EVA CONFERENCES MIRRORING_ REFLECTING _ AMPLIFYING 'CULTURE x ...

EVA CONFERENCES: MIRRORING, REFLECTING &

AMPLIFYING ‘CULTURE x TECHNOLOGY’



James Hemsley*, Vito Cappellini** & Monica Kaayk*



 EVA Conferences International; James Hemsley is also a

Visiting Researcher at the University of Florence

 ** University of Florence



INTRODUCTION

‘EVA’ in a number of European languages is ‘Eve’ in

English, Adam’s wife in the Old Testament. In this paper

however, the word is an acronym (ubiquitous in European

Commission, EC, funded projects) representing ‘Electronic

Imaging & the Visual Arts’. This expression reflects the

origins of digital imaging in the cultural sector in the 1980s

being centred in paintings in particular. Since then the scope

of the international EVA Conferences has broadened and

deepened with each year now over three hundred papers being

presented to some 1,500 participants in 5 – 6 cities across

Europe and beyond with supporting exhibitions and other

events.



This paper focuses on the on the role of the EVA Conferences

in ‘mirroring, reflecting and amplifying’ the remarkable

successes of digital imaging in helping to join the two worlds

of Culture and Technology – often seen as largely

independent of each other - or even opposing. The paper

begins with a brief historical sketch of ‘Culture x

Technology’ from the mid-1980s to the present, with

particular regard to Information & Communications

Technology (ICT) with a concentration on its origins in its

first decade. This serves as a background for a discussion of

the history, nature and role(s) of the EVA Conferences. The

time frame then switches to the future: firstly of ‘Culture x

Technology’ and then the EVA Conferences and their

community of interest before drawing conclusions.



A particularly important issue is that of polycentric

Technology R & D and its diffusion and the importance, even

in the internet age, of face-to-face human contact not only for

diffusion but also its stimulation by assisting in the early

stage ‘trust’ formation in cross-border and cross-cultural

relationships for cooperative projects by groups of institutions

and individuals. Another specific topic of attention is the role

of ‘Culture’ in inspiring Technology R &D. It is not just a

question of Technology from basic research and other more

well funded application fields, including of course, defence,

being applied to a ‘passive’ cultural sector. The latter’s role in

supporting technology progress is still not sufficiently

appreciated.



THE ORIGINS OF ‘CULTURE x TECHNOLOGY’ IN

EUROPE

During the mid -1980s there were four principal strands of

activity in the application of digital imaging technologies to

the field of the visual arts which were to prove decisive:

1. Scientific work in the laboratories of major galleries

and museums such as the National Gallery, London,

and the Central Research Laboratories of the French

National Museums (C2RMF) – supported by some

academic researchers (e.g. at ENST in Paris), using

powerful (for the time!) mini-computers

2. Bold, visionary French efforts employing the still new

but and rapidly improving PC to improve access by

visitors to museum collections.

3. Pioneering use by artists of computers as tools for

artistic creation

4. Early use by art historians for education and research.



The second of these was the first to achieve major public

success in 1986 at the opening of the Musee d’Orsay with the

inclusion of a digital image-based Visitor Information

System. The third strand constituted by individual artists’

efforts proved also to be very promising and is currently the

subject of important art historical archiving research e.g. the

CACHE project on early British computer artists. The fourth

strand including for example William Vaughan’s work in the

mid -1980s on artwork retrieval, the Morelli system, at

Birkbeck College, London University, constituted the first to

our knowledge of a long line of efforts to use ‘intelligent’

systems in the field of culture. The first strand will be

considered in somewhat more detail in this paper since

(together with strand (4)) it was the main line of the first

European Union supported Technology R&D project in the

computer field, VASARI (Visual Arts System for Archiving

& Retrieval of Images), the acronym paying homage to the

great Renaissance figure of Giorgio Vasari, the ‘father of Art

History’. The very positive reception, professional, public,

scientific and political to the British, French, German and

Italian project which was conceived in 1985-1986 and

delivered its main results in 1990 and 1991, including as a

‘spin-out’ activity, the first EVA conference, which was held

in London in 1990.



