LivingArchiveWorkshop1Minutes

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1 Minutes / Notes from a Workshop towards a public digital infrastructure for knowledge representation
2 Tuesday 29th November 2005, Beursschouwburg, Brussels.

[edit] Minutes / Notes from a Workshop towards a public digital infrastructure for knowledge representation

Monday 28th - Tuesday 29th November 2005, Beursschouwburg, Brussels.

images from Eric Georges and Mark Saunders

[edit] Introduction: What are Living archives?

Collections of text, maps, audio, video and other media generated by our projects and research that are catalogued and made useful and accessible in the long term, both to those who originate the material and to others.

Many of the groups and projects represented at this meeting have archives, although few of them have been made available online, and no large scale collaborations or archive sharing projects have been tried yet.

Living archives are of public interest, providing material or documenting events and processes that are otherwise invisible to official sources of historical and archival authority. They are also subjective, specific to the practices of each group, individual and project which produces and catalogues the material in the archive.

By sharing simple technical standards and techniques, developing technologies, tools and practices in a collaborative way, it becomes possible to turn a collection of idiosyncratic living archives into a public information infrastructure.

This interlinked living archive could be considered as a federation of independent projects with shared Living archives, something that already exists in fragments on the Internet.

This first meeting introduced a group of people to each other, and sketches out some of the projects initially under discussion about their archives and needs.

Keywords: collaborative mapping, living archives, archival sharing & exchange, living memory, public domain, public information infrastructures, cultural economies.

[edit] 1. General Introductions to people and projects:

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Saul Albert, Distributed Library Project: http://dlp.theps.net
- interested in the problems and potentials of bringing together radically different collections, with idiosyncratic cataloguing systems and indices.

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Stephanie: from Syndicat d'initiatives:

 http://www.syndicat-initiatives.org

- recording spaces in the city, project about urban conflicts covering Grenoble and Bordeaux, needs a database, wants to make a collaborative map including people's first hand accounts, maybe photos.

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Yves Degoyon: Indymedia network: http://mapomatix.sourceforge.net
- free software developer and activist
- does a yearly event, linking Tarifa and Tangiers with a Wireless Link, education and workshops dealing with technology and political/technological borders
- currently working on psygeowiki, an Open Source cartographic wiki for publishing indymedia's information spatially represented - social software for collaborative information sharing.

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Annemie: from Okno, Code 31, other groups: http://www.okno.be
- art, technology, public space.
- thinking about a hybrid semantic web / wiki tool for inter-group collaboration and Okno's own activities.
- currently developing a website for documenting projects, relaying constant live and archived streams.

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Mariano: from Citymin(e)d Barcelona: http://www.citymined.org/
- works as a network of urban collectives, requires their own repository of planning data: equivalents of official urban planning / government data.
- identifies with squat movement, activists, artists, academics.
- project: L-Atlas aims to build an international city-to-city network of information, a digital platform for up to 40 collectives from Barcelona to London to work together
- requires something long term, open (sharable), starting from their own researches and knowledgebase in Citymin(e)d.

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Erik: Reseau Citoyen Brussels: http://www.reseaucitoyen.be
- a free wireless network in Brussels, with about 40 wireless devices on rooftops
- in contact with different related groups in other cities (ie. Lille).
- require a more uesful archive, joint function of a website, a wiki and a wireless network map and node database.
- question: 'now we have our own network, what are we going to do with it?'

Stijn: Traject - art education org: http://www.traject-trajet.com
- Children record their way from home to school, in audio and video. Combination of uploads of one child with material from other children, combining impressions.
- Connections with Duinkerke, Zeeland and Lille.
- Wants to cross borders with the same theme, namely communicating image and sound. Keywords, index: name of the person, future plans: visual scores, drawing sounds

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Sofie: Citymin(e)d Brussels, Barcelona and London:

 http://www.citymined.org/

- projects in public spaces as well as producers and support.
- a network as large and diverse as possible
- consider public space as the last non-segregated space
- INI: mapping of urban intervention, intentional or not, started with six artists and a suggestive map of intervention in the city and they need tools to work this out

Geert: Victoria Deluxe, Ghent: http://www.victoriadeluxe.be : http://www.tvdeluxe.be
- artistic processes with vulnerable groups of people, on the verge of society,
- a chance to tell their stories, through stage performances, but now also digital. E.g. TV Deluxe, local television station, resulted in a site with movies and clips.
- Other projects:
  - "Stadsuniversiteit": a series of courses made public through streaming and archived as on-demand view. >> www.tvdeluxe.be
  - The "Look again-project" : the context is in a 'last chance' vocational school giving people their first practical encounter with digital tools and how they see or want themselves to be represented through multimedia/web-sites etc.

