Liviu-Ovidiu Pop | Romanian Academy, Institute of Folklore Archive (original) (raw)

Conference Presentations by Liviu-Ovidiu Pop

Liviu Pop's seminar presentation "Imaginația Populară Față în Față cu Automatizarea" provides a c... more Liviu Pop's seminar presentation "Imaginația Populară Față în Față cu Automatizarea" provides a compelling examination of the public's perception of automation and its representation in cultural narratives. Tracing the historical threads of the topic, Pop identifies the Luddite movement as an early form of resistance to the mechanization of labor, setting the stage for an ongoing dialogue about the role of technology in society. The document explores the portrayal of machines and robots in popular culture, from the fears embodied in Frankenstein's monster to the apocalyptic visions of the Terminator series. These cultural artifacts reflect a deep anxiety about the potential for technology to exceed human control and the ethical implications of artificial intelligence. The conversation continues to the present day by discussing contemporary AI technologies like ChatGPT and MidJourney, noting their rapid adoption and the significant user milestones they've reached. The discussion includes the psychological phenomenon of the "Uncanny Valley" and its relevance to the acceptance of human-like robots and animations. Concluding with a reflection on the economic value and generational displacement induced by AI, Pop's document presents a nuanced view of the interplay between technological progress and human sentiment, underscoring the need for a balanced understanding as we navigate the evolving landscape of automation and artificial intelligence." Liviu Pop's seminar delves into the intersection of technology, culture, and economy, offering insights into the collective imagination's response to the relentless march of automation.

This document explores the complexities and significance of digital archives, specifically examin... more This document explores the complexities and significance of digital archives, specifically examining the case of IAFAR. It delves into the definition of digital archives, noting their role in preserving 'digital objects' for long-term access, and contemplates the concept of 'long-term' in the context of technological solutions. The challenges discussed range from the physical fragility of storage media to the rapid evolution of technology and the metaphorical 'evaporation' of information into the cloud. Through various sections, it engages with the cultural and technological dimensions of archiving, juxtaposing the endurance of cultural artifacts against the transient nature of digital media. The document touches upon principles and solutions for organizing digital information, such as Linked Open Data, and reflects on the need for archives to be understandable to both computers and humans. Moreover, it briefly addresses concerns about privacy and the ethical considerations of machine learning, invoking historical examples of automation and artificial intelligence to highlight the shifting boundaries between human and machine interaction. The text presents an intricate picture of digital archiving as a field at the intersection of culture, technology, and ethics, underscoring the importance of developing robust systems for preserving our digital legacy.

This presentation offers an insightful exploration into the collection and curation of digital ma... more This presentation offers an insightful exploration into the collection and curation of digital materials for ethnological research, with a focus on contemporary urban folklore. Liviu Pop examines case studies such as Creative Monkeyz and Hip Hop to highlight the cultural phenomena and their urban-specific narratives in the digital age. He discusses the challenges of collecting digital data, including copyright issues and the use of specialized tools for extracting information from platforms like YouTube. The document also distinguishes between the methodologies of exporting and saving digital data, emphasizing the importance of preserving original files in secure archives, providing an in-depth look at how platforms like Facebook serve as rich sources of cultural data, referencing specific community groups to illustrate this point. Liviu Pop underscores the urgency of capturing available online materials before they become inaccessible. He advocates for a tailored approach to each digital platform to establish what constitutes valuable content, suggesting the creation of a digital-born archive for the benefit of future generations. The work concludes by acknowledging the practical reality of archiving: collecting what is available, not necessarily what is ideal. The main themes and purposes of Liviu Pop's document, which navigates the intersection of digital data collection and folkloric studies within an ethnological framework.

În era digitală, canalele de YouTube și conturile de TikTok au devenit resurse extraordinare de m... more În era digitală, canalele de YouTube și conturile de TikTok au devenit resurse extraordinare de material etnografic, oferind oportunități inedite de a păstra pentru posteritate conținut generat de amatori sau pasionați de cultură tradițională și nu numai. Prezentarea "Arhive digitale întunecate. Despre corpusuri audio-video" își propune să susțină necesitatea și urgența de a captura și arhiva aceste resurse valoroase în așa-numitele "arhive întunecate". Acestea nu numai că servesc drept depozite de cunoaștere pentru generații viitoare, dar și captează zeitgeist-ul contemporan, fie că este vorba de elemente tradiționale sau tendințe moderne. În cadrul acestei prezentări, vor fi aduse în discuție exemple concrete de canale și conturi care merită atenție și care ar putea constitui fundația unei astfel de arhive digitale întunecate. Prin arhivarea acestor corpusuri audio-video, avem șansa de a crea un mozaic complex și dinamic al culturii și societății noastre, util atât pentru cercetarea academică, cât și pentru înțelegerea evoluției culturale.

“Archives, Access & Artificial Intelligence” Conference, 2020

This presentation/paper will try to have a look behind at the hidden labour behind AIs and the ch... more This presentation/paper will try to have a look behind at the hidden labour behind AIs and the challenges of using them ethically in a future full of mechanical turk phantoms.

