CHArt announces 25th annual conference in November 2009

OBJECT AND IDENTITY IN A DIGITAL AGE
Thursday 12 - Friday 13 November 2009
Birkbeck, University of London, Clore Lecture Theatre, Clore Management Centre, Torrington Square, London, WC1 7HX.

This year's CHArt (Computers and the History of Art) conference engages with the idea of object and identity in relation to art practice, production, consumption, representation and display. The conference will explore new notions of the identity of the artist, including those involving collaboration and anonymity; new conceptions and ontologies of the art object, as processual, virtual, or hybrid; new means of consumption and reception, whether in galleries and museums, in public spaces, or over networks of broadcast and narrowcast; and the challenges these transformations bring to the display of art and to its curation and access.

Places are limited so early booking is recommended.

The programme and booking form are available at the CHArt website. Bookings made before 1 October 2009 will be entitled to a discount. Conference fees (pounds sterling) include coffee/tea breaks and lunch.


BOOKING FEE
CHArt Member: TWO DAYS £120 (£100 before 1 Oct 2009) CHArt Member: ONE DAY £80 (£70 before 1 Oct 2009)
Non-member: TWO DAYS £160 (£140 before 1 Oct 2009)
Non-member: ONE DAY £110 (£100 before 1 Oct 2009) CHArt Student Member: TWO DAYS £65 £45 before 1 Oct 2009) CHArt Student Member: ONE DAY £45(£35 before 1 Oct 2009) Student Non-member: TWO DAYS £85 (£65 before 1 Oct 2009) Student Non-member: ONE DAY £55 (£45 before 1 Oct 2009)

SVAG member in photo contest win

Congratulations to SVAG member Sanne Dijkstra-Downie of VARIE. Her beautiful photograph from the Edinburgh Cavalcade (left) was printed in the Scottish Metro newspaper as today's winner of their Fringe Framed photography contest! It can also be found on her photography blog.

ARLIS Picture This! cataloguing study day, 9 September

The ARLIS Visual Resources Committee and Cataloguing and Classification Committee jointly present a study day aimed at both library cataloguers of print and electronic publications, who need or wish to find out about how to adapt their skills to visual resources, and at ‘ACADIans’, visual resources curators and anyone responsible for the management and discovery of digital images, whether in HE, Art Colleges, Museums, Galleries or Art Collections.

It will explore approaches to the business of cataloguing images, looking at different metadata schemas, data standards & controlled vocabularies & how these have been applied to real life resources including digital image collections, the moving image, art websites, material in digital repositories, and even primary art objects. Speakers include representatives from the museums world, Higher Education & the JISC.

Further information about the event (including the booking form) can be found from this page on the ARLIS website, or contact Clare Hemmings at C.Hemmings@soton.ac.uk

Draft Programme:

Venue: The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 16 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3JA
Date and time: Wednesday 9th September 2009, 10:00am ­ 4:30pm
Cost, including lunch: £85 ARLIS members; £42.50 ARLIS Students/unwaged
£105 Non-ARLIS members; £65 Non-ARLIS Students; £63.75 Retired members

10:00 - 10:20 Registration/Tea and Coffee
10:20 - 10:30 Welcome and Introduction: Vicky Brown, Chair of ARLIS VRC
10:30 - 11:10 Practical Metadata: John Hargreaves (JISC Digital Media Technical Support Officer)
11:10 - 11:50 Sharing new standards: Building a dual-purpose image collection: Sally Forrest (University of Derby)
12:00 - 12:10 Break
12:10 - 12:40 Cataloguing moving images: describing artists' videos with MARC21: Jacqueline Cooke (Goldsmiths, University of London)
12:40 - 13:30 Lunch
13:35 - 15:20 Case studies including: Enhancing VADS ­ enhancing metadata: Marie-Therese Gramstadt (Visual Arts Data Service), Kultur: Andrew Gray (University of the Arts London), V&A Factory Project: Ella Ravilious (Victoria & Albert Museum), Cataloguing computer art: Honor Beddard (Victoria and Albert Museum), Cataloguing visual resources at the Royal College of Art: Neil Parkinson (Royal College of Art)
Intute: Mary Burslem (Intute)
15:20 - 15:50 Tea/Coffee break PLUS discussion
15:50 - 16:20 The ‘Your Paintings' website: strategies for cataloguing oil paintings for web users: Aimee Blackledge (University of Oxford)
16:20 - 16:30 Goodbye / Sum up: Elizabeth James, Chair of ARLIS C&CC
16:30 End

From Gorbachev to global warming: education experts choose images for JISC Collections archive

Education experts have taken the first steps towards building a JISC Collections archive containing over 500 hours of film and 56,000 photos documenting modern history.

The expert panel consists of e-learning advisors, librarians, academics and image specialists who collectively represent over a hundred years of experience of working with digital images in education, They have chosen 11 collections from ten suppliers to form an archive for students and academics which will be available from next July.

Following £2.5 million in funding from JISC and a competitive procurement process, JISC Collections has licensed the collections for at least 25 years as part of the Digital Images for Education initiative ¹.

The images are copyright-cleared for use in education so they can be reproduced in course packs, virtual learning environments, e-portfolios and other multimedia works.

The selected images bring to life our shared history from a local, UK and international perspectives to support teaching and lifelong learning.

Film clips will be available – from Gorbachev's accession to power in the Soviet Union in 1985 to the financial crisis of 2009, and including powerful raw footage of the 9/11 attacks, as well as coverage of key issues such as deforestation and global warming.

Photographs range from nineteenth-century life in the Scottish Highlands to contemporary youth culture.

Noel Williams, professor of communication at Sheffield Hallam University, commented: "JISC has created what is pretty much a unique resource, exciting in its scope and potential. It touches on the interests of a wide range of subject areas, and contains images which will be of value to both teachers and researchers, and useful in all educational contexts – from colleges through to the highest levels of HE."

The collection will include materials from academic and not-for-profit organisations such as the Royal Geographic Society and the University of Brighton, alongside commercial agencies such as Associated Press, ITN Source and Getty Images.

Lorraine Estelle, CEO of JISC Collections, said: "The new images purchased as part of the Digital Images for Education initiative bring to life our history and capture, in particular, the key events of the past 25 years – from the death of Princess Diana to the election of Barack Obama. The images will complement our existing and highly popular collections – Newsfilm Online, Film and Sound Online and the Education Image Gallery – to provide the UK education community with a world class library of still and moving images covering the last 150 years."

Between now and February, around a terabyte of data will be delivered each month from the content suppliers, which converted to paper would mean the use of 500,000 trees.

Each of the images has to be checked for quality, and extensive metadata tagging is required to optimise searching and browsing facilities. New features will also be built into the destination collections to ensure the tags are helpful for both curators and users of the archive.

SVAG is tweeting!

Hi all,
Just to let you know, SVAG now has a Twitter feed for the postings on our blog - you can find it here and the link is also posted on this blog:
http://twitter.com/scotvisualarts
(unfortunately SVAG was already taken but I hope that name sums it up nicely...)
The photo is negotiable, if anyone has any suggestions you can either contact me directly or leave a comment on the blog... if you forgot the URL, here it is:
http://scottish-visual-arts-group.blogspot.com/
You can always subscribe to the blog if you have a Blogger-compatible (including Google) account, or use the blog's RSS feed:
http://scottish-visual-arts-group.blogspot.com/rss.xml
Onwards and technically upwards!
Cheers,
Paula (SVAG reporting secretary)