Naming of streams are inspired by the project's name.  www.lookagain.be

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Laia: from Rotorr, Barcelona: initiative practicing urban exploration http://www.rotorr.org
- Physical activities with intuitive approach to research The research so far is put into graphical maps and diagrams. Rotor wants to put this information onto the Internet. So far archives are divided in different volumes and are categorized by physical actions (to jump, crawl,.) etc.
- Want to make an open archive categorized by locations and urban elements for collaborative indexing and contribution.

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Kobe: visual artist, "quasi-creations", (URL MISSING)
- Makes creations which from legal points of view are not considered creation, or are considered in the margins of art. E.g. walking in the city, creating places which are not on maps, feeding wild animals,

     zones for sexual encounters. Research is largely image-based and
     requires some kind of database/archival process.

Marie Yves: from Cinemanova and Vox, Brussels, volunteer-run

 film-institution : http://www.nova-cinema.com/

- works around themes through films and debates.
- Volunteers work as a collective, horizontal structure without directors.
- Vox is an initiative of Cinemanova.
- is interested in the possibility of making films, videos, transmitting and sharing knowledge.
- currently have a website about activities, programmes etc, nothing about the ethos or pragmatics and internal functioning of group.
- 20 seconds of each film is available on the website, not for download.

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Eloisa: from a young Architect group, Brussels. (URL MISSING)
- project: common database for open source tools used on an everyday basis.
- Architects need other people, skills experiences, and tools to facilitate this.
- Create tools that help more sustainable development work.
- possibly thinking of an online archive of how to organize drawings, projects, materials, share resources, skills etc.

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Anne: from Zinneke, Brussels: http://www.zinneke.org/
- Organize a festive parade on a biannual basis, lots of organizations in Brussels work together with artists to make temporary creations, the network is based in poorer neighborhoods but covers most parts of the Brussels Region.
- Offer a common platform to social and cultural initiatives, restore social tissue between them/citizens, bring people/areas who are stigmatized in the media with a positive image.
- During the year groups prepare by creating costumes, learning to dance, different groups always collaborate in some way, work together.
- Archive would help shift the focus from the event only to the process, which is never seen by the media coverage.
- Interested in developing experimental laboratories: radio workshops, shared photos and videos of preceeding workshops, recycling materials, ideas growing out of collaborations.
- New website online in December with pages about each area of Brussels, but the media is not yet accessible, so far only web-logos represent presence of each group.
- Archival issues: current keywords system is limited, there are issues with copyright, pictures, sounds, films and documentary achives.
- People are reluctant to engage on this level. Perhaps a common project for the city could grow organically from a small initiative.

Antje: Brussel Nous Apartient/Brussel Behoort Ons Toe:

 http://www.bna-bbot.be/

- Basic idea: everybody can get a minidisk and record a conversation with someone who lives in Brussels today.
- In 2000 BNA/BBOT gathered 300 conversations
- People inventing the keywords themselves to enter into the database, there's no external control over that.
- The project has to serve to create a new image of Brussels much closer to its inhabitants.
- Do collaborations with social and artistic groups.
- Now there are 850 conversations, about 1 hour long each.
- Everything is online with people's subjective keywords
  - problem: keywords are not linked at all, no categorized system or multi-lingual keyword translation.
- Conversations are divided into separate tracks, separately keyworded (still subjective, unlinked)
- BNA/BBOT is still searching for categories to link stories somehow.
- database feels pretty much ready except for categorization, but there's no more funding for the web project at this point.
- Ideally, categorization should be emotional, subjective, as is the rest of the archive.
- There are vague plans for mapping, there's a pinboard map already in the office showing locations of interviewee's houses..
- There are also access/privacy issues that need to be addressed in the archive that need to be addressed.

Sandra: media archivist for V2: http://v2.nl
- Cultural organization with a formal archive online, historical documentation of their projects.
- Classification system on types of artworks and on people. Keywords modelled on a standard Art Thesaurus.
- Taxonomical systems are only top down, at this stage there's no feedback from users.
- Undertaking tesearch on participatory media and website in Jan Van Eyck Academy. Looks at tools, design decisions, use of specific technologies, tagging,. and wants to share the ideas.