The successful results of the VASARI project and two

related projects in Telecoms (European Museum Network)

and Multimedia (NARCISSE) convinced the EC that Culture

was indeed a suitable area for financial R&D support, thus

breaking down the previous prejudices of the ‘technology

establishment’ against the field as a potentially driver for ICT

R&D. ‘The rest is history with hundreds of ‘Culture x

Technology’ projects being funded by the EC in the 1990s

and early 2000s with also corresponding support at national

and regional levels in Europe. Significant also were other

developments in the 1990s such as the following:



 In 1992 the Maastricht Treaty brought ‘Culture’ into the

area of activity of the European Commission in general

as regards selected cross-European activities.

 ‘Convergence’ of the previously separate EC R&D

Programmes for Information Technology, Telecoms and

Multimedia and the establishment of a specific R&D

funding line for ICT in Cultural & Scientific Heritage

led by Bernard Smith, amplifying an earlier one

restricted to Libraries.

 The ‘Peace Dividend’ on both sides of the Cold War e.g.

the majority of the Computer Department of a major

Moscow Gallery being from the Defence Industry by

2000. Another example was in Tuscany where a number

of hi-tech companies with defence activities began to get

engaged in ‘Culture x Technology’

 Continuing very rapid technology developments ranging

from the Web to scanner, storage and display

improvements and digital cameras.



Intense interest in Russia and former USSR countries in the

combination of Culture and Technology and the desire for

corresponding links especially with the European Union led

to substantial developments in these countries as evinced at

the first EVA Moscow in 1998. In Japan there was also great

interest but driven by a different combination of forces with

the Consumer Electronics and TV industries playing a key

role in a distinctive ‘Japanese Way’ in the early 1990s, but

later converging with the rest of the developed world. North

America followed a similar path to that of Europe eased by

relative absence of linguistic and cross-border problems, but

without the compensating advantage of EU funding.

In technology management theoretic terms there was thus a

rapid process both of technology development and diffusion

especially in the industrialised countries with regard to the

new ‘Culture x Technology’ field. In this paper the

expression ‘Culture x Technology’ is used to indicate the

reciprocal multiplicative impact of the two fields on each

other.



THE EVA CONFERENCES - A BRIEF HISTORICAL

OVERVIEW

The EVA Conferences since 1990 have mirrored, reflected

and amplified the ‘Culture x Technology’ movement

internationally in a unique manner: by the building of a multi-

site set of events each year. They spread across the European

Union and then in 1998 in North America, Russia and Japan.

In general, each EVA Conference has been locally driven

corresponding to locally determined cultural and scientific

priorities while also taking into account international trends.

Since the first EVA in London in 1990 the cumulative total

number of EVAs reaches 80 with the 10th EVA Moscow

conference, having been held in 25 cities altogether:



 Athens  Los Angeles

 Beijing  Kiev

 Berlin

 Brussels  Madrid

 Cambridge (England)  Montreal

 Cambridge (USA)  Moscow

 Dallas  New Delhi

 Edinburgh New York

 Florence  Paris

 Gifu, Japan

 Glasgow  Prague

 Jerusalem  Thessaloniki

 London  Vienna

 Warsaw



A fuller account of the EVA Conferences’ history is given in

a previous EVA Moscow paper by Hemsley & Duncan. The

ever increasing range of topics covered may be seen from the

Conference Programmes on the various individual conference

web-sites via the EVA London site (although some are

unfortunately no longer maintained). EVA Moscow papers

are however provided in full on their excellent site, a practice

which some other EVAs appear likely to follow

Each year now 5-6 EVA conferences are held with well over

300 papers presented to over 1,500 participants. They begin

each year with EVA Florence in spring followed by the other

three main annual EVA conferences in London (July), Berlin

(November) and Moscow (December), the latter being the

largest reflecting the great interest in ‘Culture x Technology’

in Russia and former USSR countries, notably Ukraine. In

addition, EVA conferences are held in other cities- for

example in Jerusalem now coming up to its fourth annual

conference year and in Vienna in 2006.



