
Do you need a support:
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Visas: Please inform yourself for need of Macedonian visa http://www.mfa.gov.mk/upload/dokumenti/VizenRezim2003.doc

SEEDI

SEEDI ( http://www.ncd.matf.bg.ac.yu/seedi/index.html) is an effort to develop awareness about digitization of cultural and scientific heritage in the South-Eastern European countries and to bring together researchers having similar scientific and practical interest in digitization and to support cooperation between them.

Culture arises pre-eminently out of playing, education and research. By "playing" we mean the way human creativity expresses itself throughout history. Activities such as dancing, singing, "edutainment" (education through entertainment) and scientific research, and the products associated with them constitute the backbone of the cultural and scientific heritage. The World-Wide Web (WWW) brings people together digitally and creates a force for cultural re-vitalization among local and global communities. In addition to "playing digital" through the WWW, the actual presence and practical outcome (the "physicality of soul") is also necessary to breathe life into culture and civilization.

Dancing and singing is a total physicality of soul experience. So is edutainment, which uses the principle that all humans learn by playing and that learning can be fun and serious at the same time. Writing and creating manuscripts is also a work of soul and belongs to the realm of playing. Thanks to the development of digitization techniques and the availability of high-speed networking services, the creativity of humans embodied in digital cultural and scientific objects can be shared world-wide.

The digitization of cultural and scientific heritage and its transmission to next generations in the form of digitized dance, music, edutainment, and research materials (e.g., manuscripts) has been of interest to many people with different professional backgrounds. Repositories of digitized resources include not only film, video or audio tapes and notation scores of dance/music performances, educational games, and manuscripts but also photographs, posters (of costume and set designs), press clippings, scrapbooks, 3D artifacts, etc. Dancers, musicians, composers, costume and set designers; computer scientists studying motion capture, analysis, and retrieval of dance patterns, musical pieces and images; developers of different notation systems, software tools, modeling languages, and instructional programs to digitize 3D and 2D dance/music/edutainment materials and manuscripts for archival purposes; content producers, librarians, archivists, museologists; art researchers, manuscripts scholars, dance/music professors, and scientists in general are among the major stakeholders of these repositories who are concerned with preservation of and perpetual access to digital objects contained therein.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

The Conference will be of particular interest to all those engaged in the Digital Preservation of, Access to and Exploitation of Cultural and Scientific Heritage:

  • Scholars in the arts and humanities, social sciences and history doing research on digital cultural heritage objects;
  • Computer scientists and information technology researchers developing such digital projects;
  • Archivists, librarians and curators responsible for the preservation of and permanent access to digital cultural and scientific heritage;
  • Students and young researchers wishing to share their ideas with distinguished experts and their colleagues; and
  • The intellectually curious.

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE

Programme Chair:

  • Smile Markovski, smile@ii.edu.mk Institute of Informatics, Faculty of Sciences, Skopje, Macedonia

Programme Committee Members:

  • De Francesco, Giuliana, defrancesco@beniculturali.it, Minerva project, Ministry for cultural heritage, Roma, Italy
  • Ikonomov, Nikola, nikonomov@ibl.bas.bg, Institute for Bulgarian Language, Sofia, Bulgaria
  • Knoll, Adolf, Adolf.Knoll@nkp.cz, Deputy Librarian, National Library, Prague, The Czech Republic
  • Kostovska, Vesna, istorijanamj@yahoo.com, Institute of History of Macedonian Language, Skopje, Macedonia
  • Mac An Airchinnigh, Micheal, mmaa@eircom.net , Department of Computer Science, University of Dublin, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
  • Mijajlovic, Zarko, zarkom@eunet.yu , Faculty of Mathematics, Belgrade, Serbian and Montenegro
  • Ognjanovic, Zoran, zorano@mi.sanu.ac.yu , Mathematical Institute of Serbian Academy of Science and Arts
  • Sotirova, Kalina, kalina@cc.bas.bg, Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Sofia, Bulgaria
  • Tonta, Yasar, tonta@hacettepe.edu.tr, Department of Information Management, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey

For additional information, please contact Programme Chair, Smile Markovski, smile@ii.edu.mk