Pierre: Radio Swap: exchange platform for radio stations: http://radioswap.ulb.ac.be/default.php
- free support for non-commercial community based stations
- eg: Radio Panic, Brussels,.. Resonance FM,
- Stations want to make program sharing possible between the different radio stations, through web databases.
- Have developed and prepared a complex indexing scheme - keywords between radio stations in different languages, as well as an attempt to develop a unified keyword list.
- What was needed was a working programme exchange tool - indexing etc. was secondary, but is planned (although funding has run out)
- Problems: radio programmes are comprised of complex material, owned by many different parties, so final version of swap radio has to be specific to that problem, more complex, specifying sample types, ownership etc.
- plan: metadata shold be universally accessible to all, samples perhaps restricted based on copyright.
- first version of taxonomy tool for radio swap didn't work - clunky interface and not enough testing from outside radio stations, also not enough incentive.
- aside: podcasting = waste of bandwidth.

Bjorn: Beursschouwburg, Brussels: http://www.beursschouwburg.be/
- art centre, platform for a lot of different artists with particular interests in the city.
- Social artistic projects:
  - Urban Survival Kid: in collaboration with other organizations, mapping the city from the perspective of children. Interactive website, with green flags for nice places and red flags for not so nice places.
  - Remap Brussels: (with Transmedia students) people taking pictures off the city, make an interface, and post them on a website. Comments can be added. The basic idea is there but still looking for a programmer to develop this idea and make it work.

Mark: Spectacle, London, http://www.spectacle.co.uk/
- keep an archive of grass roots video production and urban struggles an that goes back to the 80's.
- approx 1000 hours of material, video, two thirds of it analogue.
- Work with various groups in London, Brussels, Florence, Amsterdam, Rostock, Athens to encourage and support people to take media direct action, community-based investigatigative journalism, producing new information and counter-information.
- Logging and archiving is important postproduction, and they want to make it available and usable.
- Do not have the money nor the time to put everything on the internet.
- Also working with PTTL-video group, Brussels: http://www.pttl.be/ on ActiveArchive project
- ActiveArchive project searching best way groups can share their material, edit material and co produce across geography.
- Sharing their knowledge about video activism, technical and political, what works, what doesn't.
- Currently still physically moving archival material around, but part of production process is accumulation of information, every production is an archive.
- PTTL wants to allow people to rework the archive many times.

Els: Firefly, an artist collective that wants to narrow the gap between

 art and social life and is based around neighbourhoods and people:
 http://fireflyfilms.be

- Each project is a large archive
- For example: The Return of the Swallows, based in the Brussels area of Anneessens.
- Participation generated a labyrinth of video material, hard to put into a database.
- The archive as such is organized by a timeline instead of keywords which gave the possibility to enter drawings and text too.
- Only 10% of participants were interested in using the internet. So they created the 'Swallows Nest' the videos physically travel around so people can see them.
- The problem is still how to make the archiving sufficiently

     subjective / free flowing.

Graham: Mongrel, London: http://mongrelx.org
- works with marginalized communities, mongrels.
- recent project: 9 - http://9.waag.org/, a website where people can simply contribute text, images about their life, grouped together.
- uses visual language and keywords instead of generic categorization

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Dirk: Intermediary for art and new media technology, documenting, bringing people together, advising ministry, stimulates sharing between artists and other groups.

NB: Others joined on following days, but are not recorded here because they didn't introduce themselves formally!

[edit] 2. What are living archives?

Collections of text, audio, video and other media generated by our projects and research that are catalogued and made useful and accessible in the long term, both to those who originate the material and to others.

By sharing simple technical standards and techniques, developing technologies and practices in a collaborative way, it becomes possible to turn a collection of idiosyncratic living archives into a public information infrastructure.

This interlinked living archive could be considered as a federation of independent projects with shared living archives, something that already exists in fragments on the Internet.

This first meeting introduced a group of people to each other, and sketches out some of the projects initially under discussion about their archives and needs.

[edit] 2.1 Issues identified for discussion relating to Living Archives:

Access: meaning both physical and digital, to data and to metadata,

 addressing multiple modes of access (web, TV, radio, paper).

Interchange: formats and metadata standards, ways of sharing

 information and intention, skills and techniques as well as data.

Annotation and re-annotation: ways of adding and editing metadata:

 keywords or categorisations and re-categorisations, translations and
 semantic associations to data.

Provocation: intention, the reason for making the archive and

 activating it, also provocation, feedback, reaction.

Sustainability: mitigating risks to archives that are dependent on

 independent projects, how do archives survive their
 projects/organisations? How is access provided and maintained?

Legal aspects: Is this important now, or something to worry about later

 (reactively), ownership, legacy, remuneration, collective and
 individual ownerhsip of material in archives, lisencing etc.

[edit] 2.3 Comments and discussions on living archives:

Kobe: a book or a film can be an archive, but a library is not a format

f expression where a book is. Here it is important that the archive also

is a form of expression opposed to traditional archives of libraries.

