Events

On Wednesday 11 December (10-17, eLab Mediastudies UvA) we are organising a datasprint on ATM person data. Now that we’re making progress with the geo-infrastructure, we’re developing an approach to collectively identify and analyse Amsterdam people from a long-term perspective. Ivan and Leon have started a shared sheet that helps us see where we are now and what we need to do get to comprehensive person-time-location data, also based on work already done by Richard, Ivo and other colleagues. More information can be found in a google doc that can be shared upon request. For the datasprint we’ll be developing several concrete tasks that we’ll also share in this document. Please sign up by sending an email through the contact form on this website if you’d like to come.

The Time Machine Conference 2019 will take place on October 10-11, 2019 at Deutsches Hygiene-Museum Dresden in Dresden, Germany, and of course ATM will also be there.

Register here to hear speakers from Europe’s most prestigious science, technology and cultural institutions discuss the potential of cultural heritage data for education, creative and media industries, entertainment, urban planning, policymaking and more.

The aim of the fifth Amsterdam Time Machine datasprint is to add or enrich information on the history of Amsterdam in Wikidata. This will, for instance, help us to expand https://years.amsterdamtimemachine.nl/ as developed by Menno, Marieke and Leon during a previous datasprint. We’ll be preparing some data on our end, but you’re also welcome to share your own resources and ideas.

Please sign up through the contact form on this website if you’d like to join us and we’ll provide you with further information.

Our panel on local entertainment cultures has been accepted for the 2019 conference of the European Business History Association.  Together with colleagues from the University of Antwerp (check out their local time machine here), we'll be exploring theatre, cinema, nightlife and magic lanterns.

Researchers Vincent Baptist presents the cinema history part of the ATM-CLARIAH project at the 2019 HoMER conference.  His paper is entitled Amsterdam Cinema Audiences: A Geospatial Analysis of Film Exhibition and Consumption in Early 20th Century Amsterdam. 

Julia Noordegraaf was invited to give the keynote lecture at the UvA Universiteitsdag, where alumni and UvA researchers meet annually. Here, she speaks about the Amsterdam Time Machine.

https://alumni.uva.nl/alumniservices/ud/universiteitsdag.html

Marieke van Erp will present the Amsterdam Time Machine at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, in the lecture series of the Austrian Centre of Digital Humanities.

Together with Stadsarchief Amsterdam, we organize the fourth Amsterdam Time Machine datasprint. This data sprint will be about computer-transcribed notarial deeds. More information will follow shortly, but here you can information on the source of the data we'll be playing around with: the Crowd Leert Computer Lezen project.

Following our kick-off meeting in Brussels last month, there will be a second Time Machine-wide event in Amsterdam from Thursday May 9 (09:30-18:00) to Friday May 10 (9:30-16:00). It will take place at the University of Amsterdam, specifically venues at Oudemanhuispoort (https://www.uva.nl/locaties/binnenstad/bg-1.html) and Turfdraagsterpad 9 (BG1) (https://www.uva.nl/locaties/binnenstad/oudemanhuispoort.html).

More info on the venue and event series:

Time machines have been the stuff of stories and speculations for centuries. Today, advancements in computation allow us to construct such machines as complex information systems that process cultural heritage as big data of the past. In this event, researchers of the new Time Machine project present their exciting initiative.

The Time Machine project is a large-scale research initiative designed to map over 5000 years of European history, transforming kilometres of archives and large collections from museums into a digital information system. Over 281 institutions from 33 European countries are joining forces to bring the past back in one of the most ambitious projects aimed to consolidate European culture and identity. This event is an opportunity to engage with these researchers and hear from their ideas as to what the European Time Machine is and does, as well as to how it responds to the societal challenges of several European cities. Frédéric Kaplan, Julia Noordegraaf and Andreas Maier each present different facets of the project, while Claartje Rasterhoff moderates a panel discussion with Valérie Gouet-Brunet, Harry Verwayen, Bastien Varoutsikos and Deborah Papiernik on applications of the Time Machine for environmental security, the preservation of endangered heritage and the creative industries.

