LiveMemories

Date:

2008-2011

Themes:

Multimedia, Web Science

Funding:

Provincia Autonoma di Trento (The Autonomous Province of Trento) (Bando grandi progetti 2006)

The aim of LiveMemories is to scale up content extraction techniques towards very large scale extraction from multimedia sources, setting the scene for a Content Management Platform for Trentino; using this information to support new ways of linking, summarizing and classifying data in a new generation of digital memories which are `alive’ and user-centered; and to turn the creation of such memories into a communal web activity. Achieving these objectives will make Trento a key player in the new Web Science Initiative, digital memories, and Web 2.0, thanks also to the involvement of Southampton. But LiveMemories is also intended to have a social and cultural impact besides the scientific one: through the collection, analysis and preservation of digital memories of Trentino; by facilitating and encouraging the preservation of such community memories; and the fostering of new forms of community, and enrichment of our cultural and social heritage.

In the digital age, our records of past and present are growing at an unprecedented pace. Huge efforts are under way in order to digitize data now on analogical support; at the same time, low-cost devices to create records in the form of e.g. images, videos, and text are now widespread, such as digital cameras or mobile phones.

This wealth of data, when combined with new technologies for sharing data through platforms such as Flickr, Facebook, or the blogs, open up completely new, huge opportunities of access to memory and of communal participation to its experience.

Primary investigators

• Wendy Hall
• Paul Lewis
• Nigel Richard Shadbolt

Secondary investigators

• dpd
• Jonathan Hare
• ads04r
• Kieron O'Hara
• Heather Packer

Partners

• University of Trento
• Fondazione Bruno Kessler

Associated research group

• Web and Internet Science