Mark: Value of collected material for other people's use. The value of keeping or collecting. It is important that people produce information that has a future use. That's the active part of it.

Eloisa: literacy is important. Difficulty to understand internet, coding,. Trying to find the simplest tools, broad public access.

Anne: collectivity, how to manage an archive with unlimited access. Graham: 400 people participating, but they hang things in it and leave. The relationship between their work and what others do did not attract so much. An archive should be a search of how one's work relate to others. As you add the larger picture changes. Generative archive.

Sandra: Moderation and mediation. What kind of role do you play? Flat system or different levels of identification?

Dirk: performative potential of archive?

Kobe: in library standardized system of archive.

Saul: Infrastructure; archive dependent on how it is accessed. More like a road than like a library. Building an infrastructure for distribution.

Dirk: differences between data and knowledge.

Saul: urban planning and regeneration in London and England. Use of archives in public consultation and generating counterexamples. How history archives have been used. Limehouse is an area of London with rich historical archives about the docks of London, cultural mixes, property development. Now used as a template around the world. Through oral history programmes, cultural memory, along with land use is enclosed

wned by property developers. The East London Federation of Historical

Societies attempted to bring together old and new agencies in this area. The archive was appropiated by new funding agencies. History presented as lost and forgotten past. Useful for cultural tourism, negative impact

n the struggles and debates on the actual, contemporary problems of the

neighbourhood. No connection between current wave of regeneration, slum clearance and what happened in the 80's. It is important to bring past struggles back into the contemporary debate and contestation. The body of knowledge is held captive, and there aren't sets of counterexamples. Exploring working with people in Mumbai or Singapore in order to heighten relevance of archive. Transposition.

LUNCH

Saul: Representation of and within an archive. Problems: e.g. speaking on somebody's behalf, politics of representation,. Independent media.

Graham: key problem of Nine: lots of illiterate people, so visual interface, people represented through pictures. Representing archives through pictures, images is widening the access. Need to lock down archives by specific persons, group owner, map owner, etcetera, so a permission structure which resulted to be a disaster. They should have left it open. If a problem about permission would have risen, then it would have been a real problem to be tackled at the moment.

Mark: Consent with the person who does the interview. They do not insert unedited material. Trying to find a balance. Absurd example of Channel Four: web clips with consent, contracts given to the parents of children who had to be interviewed, with consent to edit the material forever and in any mode possible. In the end, it's all based on trust.

Antje: our procedures: contracts signed by interviewers and interviewees, with name etcetera and with their consent to let the material be put in the database. We started to split it up between applications on tv, radio, internet, database,. but it was too confusing for the people so we do not split it up anymore. But if somebody else wants to use it, another artist, they ask permission and we invite the interviewees to listen to the radio show there recordings are used in, to come to the theatre, or whatever. Next to this there is a contract for the artist or the scientist,. they are asked to sign the contract which says that they stand behind the goals of Brussels belongs to us, no use in advertising, nor for a political party. Other people have to respect the material. Creative commons licence is used

n the conversation. So if you go into the database, you know that the

people who speak always are the owners of their words. The works of the artists are considered their own, but it is a kind of shared ownership with Brussels Belongs to us and with the interviewees. Creative commons licence: the parts of the interviews can be put in another creative commons licence, but we do not have copyrights of anything. They have to keep on put our name on it.

Saul: Creative commons licence: non commercial, sharing work, attributions, non-derivative, etcetera

Antje: Brussels belongs to us: Non-commercial, attribution, use is ambiguous cause people can use and transform it, but they have to ask it before they do it.

Geert: Tv Deluxe: video clips first in public space, then on the site. Most music copyright protected. Deal with Sabam for a year. Pictures and archive: freely given at everybody and ask to put name of TV Deluxe with it, if you give pictures for free names are rarely put, if people pay for it they do.

Dirk: Using images can get you into court if you use them without permission of the owner. But the legal system does not work so well, and there are not examples of such cases.

Mark: Practical ways to deal with it: We never get credited. We do watermarking. One of the powers of media is the choice how and when to use it. We have non-commercial relationships with the people we work with. You can always negotiate about permission. We have used copyright law to empower ourselves.

Saul: You can use a Creative common licence and sell permissions, you still can use it to bring an income. Trust is the real concern. How is trust maintained when you share your material? Is your cost exponentially increased by the distribution?

Dirk: There's also context. Not only permission, also context of how it was made, staying in contact with the producer. The context needs to be explained in the net. How do you stay in touch with someone who is recreating, dialogue.

Antje: Systematically we tell people what they can and cannot do if they go into this database. People have to come and ask us a login and a password to be able to get into the database. We hope not to lose contact because of web sharing.

