19473 - Information Technology and Arts Organizations

Academic Year 2011/2012

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Innovation and Organization of Culture and the Arts (cod. 0902)

Learning outcomes

This course is an attempt to inform about Information Systems and Technologies as used within arts organizations and in cultural heritage processing. Specifically, the student is expected to confront in a knowledgeable way the development of information technology with emphasis on tourism, cultural and environmental goods. In particular, the student is expected to learn about the following topics: - Media, multimedia and multimedia systems - Coding of images, video and audio signals – compression - Networks - Data, metadata and data bases - Production and distribution of multimedia content - Devices and interfaces to access cultural content –usability.

Course contents

1. Introduction on digital space
         1. The role of Cultural Heritage
         2. Safeguarding and management
         3. Context aware multimedia guides
         4. The role of technology
   2. Basics on Computers and information coding
         1. Reference model: the Von Neumann Machine
         2. Information and its measure
         3. Binary information encoding
         4. Binary codes: fundamental inequity for coding, examples (ASCII, 7 segment, numbers)
         5. Information carried by a message: messages, sources and source entropy
   3. Media and multimedia
         1. Physical vs digital media
         2. Digital media characterization
         3. Digital media on the Web
   4. Multimedia storage, compression and transport
         1. Storage support (CD, DVD, Optical Memories, Solid State Memories, Magnetic Memories)
         2. Compression of digital data: categories and techniques, examples (run length coding, Huffman coding)
         3. Transport: online transport, basics on Internet protocols (LAN, gateways, DNS, DHCP), transfer rate
   5. Digital Images
         1. Color and color spaces
         2. Color depth, resolution, spatial resolution, compression (GIF, PNG, JPEG), vector graphic principles
   6. Digital audio
         1. Audio waves, frequency, sound speed, amplitude, basics on analog-to-digital sampling theory (sampling rate, quantization), compression (MP3), MIDI
   7. Introduction to relational data bases
         1. Entities, attributes and relations
         2. Primary key and foreign key, data domain, query language (SQL)
         3. Examples using Access DBMS
         4. Spatial access to digital contents: GIS and GPS
         5. GIS examples using ESRI Arcview
   8. Metadata and ontologies for digital cultural heritage documentation
         1. XML, RDF
         2. Dublin Core
         3. Microformats
         4. Semantic Web
         5. OWL, ontologies, Cidoc-CRM
   9. Content and Containers for the digital representation of human world: techno-business perspective
         1. Multimedia production for mobile devices: human resources, activities, organization, innovation
         2. Business model for interoperable innovative services based on semantic Web technologies

Readings/Bibliography

Handbook of Research on Technologies and Cultural Heritage: Applications and Environments
http://www.igi-global.com/bookstore/titledetails.aspx?titleid=41892

Archives & Museum Informatics                         
http://www.archimuse.com/index.html

EPOCH (European Network of Excellence in Open Cultural Heritage)
http://www.epoch-net.org

IMSS (Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza)         
http://www.imss.fi.it/index.html

EUROPEANA pensar cultura
http://www.europeana.eu/portal/

Ther CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model
http://www.cidoc-crm.org/

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
http://dublincore.org/

Teaching methods

Classes are supported by Power Point slides. During the course will be given some seminars and demos.

Assessment methods

1) A public presentation of a course related topic choosen by the student in agreement with the teacher
2) A oral discussion

Teaching tools

The Moodle platform will be used to interact with students (http://www.moodle.unibo.it/mod/forum/view.php?id=12768)

Links to further information

http://didattica.arces.unibo.it/mod/resource/view.php?id=449

Office hours

See the website of Luca Roffia