Online column – EVA 2002, London: Electronic
Imaging, the Visual Arts & Beyond
The EVA series of conferences, exhibitions, tutorials
and workshops [www.vasari.co.uk/eva],
organized by Jim Hemsley of Vasari Enterprises [www.vasari.co.uk] have been a cornerstone
for the area of electronic imaging and the visual arts since 1990. They have
expanded to include events all over the world, so much so that the 50th
EVA conference anniversary event [www.vasari.co.uk/eva/london]
was held in July 2002 in London at the Victoria & Albert Museum [www.vam.ac.uk] and Imperial College (where the
first event was held in 1990), close by in South Kensington.
The
whole event lasted for eight days, with a main conference of two days in the
middle of workshops and other activities. The conference’s opening address was
delivered by Mark Jones, Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum, who was
keen to see more on-line forums for specialists, as discussed in the previous
column (e.g., see [forums.museophile.net]).
A number of subsequent presentations with interesting associated websites are
briefly covered here.
The
People’s Network is a UK government project to connect all public libraries to
the Internet [www.peoplesnetwork.gov.uk],
financed by the New Opportunities Fund (NOF). At the time of writing, the
website claims that 70% of UK libraries are online.
Work
on virtual world continues to be of interest to the heritage section. A
European IST VirtuAL project to provide a virtual archive and library for
cathedrals is underway. An initial website has been established [www.virtualheritage.net]. This has
yet to include any 3D models but it is planned to develop the site as the
project progresses.
PaperPrint
is a patent applied for method that records two images of paper together, one
of reflected light and one of transmitted light developed at the University of
London. This is useful for recording watermarks, etc. Detail on the methods
used are available online [www.earlypaper.com].
The
European ARTISTE IST project on dynamic search and retrieval of high resolution
art images by the content has produced a website that aims to develop seamless
distributed access to multiple collections and distributed content based
navigation methods for art collections, especially for picture researchers. A
prototype version (using Flash technology) is available [www.artisteweb.org].
A
UK project supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund has established a website to
present UK buildings and their architects [www.lookingatbuildings.org.uk].
The site is associated with the Pevsner regional architectural guides and is
searchable by architect, building name, etc.
An
interesting presentation on the new British Galleries at the Victoria &
Albert Museum [www.vam.ac.uk/exploring/galleries/brit_galleries/?section=brit_galleries]
included information on the installation of the large number of interactives in
the galleries. Currently the online information for these new galleries is not
particularly impressive, but it is planned to make online versions of the
gallery interactive displays available in due course.
Other
recent EVA events have been held in Beijing (April 2002) and Kiev (May 2002).
Further EVA events are planned in Berlin (November 2002) and Moscow (December 2002).
EVA seems to be very much alive and well in the international arena, building
on its very successful history [www.vasari.co.uk/evapaper.htm].
It will return to London in summer 2003.
Jonathan Bowen, Professor of
Computing, South Bank University, London [www.jpbowen.com]