Anne: Lots of images of people who do not know they are on it. E.g. people

n the pictures who are illegal,. and get into trouble because of the

pictures.

Antje: Brussels belongs to us: Relationship between the structure of database which is complex and hard, and the participation of people. Everybody does it as he or she feel it is best. The interviewees give the keywords and the context. It is important that they follow some sort of guideline. Tension between precision and the general context. The objective is that it can be subjective, but also of use for everybody.

Pierre (Radio): People in registration have to be in a similar relationship to trust, to give their work away. For most people it is quite alright to share their work. Digital media created a kind of paranoid idea of control, but nothing really has changed so much. People always had to be ready to give their work to the world.

Saul: Immense amount of commercial propaganda of control. But relationships between groups, associations between people who are organizing all sorts of things,. Some people depend on invisibility to continue their work. Positive articulation of trust can mean more or less visibility.

Mark: There has been a change. Collecting images has changed, and augmented in quality, there has been a shift and you have to be careful with your images.

Eloisa: Structures around networks. Archives who align different networks. When you combine different networks with different categories, what

bstacles, common grounds between different users.

Mariano: Several international standards on annotation. Use them or keep closer to the users and build our own categories? Dublin Core: international standard for artistic categories, and categories which are made by community itself (tagging);

Saul: Dublin Core: part of a network, very grammatical structure; Grammatical structure is essential if you want to combine different categories.

Victoria Deluxe: Droopall system is what we used, but maybe there are other

pen source systems. Droopall is like a blog where people can plug in to

assign keywords, it is basically a content manager system.

Sandra: V2 used MMbase but it is quite restrictive. We translated our info to Rdf and xml. We do not want to be so dependent on specific programs, so we can use it in more forms. MMbase is open source, has a large user basis.

Yves: Droopall is free content manager system, of 20 developers, very modular, lots of info-adding modules, close to wiki, edit and publish information. Why is everybody so interest in open source? Out of cost, or to modify?

Victoria: Modification, free and also something ethical to support the movement.

Eloisa: the aspect of cost is very important. And the proximity to the developers of small parts of programs

Anne: We only have ethical reasons. Open source takes a lot of time when you are working with a lot of people and a large public. Finances we can solve.

Eloisa: many people do not know about it, there is also a kind of pioneering part of it.

Annemie: Public organizations. Different levels: communication level and a working tool, how to combine both levels in a useful way?

Dirk: With a login for some and others not, or leave it open

Saul: When activating a set of archives, attempt to make the same tool for access and administration, that everything is pushing in the same direction.

Mark: Specific video: final cut pro: You have to log it, index it. You can export this databases so that other controllers can read them. Instead of fighting it, we have to think about how to input data only once, to gain time and resources. For me archiving is a by-product, all other experiences are interesting.

Wendy: Website for a museum in SPIP, open source, users of the museum can use it in all different ways, integrating the whole past of the museum, use it, accounts, web shops, posters, publication, bibliography.

Annemie: I think the problem is the different public, the small group of insiders and the larger public. The last ones always complain that they cannot find anything on the site, so maybe two tools is the only solution.

Anne: we have 15 persons and everyone complains of too many mails, so we got intranet, but only few people use it, you have to educate people.

Laia: Sustainability. Places disappear. Funding stops. We tried to offer the area to the historical patrimony of Pablonau(?). People should have access.

Geert: Victoria Deluxe: our website is a ongoing process, based on feedback. It's basic, clean and sober, so we did not get any problems of accessibility. We are depending on 3 different providers which causes problems of cost, bandwidth, open source support, technical problems, .

Laia: Problems of migrating databases.

Eloisa: how does the illiteracy of your public influence your archive management?

Eric: wiki is very messy and nobody can find anything. We use a map. Everybody can link everything, so at the end you cannot find anything. We do not moderate. There aren't any rules, it is not really ideal. We have a 100 regular users.

Stijn: We have already three schools. The data is translated from one program to another and put onto the internet. We want the children and even the teachers to do it. Teachers are scared, children trial and error. We looked for an universal language to reach all types of children, now we use sounds as another type of literacy. Something teachers are afraid of again.

Saul: multiple versions of online content for people with different cognitive abilities is something which should be discussed more.

