Archiving Intangible Cultural Heritage & Performing Arts: A Symposium and Summer School for Living Traditions – 6-7 August 2018

Motion capture and display of kung fu

6-7 August 2018

EPFL campus, Lausanne, Switzerland

Download a full copy of the program here.

Overview:
The documentation, reproduction and presentation of immaterial cultural forms (ICH) pose significant theoretical and technological challenges. Ephemeral traditions (e.g. performances or rituals) require cultural scholars, technologists, artists and scientists to work together with communities to develop new methods for sustaining and enlivening ICH. The symposium examines strategies for encoding, retrieving and re-enacting intangible heritage in ways that allow these archives to be ‘alive’ in the present, bringing together historical materials with creative visualizations derived from advanced documentation processes including motion capture, motion-over-time analytics, 3D reconstruction, and panoramic and high-speed video. Exposing the potential to revivify cultural heritage, these digital archival materials also form the basis for new curatorial opportunities and public engagement strategies. These ‘living archives’ may be re-interpreted and re-performed through the mediums of augmented and virtual reality and interactive media art, utilizing new immersive and interactive display paradigms to perpetuate the performances for future generations.

This Symposium and Summer School is stimulated by a growing worldwide interest in Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) and performance studies. The gathering brings together world leaders in the research, documentation, preservation and public engagement with ICH through digital means. It intends to stimulate interest and advance discussion through more than a dozen seminal speakers, all leaders in the field of performing arts and ICH.

The aims are to:

  • explore new models for data curation of intangible cultural heritage and tools for its dissemination

  • engage with new strategies for the ‘re-enactment’ of living archives for public audiences

  • create innovative tools and opportunities for technology transfer

  • stimulate the network of digital intangible heritage practitioners across Switzerland and the world.

The gathering is co-located with a new major exhibition at EPFL’s ArtLab, Kung Fu Motion: The Living Archive (27.04-26.08.2018). This exhibition focuses on the preservation of the intangible cultural heritage of Hakka Kung Fu, bringing together archival materials re-interpreted and re-performed through the mediums of augmented virtual reality and interactive media art.

Chaired by:
Prof. Sarah Kenderdine, Professor of Digital Museology, Director of the ArtLab, EPFL.
Dr. Nicholas Crofts, International Olympic Committee, ICOM-CIDOC.

Organization:
Dr. Lisandra (Lia) Costiner in collaboration with the eM+, ArtLab team.

Keynote and Guest Speakers:

Prof. Sarah Kenderdine, Professor of Digital Museology and Director of the ArtLab, EPFL, Switzerland

Prof. Lorenzo Cantoni, UNESCO Chair in ICT to develop and promote sustainable tourism in World Heritage Sites, Universita della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland

Prof. Dr. Manvi Seth, Professor and Head of the Dept. of Museology, National Museum Institute, India

Prof. Jeffrey Shaw, Chair Professor of the School of Creative Media, City University, Hong Kong

Prof. Hyojung Cho, Associate Professor of Heritage Management, Heritage and Museum Sciences Program, Museum of Texas Tech. University, U.S.A

Dr. Georges Favraud, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France

Mr. Norbert Kanter, Managing Director, Zetcom Informatikdienstleistungen, Germany

Mr. Hing Chao, Founder and Executive Director of the International Guoshu Association, Hong Kong and Hong Kong International Kung Fu Festival (2017), Founding Chairman of Hakka Kung Fu Culture Research Society, Hong Kong

Dr. Daniel Jaquet, Morges Castle and its Museums, Switzerland

Dr. Harald Kraemer, Associate Professor, City University, Hong Kong

Dr. Alain Dufaux, Montreux Jazz Digital Project, Metamedia Center, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland

Prof. Peng Lin, Professor of History and Manager of the Centre for Chinese Ritual Studies, Tsinghua University, China

Dr. Felix Rauh, Deputy Director of MEMORIAV, Switzerland

Dr. Birk Weiberg, Swiss Archive of the Performing Arts, Switzerland

Dr. Nicholas Crofts, Reference Ontology Administrator, Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage, Switzerland

Dr. Guido Raschieri, Ethnomusicologist and Founder of the Museo del Paesaggio Sonoro, Italy

Dr. Florence Graezer Bideau, Senior Lecturer and Senior Scientist, Institute for Area and Global Studies, EPFL, Switzerland

Dr. Hanna Hölling, Lecturer in the History of Art and Material Studies, University College London, U.K.

Dr. Sixt Wetzler, Deputy Director, Klingenstadt Solingen (Blade Museum), Germany

Historical European Martian Arts Performances by:

Opera Nova School, Botticino, Italy

Mr. Roberto Grotti, Mr. Iacopo Penso, and Mr. Moreno dei Ricci

motion capture of kung fu logo