Annapaula Freire de Oliveira
Former Community Editor , Europeana Foundation
Europeana at THE ARTS+ 2017: from insights into digital cultural transformation to new creative experiences
- Title:
- Participants during Europeana's GIF-making workshop at THE ARTS+ 2017.
- Copyright:
- CC BY-SA
From 11 to 15 October, Europeana joined cultural institutions, publishing houses, technology companies and other creative minds in Frankfurt, Germany. We were a key partner of THE ARTS+, a creative business festival that takes place during the Frankfurt Book Fair. This year, THE ARTS+ spread across 3,000 square meters, with 54 exhibitors, 120 speakers and 31 partners presenting innovative ideas, projects and services.
During these five days of innovation and inspiration, Europeana championed different areas of interest for creative businesses. In a panel revolving around digitisation, creativity and society, we invited speakers from world-renowned cultural heritage institutions to discuss digital transformation in museums and libraries. We worked on fostering partnerships for reuse of digital cultural heritage at a dedicated stand in THE ARTS+ Business Hub. Finally, we showcased interactive installations that make use of cultural data in innovative ways at a POP-UP museum.
An immersive Pop-Up museum
Hosting nine multimedia art installations at THE ARTS+ Salon during the weekend, the POP-UP Museum enticed fairgoers into experiencing culture beyond the traditional museums.
Europeana Challenge winner Storypix invited the public to engage with artworks in a new way. The installation is built on a technology that allows the display of and interaction with high-resolution images on large screens. Engaging and amusing captions were added to the artworks to inspire new interpretations from the audience.
Public plays with Storypix installation during THE ARTS+ 2017. CC BY-SA Europeana
The Danish digital design studio Space & Time presented four installations which combined culture and interactive technologies: Digie, Interactive work table, Mixoscope and JumpingJack. The JumpingJacks let visitors project their own body transformed by cut-outs from the Europeana 280 artworks onto walls and ceilings, thus creating their own unique, moving artworks.
Europeana also explored the power of multimedia storytelling. We led four GIF-making workshops for beginners at THE ARTS+ POP-UP Museum. GIF-makers, cultural heritage enthusiasts and lovers of the Internet were invited to participate in the GIF IT UP competition - a challenge looking for the best GIFs created from openly licensed material available on Europeana, Digital Public Library of America, DigitalNZ or Trove. Fairgoers learned various ways to create GIFs by using vintage videos, stickers and effects, or playing with colours and exploring movement and transformation. Either by using effects to revive a painting or using a sequence of images to illustrate a transformation, visitors discovered how to tell old-time stories in a few seconds time.
GIF-makers can submit their creations and apply for #GIFITUP2017 until 31 October.
We were thrilled to be part of an event that investigated how Europe’s shared cultural heritage can be used for new creative business projects. Looking forward to the 2018 edition!