BREAK

[edit] 3. Presentations

[edit] 3.1 Presentation Sandra: Semantic Web: short intro

powerpoint presentation
associated research project : http://www.spinster.be/participation/

(link: )

 . html and css, no other meta-information.
 . Semantic web idea: adding this extra layer of information which for
  example google cannot find. Website developers needed a way to find,
  give this information, make webpages to have more meaning.
 . To have more meaning, means more links, more common grounds, ability
  to connect resources, sharing of meaning between resources.
 . WWW-consortium developed semantic web, a new kind of text, semantic
  web mark-up to give more meaning. XML: basic technology and RDF:
  specific structure to describe anything you have in a database.
 . Ontology and un-ontology: type of structured vocabulary that defines
  what you're talking about. Basic, general concepts for an ontology
  through which you can share resources. Relationships between the
  concepts are also part of the ontology. Written in OWL. Example of
  wine-ontology. Classes are the basis abstract concepts you works with
  (grape, place,.), they have properties (flavour, colour,.). Third part
  is the concrete thing that you describe, the real world instances
  (Chateau Beaujolais,.).
 . Semantic web in use on low level, RSS. Source of RSS is RDF-code
  (about title, summary, keywords and more semantic info)
 . Using Creative Commons Licence you also use semantic web. Friend of a
  friend network: RDF-system to integrate on your own website, social
  network.
 . XML and RDF metadata imbedded in images and video materials
 . Webpage Rotterdam, Flickrwebsite: RSS for all the presentations, for
  every photo, text, tag,.
 . Delicious social bookmarking tool: all has RSS feats
 . Technorati: idem
 . If you would develop a common ontology on top of RSS, than you have a
  much more refined connecting ground
 . Dublin Core is also integrated within the whole of the semantic web, a
  very basic application
 . A few major search engines as Google's advanced search include option
  to search for specific Creative Commons Licence. This possibility
  would grow if more metadata would be included in webpages.
 . Current status of semantic web applications: zie powerpoint presentation  of Sandra

Questions:

Saul: Structure of RDf being distributed and non-hierarchical .. makes it simple. None of us should be canonical. Everybody can have their own terminology and ontology. Because they are grammatically structured and still use completely different vocabulary. You do not lose the scale of communication. The complexity is only there if you have some sort of consensus, but outside it is simple, you can 'smish' terminology and specific terms remain as extensions.

Laia: RSS?

Sandra: Really Simple Syndication. For example: Weblogs and its postings can be seen on the webpage, and an RSS button which gives same content in RDF structure. Use: you can subscribe to that as a user. With a RSS-reading program you can follow the feats you are interested in. You can pull information from a website and view it as a user within one application.

Geert: RSS is handy. Because it chooses the updated websites out of the

nes you check daily, without that you have to look at the not updated

websites.

Anne: How do you start using RDF, is it complicated?

Saul: lots of tools have it built into. E.g. blogs, creative common's licence, drupal.. Vocabulary: more like a reference to things, non-hierarchical, (now Saul is showing a few RDF pages and FOAF pages) , RDF is very grammatical (subject predicator object)

Sandra: To develop your own ontology, there are ontology developers available to help you create it: e.g. Prot�g�, Swoop, .

Eric: is this compatible with Flash?

Sandra: yes, XML can be used, but Flash is a rather closed application and it is not encouraged

Wendy: from Constant: event 'Digitale', lots of audio data. Used the keyword-system from Flickr. www.constantvzw.com

Geert: did you cut up all the interviews?

Wendy: We used a datapatch, a recording machine, which goes automatically to the next question every time you press enter. The program is called Pure Data.

Antje: Brussels belongs to us: www.bna-bbot.net/OS/ Interface is in Flash, XML, normal multiplatform.

Dirk: Need for some standardization in keywords? Why?

Eric: there's no relation between the same words in different languages. You can add categories, but no content. It is very complicated to link the thematic aspects, also because the themes change. The keywords are very diverse and there are not any links between keywords which do have thematic links.

Sandra: Created own thesaurus looking at the resources, making short summaries, using similar terms, synonyms. We also looked at the existing Thesaurus.

Antje: We want to keep the subjectivity of this oral history project. Some facts are really specific. We would like people to tag compilations of conversations, also on a very subjective way.

Yves: www.v2v.cc video syndication network

[edit] Tuesday 29th November 2005, Beursschouwburg, Brussels.

http://www.timesaga.be/albums/album09/map.thumb.jpg

[edit] 3.2 : Collaborative tools for social networks: MapOMatix. Presentation

Yves Degoyon - presentation

 . Yves works with Indymedia, which is a network around the world and
  which felt the need to map their work, to locate their information.
  Need for a tool. Specifically, for project between Spain and Morocco

