eCommemoration Convention 2023 – Bridging analogue and digital worlds

In 2023, we will again bring together international historians, memory workers, digital pioneers and creative minds. This year, the eCommemoration Convention specifically aims to create and explore bridges between analogue and digital worlds. Various panels, hands-on digital experiences and creative exchange will again form the centre of this two-day interdisciplinary convention, which will take place on 28 and 29 September 2023 in Hamburg.

For complete programme information, live streams, speaker infos and more check out our convention website!

This year’s mission

Maybe analogue and digital worlds are generally less separated than one might think – in 2005 already, Danish game designer and theorist Jesper Ruul described video-gaming as a half-real space, in which rules and standards of the analogue world meet fictional worlds. Videogames or Extended Reality, neither is an agency-less add-on of the analogue world, fully disconnected from “traditional” standards, practices and strategies of history-telling and cultural narration.

But where and how do these connections work and appear in eCommemoration?

The third eCommemoration Convention specifically aims to create and explore bridges between analogue and digital worlds. We want to identify the cross-sections of analogue remembrance and digital practices with regards to commemorative culture: where do different practices spill from one into the other sphere? To what extend can both worlds benefit from their respective peculiarities?

Programme

Panel-Discussion 1: Call for Action.

Mobilising People with the Help of eCommemoration

28 Sept. – 11.30am

Looking at the past allows us to re-evaluate the world we live in.

Often, contemporary protests root in historical events, which pathed the way for decisions against which people protest or rebel today.

The legitimacy and interpretation of those historical events and developments could be called into question with eCommemoration.

Further, eCommemoration itself can be a catalyst – mobilising people to take action and initiate change in physical spaces of the ‘real’, ‘analogue’ world.

The panel “Call for Action” discusses digital projects connected to protest movements all over the world and in particularly iNK Stories’ 1979 Revolution and Fortnite’s March through Time.

Speakers:

Navid Khonsari, Video Game Designer & Mixed Reality Film Creator

Mathieu Arribart, CEO Vysena Studios

Moderator: Mai-Vy Thach

PUBLIC EVENT Keynote & Discussion: Artificial Memories. Decolonizing our Minds and Data

28 Sept. – 6pm

Nora Al-Badri will talk about her conceptualization of technoheritage: what happens when technology/ artificial intelligence, decoloniality and museum collections come together?

Talking to moderator Marcus Richter, Al-Badri will discuss which new questions, in the realm of politics of representation and collective memory, can be raised through the lenses and voices of AI as an artistic tool. Will the subaltern start speaking or are we even amplifying the good old colonial power structures and oversimplify the world with limited machinic abstraction?

Speaker: Nora Al-Badri, Conceptual Media Artist

Moderator: Marcus Richter, Journalist & Moderator

Free registration here!

PUBLIC EVENT opera – a future game

28 Sept. – 7.30pm

“opera – a future game” is an interactive, digital music theatre video game essay. Accompanied by an inner voice, the users wander through a dystopian landscape that tells of the disappearance of the present and of a society that is apparently only capable of thinking of the future as a catastrophe. Meanwhile, other audience members in the room can follow the events, comment on them and intervene.

Director: Michael von zur Mühlen

music by eloain lovis hübner – texts by thomas köck
based on the opera “opera opera! revenants&revolutions”

More info and free registration here!

Panel-Discussion 2: Extending Realities.

Generating New Forms of Knowledge about the Past

29 Sept. – 1pm

The internet gave way to new forms of participation and collaboration. Archives, museums, game developers and projects dealing with a people’s history of historical events now often use not just swarm intelligence to collect and share history. They also base their knowledge about specific objects, places, spaces and events on accounts and memories shared via social media, game forums or other digital tools. Further, sharing these findings via social media and digital projects allows us to bridge analogue and digital worlds, listening to voices previously unheard.

The panel “Extending Realities” gives space to projects which re-adjust the reading of history with the help of participatory and collaborative forms of eCommemoration.

Speakers:

Katrina Keefer, Cultural Historian

Lanae Spruce, Social Creative

Moderator: Soraya Jaber, CEO & Co-Founder Opuscope

Panel-Discussion 3: Navigating Travel.

Innovative Forms of On-, Off- and De-Boarding

29 Sept. – 4pm

Traveling between analogue and digital worlds is still challenging for all of us. Entering virtual reality and virtual interpretations of our past can be overwhelming. Immersive exhibition-makers, XR artists and digital historians pay special attention to the challenges and benefits of well-conceptualised practices of on- and off-boarding. How do these interconnections work with regard to museums and heritage sites? How do we experience, contextualise and preserve history and make it accessible?

The panel “Navigating Travel” looks at implemented on-, off- and de-boarding practices, digital archaeology and digital contextualisation of museum collections.

Speakers:

Gurbaksh Singh, Chief Innovation Officer

Khaled Hiatlih, Archaeologist

Moderator: Tessniem Kadiri, Journalist & Moderator