Summer School

Intangible cultural heritage summer school: The impact of preserving traditional dances using digital era’s tools
Terpsichore Project: Transforming Intangible Folkloric Performing Arts into Tangible Choreographic Digital Objects

Purpose/Objectives

The summer school aims in introducing the audiences to the world of intangible cultural heritage, emphasizing in folkloric dances. Audiences will:

• understand the importance of the ICH and the challenges in preservation
  
• learn about traditional Greek dances
  
• understand the benefits of AR/VR environments in ICH.
  

Audience

The target groups of the summer school are:

• ICL 2018 conference participants (no additional charge, use the ICL registration fees)
  
• Terpsichore project participants (no charge for the summer school)
  
• Anyone with interests on the topic (charge to be defined)
  

There are no prerequisites, expected from the participants, to follow the summer school.

Overview

The summer school provides insights to a variety of intangible heritage topics, including:

• Folkloric dance preservation: dance as an act, the impact of the territory, how the traditions affect the expressions, teaching the choreography, etc.
• VR/AR applications
• Interactive environments: capturing the intangible contents by developing an open and extendable platform to provide access to ICH resources, enable knowledge exchange and contribute to the transmission of rare know-how.
  
• Machine learning applications: Dance identification, posture classification, choreography extraction, movements digitization.
  

Topics - Timetable

(Detailed program is available here)

Presenter(s)/Facilitator(s)

Kosmas Dimitropoulos is a research fellow at Visual Computing Lab of Information Technologies Institute - Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (ITI-CERTH) and an academic faculty member of AIMove (Artificial Intelligence and Movement in Industries and Creation) Post-Master Programme at MINES ParisTech University, in Paris. He holds a diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a Ph.D. degree in Applied Informatics. His main research interests lie in the fields of multi-dimensional data modelling and analysis, human computer interaction, virtual reality and serious games. His involvement with these research areas has led to the co-authoring of more than 110 publications in refereed journals and international conference proceedings. He has received as a co-author in scientific papers: the IET ITS Premium Award, the Euromed 2012 Best Full Paper Award and the CONTACT/ECCV 2014 Best Student Paper Award. He has been the technical coordinator, quality project manager, deputy project coordinator or work-package leader in several European and national research projects and has served as a regular reviewer for a number of international journals and conferences. He is a member of IEEE and the Technical Chamber of Greece.

Stella Douka is associate professor in the Department of Physical Education and Sport Science of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece). Her research interests are Physical education, Greek traditional dances, History of dance, Physiological and Psychological benefits of dance, Sociology of Sport and Leisure and Technology in Sport. She is responsible coordinator ECTS for her department and member of the curriculum development committee. She has published more than 140 papers in Journals and in well-known refereed conferences and she is co-author in 3 books and since 2004, she has been involved in more than 10 research projects. She has been a PC member and referee in various international journals and conferences. She is also involved in numerous sport and cultural event organizing committees. She is also member of the Laboratory of Sport, Tourism and Recreation Management (www.sportourmanlab.auth.gr). The mission of the lab is the promote excellence in research, training and education in areas related to sport management, physical activity promotion through recreational activities (included but not limited to fitness, outdoor sports and traditional / modern dancing), sport tourism development and Technology in Sport.

Nikolaos Grammalidis is a Senior Researcher (Grade B’) at CERTH-ITI. He received his Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering, both from the Aristotelio Panepistimio Thessalonikis, Greece in 1992 and 2000, respectively. His main research interests include Image, Video and Multidimensional signal Processing, Computer vision, Machine learning, Intelligent Systems and Applications, ICT in Cultural Heritage, Analysis, Modeling, and Visualization of body movement and facial expressions. His involvement with those research areas has led to the co-authoring of more than 130 articles in refereed international journals and conferences. He has received the IET Premium Award 2012 and the Euromed 2012 Best Full Paper Award, as a co-author in scientific papers. Since 1992, he has been involved in more than 15 projects funded by the EC and 13 by the Greek General Secretariat of Research and Technology. He has been the coordinator of several European and National research projects, including the FP7 i-Treasures and FP7 FIRESENSE projects.

Fotis Liarokapis holds a docent in Interactive Virtual and Augmented Reality Environments from Masaryk University, a DPhil in Computer Engineering from the University of Sussex, an MSc in Computer Graphics and Virtual Environments from the University of Hull and a BEng in Computer Systems Engineering from the University of Sussex. In September 2014, he joined Masaryk University, Faculty of Informatics, Brno, Czech Republic at the position of Associate Professor at the HCI Laboratory. He has worked at Coventry University as the director of Interactive Worlds Applied Research Group (iWARG) and as a research fellow at the Serious Games Institute. He had also worked as a research fellow at City University for an EPSRC, Location and Timing KTN funded research project called 'Development of Location-context Tools for UMTS Mobile Information Services (LOCUS)' and before that as a research officer at the University of Sussex for an FP5 European Union funded research project called 'Augmented Representation of Cultural Objects (ARCO)'. Fotis has contributed to more than 100 refereed publications and has more than 2371 citations

Eftychios Protopapadakis (National Technical University of Athens, Greece). Eftychios Protopapadakis studied production engineering and management at technical university of Crete. His educational background includes a M.S. degree in management and business administrator and a Ph.D. in decision systems design, both at the same university. His research interests focus on machine learning applications in real life problems including maritime surveillance, elder people support, industrial workflow monitoring, cultural heritage applications, structural assessment in transportation tunnel infrastructures, intelligent parking management policies, and radar signal processing for target identification.

Athanasios Yamas is CEO of UAB Metis Baltic. He is involved in many projects in cultural heritage and he has active relations with Berklee and MIT Labs for media arts.