- n migration, wanted infrastructure, trace the routes of crossing

  borders, locate digital documents.
 . www.hackitectura.net : digitalize flows of information and migration,
  example of Street of Gibraltar
 . On the one hand they do maps and on the other hand they produce
  digital video and audio, they wanted to combine these things, so
  MapOMatix was created.
 . MapOMatix: online, open source tool for creating maps, collaborative
  tool available to upload images and digital media and put it on the
  map. On the map are links to videos, sites, RSS, comments.
 . Example of the Spanish-Moroccan border. The map is dated, there is a
  notion of time in the maps, so you can go back in time and see what
  the situation of the map was at a given moment in time. When entering
  meta-information, the comments are grouped and related to keywords.
  Next to that there is the feature of time.
 . Video link on the with interview with Brian Holmes.
 . Maps not only for territory but also for other kind of structures,
  semantic maps,. it does not only have to be geographically organized
  information, in this way the information added can be more subjective.
  You create the map yourself only needing four coordinates, the ones of
  the corners and that's it.
 . You can also add layers, and insert comments, which can be shown or
  hidden. There is only one background, but up to seven or more layers,
  the fact that they can be hidden keeps the information clear and
  transparent. More background would make it too complex.
 . Example of a project under construction on the roofs of Barcelona.
 . To archive video on the map, similar problems of size and format
  always arise. With this tool you can upload any kind of video, the
  site itself does the conversion, and all is stalled in ogg.-format.
 . Some backgrounds are in SVG, a format which is not always compatible
  with all programs, all info about it is on the website (see below).

Questions:

Q: How many people contributed to the map? A: There is no control on the access, so everybody can add. The map of Morocco was made by three persons (Indymedia Estrecho). But up to 20 persons can be working on the same map. All the information can be deleted, but as a matter of fact if you go back in the timeline, the information is not really deleted. Deleting becomes a form of expression.

Q: False information, valuable info deleted,.? A: That is the problem with all media, everybody has to judge the value

f information himself. You can of course control the access, if you

want. You have to put it in separately because the program does not control it.

Saul: The option of history and that you can see the changes that were made, evades the problem of deleting or changing information. On the other hand you should not try to prevent problems, or sabotage or,. because then you do not allow the program to show all its possibilities.

Yves: Example: Map of Brussels and uploading images: start with a background (preferred copyleft and public). Question about copyright, if you google a map most of the time there is no copyright added, so what do you do then?

www.mapomatix.sourceforge.net : to download the tools, links to already existing maps,. Supported and developed by ReadMe.

End of presentation

[edit] 3.3: Short presentation by Saul: Semantic Web initiatives

Ways of representing information between people and places, and describing these relationships which can form part of a general knowledgebase.

Some well known initiatives: FOAF (Friend of a Friend): semantic web initiative, social network. Structured vocabulary for talking about relationships between people, ( birthdays, addresses, names,.). When annotating info to people, it is interesting when you can infer. The most basic info in FOAF is: "I know you.", but more info is available than in the statement cause the relationship is reciprocal.

Example: Starting with who you are, the organizations, the projects you work with, etcetera. (Name, name of the last 5 people you worked with, last 5 projects, last 5 spaces you worked in, names of the last 5

rganisations) and separately: as many of the relationships that can

exist between what you have written down earlier e.g. .works with ., . is

rganiser of.,.

Broad outline:

www.wirelesslondon.info : an attempt to gather info about locality

 through free wireless networks. Wireless networks leak out and create
 some sort of public spaces.

 starting point of an attempt to a richer visualization, of sharing
 infrastructure, blank map because  of political  reasons (normalizing
 access to geographical information, tax payers' money is used to create
 maps and these maps are sold to the same tax payers) Need to know what
 you're sharing, the relationships if you are making a network with
 richer and more interesting descriptions.

www.map.wirelesslondon.info/, got the map from NASA (for free)

www.openstreetmap.org : free GPS maps, geographical information system. E-

 courier provided the details on the GPS maps for London, a package delivery
 service which gave all their data to Openstreetmap.
 http://Freemap.in other free map site

www.london.openguides.org add pubs, comments,. piece of free software

 to make an open guide for your city. Every time you add a page it has a
 longitude and a latitude. It is a wiki. Each node has a piece of RDF
 associated with it.  Interconnection is endless and messy.

Organizational level mapping:

http://evnt.org : with info on events, who goes, where it is, .
www.map.nodel.org : for festival of media arts , a semantic wiki describes

 places, events, people,. (www.map.nodel.org/person/xmllist)
 every page has an edit button

http://bbox.nodel.org Brussels semantic web
http://bbox.nodel.org/bxl.cgi : test page for afternoon workshop with Saul

BREAK

[edit] 4. Working in groups on mapping:

[edit] A. Organisational/Semantic mapping with Saul

map of relationships: (link/image)

Saul: Semantic Web descriptions are necessarily very complex to look at, but computer processing can make them useful and specific.