‘CULTURE x TECHNOLOGY: FUTURE

PERSPECTIVES & SCENARIOS

The future progress of ‘Culture x Technology’ may be

regarded as a complex process of ‘widening and deepening’.

Firstly let us consider the simpler issue of ‘widening’ based

on polycentric impulses, i.e. diffusion, with regard to

geography, cultural ‘sub-sector’ and societal segments .

‘deepening’ (or perhaps better ‘raising’) is a more complex

issue since the future course of technology developments are

far from certain and so we use a scenario-based approach

taking into consideration Kondratieff’s Wave Theory of

economic progress.

Technology diffusion or widening may be confidently

expected to continue in the cultural sector as long as the

technology is increasingly affordable, cost-effective and

usable. Thus for example, thanks in particular to telecoms

improvements even in the most remote cities of the world,

museums and libraries may be expected to use computers and

the web provided of course that that general socio-economic

development is positive, a caveat that in view of humanity’s

history is unfortunately far from certain. But there is also the

question of rural regions especially in the disadvantaged

countries of the world. ‘Culture x Technology’ may be

regarded as lying in the upper part of Maslow’s famous

Hierarchy of Needs and so for example in the poorer regions

of Africa such as the northern province of Niassa in

Mozambique (country GNP per capita below $1 per day).

Niassa, sometimes termed the ‘Siberia’ of Mozambique - is

still recovering from 25 years of war and is below general

Mozambique ‘wealth’ levels. Now it is also threatened by –

inter alia – the impact of global warning caused largely by the

industrialised and industrialising countries according to many

scientists. Diffusion here will take considerable time although

a positive aspect is the increasing availability of mobile

telephones and television except in the very remote rural

areas and the ‘digital divide’ is starting to be partially

bridged.

However, there are grounds for optimism for diffusion or

‘widening’, regarding the application of ICT to almost every

sub-sector of ‘Culture’ judging by the increasing number of

EVA papers on R&D work in Music, Dance and other

performance-based activities including even Poetry (EVA

2007 London) contrasted with the situation only 7 years

previously. Another illustrative positive aspect of diffusion is

with regard to the case of patients in hospitals. Dreams of one

of the authors while in hospital for a considerable period only

15 years ago that it would one day be possible from one’s bed

to virtually visit the world’s museums for example are now

already a reality even in the UK’s much maligned National

Health Service, e.g. Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey. This

type of widened access and similar improvements for other

disabled people may be expected to become more widely

available in the not too distant future, with the usual caveats

of funding availability for system infrastructure and

equipment.

Thus the ‘ripples’ from stones thrown into the ‘lake’ of

society may be expected to spread outwards, provided that

force majeure of natural or man-made disaster does not occur!

Future ‘widening’ perspectives and scenarios thus differ

primarily in the rate of ‘ripple’ extension.

‘Deepening’ (or better perhaps, ‘raising’) of the technology

side of the formula is more difficult to assess. Here we limit

discussion to just sketching three potential scenarios which

are substantially different:

A ‘Optimistic Scenario’ : ICT continues to develop rapidly

with not only new ‘disruptive’ breakthroughs but also the

effective functioning of the whole chain from R&D to Market

launch followed by diffusion as discussed above. Candidate

technology examples include 3D imaging, Grid technologies,

Haptics for touch and even the senses of taste and smell

looking forward perhaps 20 years. Also on the far horizon are

advances in the area of Intelligent Systems for ‘complex

fuzzy’ fields such as literature and history with significant

advances of such work in the field of music already being

reported and applied.