Pentru Marea Unire s-au urnit valuri de oameni să ajungă la Alba-Iulia, precum într-un pelerinaj ... more Pentru Marea Unire s-au urnit valuri de oameni să ajungă la Alba-Iulia, precum într-un pelerinaj laic. O sută de ani mai târziu o inițiativă îndrăzneață propune reîndrăgostirea românilor de România profundă prin traversarea ei în diagonală de la Drobeta-Turnu Severin până la Putna. Prezentarea va analiza acceastă inițiativă în contextul internațional și istoric al rutelor de "pelerinaj" și cum ar putea Via Transilvanică să se transforme într-o tradiție.

Presentation given during the workshop Text Analysis across Disciplines Digital Humanities Initia... more Presentation given during the workshop Text Analysis across Disciplines
Digital Humanities Initiative Workshop, Central European University, Budapest.

[Tehnicianul] Negruț era o figura pitoreasca. Mic si negricios, asa cum sugera si numele, era str... more [Tehnicianul] Negruț era o figura pitoreasca. Mic si negricios, asa cum sugera si numele, era strungar de mecanica fina, dar de fapt un mester desavârsit în orice. Cel putin asa se lauda. Prima proba pentru mine a fost ca facea un vin fiert excelent, cu care ne delectam în multe zile reci de iarna. Al doilea ca a reusit sa-mi repare de câteva ori un vechi ceas de mâna de care ceasornicarii ezitau sa se mai ocupe, dar pe care în cele din urma i l-am facut cadou. El spunea ca poate face orice, de la elice de vapor la vioara si, la nevoie poate repara si avioane.

The presentation will be two folded: on one hand there will be a general presentation of The Inst... more The presentation will be two folded: on one hand there will be a general presentation of The Institute "Folklore Archive" of the Romanian Academy from Cluj-Napoca and the current digitisation project and on the other hand I will present a possible solution for long term digital preservation of the content of the archive. The solution can be viewed from two organic perspectives: on of the zoo and the other one of the guerrilla gardening. The first one insists on the importance of returning into the wild what was once captured on the field of research, and the other one offers a way of doing this, by adopting the seed bombing method to the problem of disappearing immaterial cultural heritage. Thanks to the Moore's Law, it is now possible to have decent hardware for very good prices and this might allow the implementation of many small NUCs or Raspberry PIs either as small web-servers or kiosks (or both) in remote villages from Transylvania, the place where the majority of the content from the archive was recorded. Using Omeka software or other open-source digital archives solutions, the digitised content may become available to the inhabitants of the villages. Thus the crystallised folklore, which has a fundamental open source structure, might become, thanks to open source technologies, fluid again.

Despre arhive digitale în general / o colecție foto în particular.

“Archives, Access & Artificial Intelligence” Conference, 2020

Despre arhive digitale în general / o colecție foto în particular.

The Project PN-III-P2-2.1-BG-2016-0390 Digitization of the Cultural Food Heritage of Bacău County... more The Project PN-III-P2-2.1-BG-2016-0390 Digitization of the Cultural Food Heritage of Bacău County – eCULTFOOD was based on the premise that in the area of gastronomic cultural heritage, more than in other fields, each community owns a particular set of knowledge built over time, a result of the interaction between the natural environment and the living conditions. This knowledge base and the values passed orally from one generation to another, form, in fact, the historical outcome of the human relationship to the environment. Rediscovering it can only take place by resorting to discourse. The project’s aim was to render visible this heritage as reflected in the knowledge related to food through preservation in a digital geographical form of representative corpora of audio-visual documents, produced during the research field trips while interviewing subjects of different age groups from Bacău county. The result of this endeavor was the creation of the e-CULTFOOD digital platform as a complex database containing research results from field trips, archives and libraries of the practices and the traditions related to food from the region. The article presents the technical details of the digital platform and a quick look at the work behind the scenes.

Studia UBB Digitalia, No 1 (2017): Digitising the Humanities, 2017

Technological fatigue is spreading due to the increased arrays of technological branches and the ... more Technological fatigue is spreading due to the increased arrays of technological branches and the rapid pace of development. Keeping up with the latest and newest might prove not only difficult and tiring, but also not necessarily recommended to beginners in digital humanities. A more " back to the basis " approach might be more useful for students that don't have technical backgrounds.

The article presents an alternative solution to the long term preservation of the documents from ... more The article presents an alternative solution to the long term preservation of the documents from the Folklore Archive of the Romanian Academy. This solution can be viewed from several organic perspectives: one of the zoo, one of the seed-bank and, finally, the guerrilla gardening perspective. The first one insists on the importance of returning into the wild what was once captured on the field of research, the second one is about the seed-bank as a live database for future generations and the last one offers a way of adopting the seed bombing method to the problem of disappearing immaterial cultural heritage. This article describes a conceptual model, rather than getting into technical details.

