Pokumon

pokumon
  • Period: April 2007 - March 2009
  • Employer: IBBT
  • Project website: http://projects.ibbt.be/pokumon/
  • This information last updated: March 13 2008

The offer of performing arts in Flanders is of the highest quality. On the one hand Flanders has theatre, ballet and music ensembles with an international reputation, on the other hand Flanders is a unique artistic meetingplace where the biggest stars perform. The Flemish culture halls have archived both their own productions and guest shows; in the past in an analogue format and now more and more in a digital format. The recordings were generally realised by a third party according to several standards and formats. Within the sector a strong need arose to disclose the archived material to several categories of end-users according to a standardised metadata exchange model.

Within this project the cooperation between a number of important performing arts centres is an absolute necessity. The partners were carefully selected and can be classified into two groups: institutions which produce themselves (Flemish Opera, Ballet of Flanders, DeFilharmonie) and receptive institutions such as deSingel and the Bijloke. They all show a strong involvement in this digital archiving and disclosure project. The Flemish Theatre Institute (VTi) and more specific Dries Moreels was prepared to play an active role in this project. The VTi has already spend a considerable amount of time solving these problems. Together with foreign partners Vti searched for efficient ways to disclose this multifaceted material in an uniform manner. Flanders Music Centre has acquired audio expertise within the project `digitalisation of the Flemish musical heritage’ and thus will focus exclusively on the audio track. In addition to these partners there are still other institutions in Flanders which bring performing arts and we will certainly involve them in our research. However, involving even more partners would burden an efficient coordination of this project. An important partner in this project is Telenet as they are responsible for the technological infrastructure.

The united project partners aspire to the development of an efficient disclosure tool, both for economic and social reasons. The economic value of such a project consists of their content to be more promoted and to be offered via new channels. This way one drills a new well of income to all kinds of target groups. Socially the disclosure of performing arts assets equals larger accessibility, which opens up the public debate in this sector. Moreover, these assets play an important educational role. Furthermore the exchange of assets between cultural partners inland and abroad is one of the objectives.

The Pokumon project aims both at video, audio, photograph assets and textual information. Besides the general research track which focuses on an integrated multimedia disclosure of performing arts content, also a special case which broadens the project scope beyond performing arts, is incorporated within the project. This case will aim exclusively at audio, thereby producing detailed insights in archiving and disclosing this specific medium.

Besides archiving and disclosure of actual productions, attention within this project will also be paid to the archiving and disclosure of show introductions, interviews with soloists/artists, programme brochures, reviews, etc. As these multimedia archiving and disclosure information streams could originate from different sources, a few specific challenges which will be studied as well, are implied:

  • keep descriptive metadata consistent across different media types;
  • synchronise presentations of different information streams;
  • generate links automatically across informations streams (eg. by using timestamps);
  • realize efficiënt/orderly user interfaces
  • etc...

To disclose in an efficiënt manner, one needs expertise in

  • annotating productions (use of metadata, design of an appropriate metadata model both semantic and syntactic);
  • coding and transcoding of multimedia information streams (not only of video, but also of audio, photo assets and textual information);
  • describing and enforced complying of rights in reference to these information streams
  • requirements of the involved parters (both producing, receptive, facilitating and servicing partners, as end users).

Project website Pokumon

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