B ‘Pessimistic Scenario’: Followers of the Kondratieff

Wave Theory are likely to regard economic growth based on

the ICT-powered wave of innovation originating during

World War II as a having peaked in the 1990s , its

weakening marked by the dotcom Boom and Bust around the

year 2000. In this view the ‘low-hanging fruits’ have all been

picked -- and also most of the ‘medium-hanging’ ones as

well with relatively little to be expected from the ‘high-

hanging’ fruits which are either largely very difficult to reach,

or like the Anglo- French Concorde, and its Russian

equivalent, beyond market realities, especially as regards

‘Culture x Technology’ with its very limited financial

resources.

C ‘ Middle Scenario’: Lying between the two above

scenarios such a view is characterised by modest but

continued innovation-based technology development with, in

particular, correspondingly slower major advances in both

ICT in general and in the field of ‘Culture x Technology’ than

have occurred in the last 25 years.

The reader’s own beliefs on general socio-economic –

technology progress are likely to affect his/her views on

which of these three scenarios is most likely to occur.

Nonetheless it does appear reasonable even for the pessimists

to anticipate at least significant diffusion-based impact of

current leading-edge practical technologies. Moreover, the

rise of new industrial powers such as China, India and Brazil

as well as renewed ones, especially Russia, with altogether

many more scientists and engineers being produced than even

by the US that there could well be technology advance

surprises! The technology world is becoming increasingly

polycentric.



EVA CONFERENCES – THE FUTURE

The 80th EVA Conference at the 10th EVA Moscow

Conference is a felicitous coincidence which hopefully augurs

well for the future. Looking ahead to 2008 six EVA

Conferences are already being planned as follows:



 EVA Florence 2008, April 16 – 18

 EVA London 2008, July

 EVA Vienna 2008, August ( a biennial event)

 EVA Berlin 2008, November

 EVA Jerusalem 2008, November (intended to continue

annually)

 EVA Moscow 2008, December

In order to help synergy between these connected but

distinctive events the first general meeting for representatives

from each EVA Conference is being planned to be held at

EVA Florence 2008 as part of the International Workshop on

April 16, 2008.

In 2009 it is hoped that there will again be six EVA

Conferences including – possibly – the first EVA Budapest

being held in August and the continue biennially alternating

with EVA Vienna.

In 2010 there should again be six EVA conferences, assuming

that EVA Vienna continues its targeted biennial production.

At an annual rate of six per year already looking to be a

reasonable expectation, this would mean that just two

additional EVAs in the three year period 2008 – 2010 would

lead to the calculation:



80th in Moscow in 2007 + 3 x 6 + 2 = 100



---i.e. the 100th EVA in such a scenario would be at EVA

Moscow in 2010!



However, it is appropriate to stress that the holding of

additional EVAs and indeed even the continuation of the

current regular annual events are critically dependent upon:

 Financial resources for each.

 Leadership and organizational efforts for each of the

‘decentralised / distributed’ EVA conferences.

Regarding financial resources, each EVA conference needs to

continue to make its own provision as they have all done

since the previous very helpful funding and advice in the late

1990s and early 2000s from the European Commission. This

ceased several years ago and the EVAs were sent on to fly

under their own power, as has so far successfully occurred

thanks to the Chairs and Organizing Groups of each of the

long-standing ones and the new ones in Austria and Israel. In

certain of the cities where EVAs have been held in the past as

listed above, local events have emerged, often inspired by the

example of a one-off EVA conference specially supported by

the EC as part of its general dissemination and promotion

policies. If EC policy changes again then it would be

wonderful for example to see a second EVA Kiev conference.