The article presents an alternative solution to the long term preservation of the documents from ... more The article presents an alternative solution to the long term preservation of the documents from the Folklore Archive of the Romanian Academy. This solution can be viewed from several organic perspectives: on of the zoo, one of the seed-bank and, finally, the guerrilla gardening perspective. The first one insists on the im- portance of returning into the wild what was once captured on the field of research, the second one is about the seed-bank as a live database for future generations and the last one offers a way of adopting the seed bombing method to the problem of disappearing immaterial cultural heritage. This article is trying to describe a conceptual model, rather than technical details.

Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory, Oct 2015

The totalitarian states from the former east side of the Iron Curtain used the archives as a weap... more The totalitarian states from the former east side of the Iron Curtain used the archives as a weapon of mass submission. By employing a huge network of formal and informal agents to spy on their own citizens, to prevent any unsettlement of the political status quo, and keeping records on anyone who had a certain level of social clout or institutional role in the society, those in power installed fear on all the levels of the society. Knowing that a certain kind of document about some possible crime against the regime is kept somewhere was most of the time a powerful detriment into trying to change one’s assigned role. The political influence on the society of the archives is a bit older, and can be found both in ancient Greece, but also in the times after the Bonaparte reign. This article explores reactions to the archives of the former totalitarian regimes in Romania, Germany and Hungary.

90 de ani de cercetări etnologice la Cluj (1922–2012), 2012

This paper presents the key documents that defined the scope and the role of Europeana. European ... more This paper presents the key documents that defined the scope and the role of Europeana. European culture might have been at risk of not playing an important role in a globalised world if a unified strategy for accessing and promo‐ ting it wouldn’t have been developed. Seen as one of the fundamental pilons for the future economic growth, the European cultural heritage is not perceived anymore as a Cindarella, but a fertile ground for the developement of creative industries and scientific discoveries. Despite legal issues on what public domain is and how the copyright should protect an author’s privilege being still open, some solutions are tested in an attempt to increase open access to knowledge and the European culture.

The Ethnological Archive Paradigms and Dialogues, Sep 2011

This paper presents an analysis of the ethnological archive, in relation to time, from two points... more This paper presents an analysis of the ethnological archive, in relation to time, from two points of view: of the content and storing of archived information. The material encompasses two distinct, but complementary, methodological settings: the first is an anthropological study and the second one is a technical approach on the digital archive. This research is an application on the archive of the Folklore Club of the Faculty of Letters, Babe􏰁-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Der vorliegende Artikel stellt synthetisch ein paar Momente in der Geschichte der analogen Techno... more Der vorliegende Artikel stellt synthetisch ein paar Momente in der Geschichte der analogen Technologien dar, und führt kurz in die Medienarchäologie ein. Nach einer Darstellung der Vor- und Nachteile der digitalen Medien, bzw. der analogen, biete ich ein paar Daten über Programme, die zur Zeit für die Digitalisierung des kulturellen Erbes auf europäischer Ebene eingesetzt werden.

Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies, Jan 1, 2010

Studia Universitatis Babeş-Bolyai, Jun 30, 2017

Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai Digitalia, 2017

Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Digital Access to Textual Cultural Heritage, 2019

This paper explores the way in which the old catalogues from the Romanian folklore archives can b... more This paper explores the way in which the old catalogues from the Romanian folklore archives can be improved with updated information about two key aspects of the folklore collections: the informant/performer and the village/location where the recordings where made. Using the headers from three different archives we will show the solution found for enriching the equivalent to dc:creator and dc:coverage. We will particularly focus on the case study of a series of recordings from Western Transylvania and how the metadata was cleaned, spliced and improved.

Philobiblon , 2010

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) awarded in 1996 a long list of computer scientists ... more The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) awarded in 1996 a long list of computer scientists from Central and Eastern Europe adding them to the pioneers pantheon as an acknowledgement of their work on the evolution of computer science behind the Iron Curtain. The history of the dawn of computers on this particular side of the world was shadowed by the intense interest in evolution of the field in Russia, closely scrutinized during the start of the Cold War. What happened between Eastern Germany and Russia was regarded as a footnote when addressing the history of computing. We would like to expand that footnote not only by exposing the technical mastery and engineering craftsmanship, but also adding stories from the birth of the magnificent calculating behemoths. Transylvania Digital Humanities Centre (DigiHUBB) invites participants from Central & Eastern Europe to join us at the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj Napoca, Romania to share the hidden stories of the first digital workers and the primitive computers from their respective countries. We are looking for presentations from mathematicians, computer scientists and technology historians accessible to a non-technical audience.

Submissions of abstracts for oral presentations no longer than 20 minutes, featuring high quality and previously unpublished research are invited on the following TOPICS:
• Early computers and pioneers from Eastern and Central Europe
• Computer prototypes and experimental machines
• The evolution of computing technology and communications
• Educational initiatives and the birth of computer science in Eastern and Central Europe countries
• Women as digital workers