Dirk: We need to know how to use this approach in specific projects

Anne: You have to define the relationships you want to show, what you want to use it for, useful as a day to day tool for the collaborators.

Geert: it is interesting if every organisation makes this kind of map for its own, so organisations become linked, gradually extending the different maps, they become more and more linked and relationships evolve eventually as references or databases.

Saul: an example of a Semantic Web archive in operation:

http://wiki.wirelesslondon.info/Nodeltools

This is an RDF-based application that aggregates information about a locality from web sources such as http://london.openguides.org and other services, and delivers them to people when they access a free wireless network on their laptops.

Whether people knew about the free networking or not, they could use it, adapt it and aggregate things to it, generating maps. Encouraging other people to talk about their own projects, you do not have any control over it nor responsibility and people update it their selves. Dynamic sources

f information come in from all over the place.

[edit] B. Mapping Brussels with Yves: Mapomatix

Our approach was to find out what to use it for, how to use it, which became quite clear. It seems a good tool to start with, to point out relationships between different projects. It is not clear how we should link different maps within MapOMatix.

Mariano: can we link or translate Bbox map to MapOMatix?

Yves: yes, you can use MapOMatix to visualise structural data. If you respect the rules when you make the map you can, but there is no logic in the program itself.

Saul: or adding RSS feeds, which is a version of RDF

Yves: you can add extra RSS links, but there is no logic built in to construct relations between notes.

Saul: semantic relationship presented in MapOMatix? Seems possible?

Yves: we do not want to built in logical relations between the nodes, because it has to remain free to people. It is not my priority, nor useful in our context. We represent places using themes and keywords that are used to filter nodes. The relationship could be defined through keywords. You can add a link between two nodes. Clicking on a node can give an option to another link. You can define the link, through a colour-code, define the kind of relationship the link is constituted of. You can add a text to the colour.

Mark: the colour coding is only a representation, it does not become part

f the data

Yves: it is indeed a trick, it is not memorized as real data, just an adaptation of the tool. We do not want to make too many assumptions

Saul: You can aggregate information from different sources . The maps Saul made, can be linked as well.

Simon:: It would be nice to built a visualisation of the data that Saul constructed

Saul: The design methodology to associate visual forms with semantic relationship can be done without any structural restriction

Simon: Graphical representation of sources, Sony used between artists, files, music,. There is a generation of graphical designers working on this.

Yves: Presents map of Brussels made by MapOMatix: insertion of a link to a website related to a specific monument as an example, but you can upload all kind of stuff.

Questions: Q: What contents can you link? Websites, audio, video, comments, .

A: the audio and video has to be uploaded through the web interface of MapOMatix, it is not sufficient to already have it on another server, you cannot use the format you have, it has to be converted by MapOMatix. Video-format of MapOMatix: Theora: this is an open source codec.

[edit] 5. Follow-up and Future Plans

Dirk: We need a more detailed discussion, I am ready to organize the same discussion on a smaller scale we still have a small budget left.

Wendy: to make use of the tools, they are free and open to use for your

wn purposes

Geert: maybe we organize something in our workplace, without promising something

Okno: to be continued through workshops and online

Antje: I do not think we will apply the workshop, but we know they exist and hopefully in the future a mapping initiative can be coming up.

Anne: I will pass the information to others around me, stay in touch, we want to do a separate project which involves the Brussels database

Wendy: I want to practise with MapOMatix

Laia: Meeting local networks in Brussels was very interesting, for me it is a bridge between Barcelona and Brussels. We would try to stimulate the relationship.

Mariano: LATLAS still has to learn from the different shown software, we still have to process the theoretical info, it is still a lot of work, so we will start uploading info, and you all will be invited to use LATLAS

nce it is online and maybe it can function like an umbrella program

Pierre: It made me think in other directions. We skipped the standardized taxonomy discussion and I would like to continue on that

Wendy : MapOMatix can be used in Brussels, maybe it is interesting for Cuisine interne

? : More concrete meeting is needed to create a map of Brussels with Citymin(e)d

Kobe: The different tools have potential, exchange in international ways can be made easier, but problems: we have to invite you again but from the

ther way, once we have done the work and can show you what we have done

Eloisa: the other tools and other projects were interesting, need for more discussion

?: interest in MapOMatix to stay using it and meeting with others who want to develop it

Yves: people should take it into their own hands, install their own servers, but we can host some projects for people who really want to do it. You should do a loop between theory and practice.

Saul: The different kinds of engagement, understandings of data and resources and how they can inspire each other was valuable. It is interesting to think about how to develop and use tools for these contexts. The problems we had were very specific to London, and maybe you do not have the same kind of problems or restrictions here.

END

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