The first issue is thus critically dependent on the second:

leadership by the Chairs supported by Organisation Group

volunteers from combinations of a diverse range of interested

parties, such as museums, universities, libraries, companies

(large and small), government bodies and others - and

corresponding organizational resources. The crucial factors

for continued success are not only continued commitment by

the key people involved but also-as necessary-by their

replacement by the ‘New Generation’. Fittingly, this has

already been achieved in the case of Eva London, the 2007

Conference being organised by a new triumvirate of Chairs

(Suzanne Keene, UCL); Jonathan Bowen (King’s College)

and Lindsay MacDonald, (LCC, University of the Arts,

London) with the founder now having merely an honorary

role. This transition took three years following the 15th UK

EVA in 2004, the crucial role of Conference administration

and marketing also passing to the three co-chairs and a strong

Organization Group to which Monica Kaayk passed over

these vital aspects. As regards maintaining and enhancing the

linkages between the different EVAs and pursuing future

funding opportunities from the European Commission and

elsewhere to seek joint funding support this should be taken

care of by direct cooperation, beginning at the EVA 2008

Florence meeting of EVA Conference representatives

mentioned above. The batons are being passed on!



We return now to dreams for the future for one of the possible

additional EVAs in 2008-2010 to be held in the Southern

Hemisphere, e.g. Latin America or Australasia and ideally

one in Africa, the Middle East or Asia. Volunteers are

welcome!



CONCLUSIONS

The EVA Conferences and their participants, speakers and

organizers may be seen as playing a role in the ’Global/ Local

Village’ worldview since they constitute a locally/regionally-

driven set of events on the global stage, essentially forming

an international community. Since 1990 they have provided

‘mirrors’ for over 2,000 speakers and hundreds of exhibitors

to help see themselves objectively by peer comparisons,

respectively in the customary scientific and business ways.

Moreover, they ‘reflected’ – including stimulation of

cognitive reflective and even philosophising - and ‘amplified’

their results and messages to both the physical audiences and

readers of the Proceedings, including notably the on-line

versions from EVA Moscow. In particular they have served

to disseminate the results of European projects, including a

number of Russian members, as well as ‘experiences, plans

and dreams’ in ‘Culture x Technology’ from across Europe,

Russia, North America, Japan and also initially at least from

China, India and Israel. As the largest single EVA Conference

and now celebrating its 10th anniversary, EVA Moscow has

made an especially important contribution to our joint

international movement.

A key issue in considering the future of the EVA Conferences

has been identified above as the question of the continued

dynamism of the ‘Culture x Technology’ field. The three

scenarios presented may all be viewed as beliefs or

judgements regarding economic and general societal

development as well as purely technological projections in

the 21st century with its new threats especially of climate

change, dwindling natural resources, still growing population

(except in a small number of countries e.g. Germany and

Italy) and religious ‘clashes of civilisations’. However, it is

our hope that at least a ‘middle’ scenario of ICT, development

will be achieved, and any case there are great challenges and

opportunities in much more widespread global diffusion of

the benefits of ‘Culture x Technology’. Perhaps the most

important one is in helping people to learn about, appreciate

and respect the cultures of other countries and regions –as in

the case of the current rapidly increasing interest in ‘World

Music’. In any case it is our hope that the future EVA

conferences and other events such as the Museums on the

Web conference will continue to act as fora for international

exchange and cooperation in ‘Culture x Technology’ with

beneficial influences extending from the growing intersection

of these two important spheres of human activity to their

respective hinterlands and to the wider societies



Therefore we look hopefully and positively forward to the

100th EVA conference, perhaps as early as 2010 in Moscow;

we trust that such events will continue and also begin to

engage more with other parts of the world, especially the

Southern hemisphere. Such desired developments would

follow the examples in the past five years of China and India

which have begun to become more involved internationally in

‘Culture x Technology’. The University of Florence has

developed (thanks in large part to the EVA conferences)

relationships in China, Japan and Latin America as well as

‘nearer to home’. The strategic role of UNESCO is of course

crucial, but at the grass-roots individual and organization

levels contributions can also be made and the strategic

position of Russia straddling both the Asian and European

continents is especially important and favourable. Thus EVA

Moscow in particular can play an even more important role in

the future ‘mirroring, reflecting and amplifying’ ‘Culture x

Technology’ by continuing to provide opportunities for

people across continents as well as countries to exchange

‘experiences, plans and dreams’ and help build relationships,

cooperative projects and networks in ‘Culture x Technology’.