About the speakers

Julia Noordegraaf is professor of Digital Heritage in the department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. She is director of the Amsterdam Centre for Cultural Heritage and Identity (ACHI), one of the university’s research priority areas. At ACHI she leads the digital humanities research program Creative Amsterdam (CREATE), that studies the history of urban creativity using digital data and methods. Noordegraaf’s research focuses on the preservation and reuse of audiovisual and digital heritage.

Frédéric Kaplan holds the Digital Humanities Chair at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and directs the EPFL Digital Humanities Laboratory (DHLAB). He conducts research projects combining archive digitization, information modeling and museographic design. He is currently directing the “Venice Time Machine”, an international project aiming to model the evolution and history of Venice over a 1000 year period. In parallel to his scientific work, Frederic Kaplan participated to exhibitions in several museums including the Biennale of architecture in Venice, the Grand Palais and the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Andreas Maier is a computer scientist and specialist in topics of pattern recognition and machine learning. He heads the pattern recognition lab at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität working on topics in medical imaging, speech processing, computer vision, and general machine learning. His work focuses on tomography of books and scrolls (i.e. reading them without opening them), scribe and writer identification, and the fusion of deep learning with traditional techniques, such as general signal processing or knowledge representation.

Claartje Rasterhoff is Assistant Professor of Urban History and Digital Methods at the department of History, University of Amsterdam. She acts as coordinator of the Amsterdam Time Machine project. Her research concerns the relationship between culture, economy, and cities since the sixteenth century. She is currently developing a digital historical project on the cultural economy of urban nightlife. She has published on the painting and publishing industries in the early modern Dutch Republic, the organization of the early modern international art trade, and the history of Dutch Design.

Registration

You can sign up for this program for free. If you subscribe for the program we count on your presence. If you are unable to attend, please let us know via spui25@uva.nl | T: +31 (0)20 525 8142.

For this data sprint, we propose building an experimental interface to combine 2D, 3D and textual data in one map of Amsterdam. We will be using libraries that contain such data and testing their application in a map, as well as paying attention to existing gaps in the datasets. The result should be a demo interface that provides intuitive access to the data without being overwhelming. Interface experts and designers are especially desired, so if you know any, please do feel free to forward this event to them.

If you’d like to join, please let us know by contacting us through the contact form on this website and we will send you other relevant information in the coming weeks.

Claartje Rasterhoff will present the Amsterdam Time Machine at the symposium 'Ja ik wil' (Yes, I do). At this symposium René van Weeren and Tine de Moor (Utrecht University) will launch their new book Ja ik wil, verliefd, verloofd, getrouwd in Amsterdam, 1580-1810. There is a morning program on the topic of citizen science and an afternoon program with research on historical marriage patterns and other relevant projects ( in Dutch).

The official Time Machine Kick-Off takes place in Brussels on the 19th and 20th of March. ATM members Julia Noordegraaf and Claartje Rasterhoff (UvA), Harry Verwayen (Europeana), Marc Lindeman and Ellen van Noort (Picturae), Walter Swagemaker (Eye Filmmuseum), Johan Oomen (Institute for Sound and Vision) and many others will be attending.

Claartje Rasterhoff, one of ATM's coordinators, will present ATM at the annual DEN event. You can find the entire program here.

The Amsterdam Time Machine organizes a mini data sprint on the subject of data storage structure. This event has sprouted from the need to design a logical structure for storing the CLARIAH Amsterdam Time Machine project data. The team members will focus on devising a solution for storing their research data.

The data sprint (09:30 - 16:00) will take place in room is 2.18 at Spinhuis, Oudezijds Voorburgwal 185 Amsterdam. People will need to sign in at the reception, and state that they come visit Marieke van Erp or Astrid Kulsdom.

Please sign up through the contact form.

Please be invited to the kick-off meeting organized by the Virtual Interiors as Interfaces for Big Historical Data Research project. Join if you are interested to learn more about this NWO Smart Culture – Big Data / Digital Humanities funded project on spatially enhanced publications of the creative industries of the Dutch Golden Age, which is hosted at Huygens ING and CREATE (UvA) and works in close collaboration with Brill and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.

The program can be found here.