The University of Valencia (Universitat de València), a SILKNOW Project partner, organized from 30^th November to 4^th December 2020 the congress “Weaving Europe. Online International Conference on Silk heritage and Digital Technologies“.

The organization of this conference was shared with all the other partners of the European Project SILKNOW, and entirely sponsored by the Conselleria d’Innovació, Universitats, Ciència i Societat Digital, from the valencian autonomous government, Generalitat Valenciana. (Science, Universities & Digital Innovation Department).

For 5 days, technicians, experts, researchers, students and creatives gathered, in a virtual way, in a meeting focused on silk heritage, its conservation and restoration, its digitization, about information technologies (ICT), tourism, creative industries, social innovation and communication of textile heritage.

After few months of an open call for papers, a sum of fifteen communications were selected, which were presented in four simultaneous panels during one of the main days of the meeting.

Registration for the congress was very well received, with more than 150 registered people during the days in which the conferences were held.

Due to the COVID-19 socio-sanitary circumstances, the conference organization made up for the virtual modality, facilitating the participation of more than 50 speakers. All these virtual sessions have been recorded on video, for later dissemination, thus allowing their subsequent viewing.

In addition, the authors will see their presentations published in a proceedings book, which will be available both printed & digital.

The Università degli Studi di Palermo will participate at the Sharper Night.
This event aims to involve all citizens in the discovery of what a researcher does and which is their role in building the future of society through the investigation of the world based on facts, observations and the ability to adapt and interpret increasingly complex and evolving social and cultural contexts.

During this event, we will showcase the importance of silk heritage and a live demonstration on the Virtual Loom will be done.

Date and hour: 27 November from 16:00 – 17:00

Register here.

La Ruta de la Seda

El material didáctico La Ruta de la Seda ha sido especialmente diseñado para el aprendizaje de español a través de diferentes aspectos relacionados con la seda en Europa. El objetivo de su publicación en el portal SILKNOW es el de difundir nuestro patrimonio cultural y poner en valor el intercambio cultural que supuso y todavía supone la producción y el comercio de la seda.

El material puede ser utilizado por estudiantes de nivel B1 de español para el aprendizaje autónomo y también por profesores para el trabajo dentro de un curso, en el aula o fuera de ella. La Ruta de la seda consta de cuatro temas relacionados con la Ruta de la seda y las huellas que ha dejado en nuestra historia y nuestro presente:

1. Las ciudades de la Ruta de la Seda
2. Historia de la seda en Europa
3. Procesos y creación de la seda
4. Historia de la moda

Cada uno de los temas puede trabajarse de manera independiente, supone aproximadamente tres horas de trabajo e incluye tres capítulos y un total de 18 actividades interactivas para aprender variados contenidos culturales, ampliar el repertorio léxico y consolidar su conocimiento gramatical. 

Las actividades se han desarrollado en variadas dinámicas como arrastrar, colorear, elegir opciones, escribir, relacionar, etc. Ofrece una retroalimentación automática que permite al alumno conocer si ha realizado correctamente la actividad, y si lo requiere, puede siempre acceder al sistema de corrección automático, que ofrece la solución de la actividad.  Al final de cada tema el alumno accede a una actividad de autoevaluación para revisar los contenidos más relevantes. Igualmente, la plataforma ofrece un sistema de seguimiento automático que indica al alumno qué ha hecho y qué le falta por hacer, y sitúa al alumno en el punto en el que dejó la última sesión. Estas características hacen que el material sea idóneo para el trabajo autónomo. 

El material ha sido desarrollado por la Universidad de Valencia, que ha contado con los desarrolladores de la empresa ALTEN, con la colaboración del Instituto Cervantes, que ha asesorado en el proceso de diseño y revisiones, y lo ha pilotado en su red de centros. Agradecemos desde aquí la participación en el pilotaje de este material de los alumnos y profesores de los centros del Instituto Cervantes en Belo Horizonte, Bucarest, El Cairo, Lyon, Orán, Sao Paulo y Varsovia.

El material es de acceso libre y se puede consultar en: https://silknow.uv.es/moodle/login/

Información para profesores. Tabla de contenidos.

– Me pareció tan interesante que empecé a ver la serie “Marco Polo” en Netflix.

– Me gustó el contenido cultural y descubrir cosas nuevas sobre ciudades conocidas en mis viajes

– Combinación entre textos con muchas palabras nuevas y gramática.

Testimonios de alumnos que participaron en el pilotaje

– Se trata de un tema poco conocido por mis estudiantes. Además de ser una experiencia muy dinámica, interactiva y de aprendizaje lingüístico.

– Material atractivo, divertido, cultural, enriquecedor.

Testimonios de docentes

Información en inglés

La Ruta de la Seda (The Silk Road)

La Ruta de la Seda (The Silk Road) educational material has been specially designed for learning Spanish through different aspects related to silk in Europe. The aim of its publication in the SILKNOW portal is to disseminate our cultural heritage and to highlight the cultural exchange that the production and trade of silk involved and still involves.

The material can be used by B1-level students of Spanish seeking autonomous learning and also by teachers for work within a course, in the classroom, or outside it. La Ruta de la Seda consists of four units related to the Silk Road and the traces it has left in our history and our present:

1. The cities of the Silk Road
2. History of silk in Europe
3. Processes and creation of silk
4. History of fashion

Each unit can be worked on independently, involves approximately three hours of work and includes three chapters and a total of 18 interactive activities to learn various cultural contents, broaden the lexical repertoire and consolidate grammatical competence.

The activities have been developed in various dynamics such as dragging, colouring, multiple choice questions, writing, relating, etc. It offers automatic feedback that allows the students to know if they have done the activity correctly, and if required, they can always access the automatic correction system, where the solution to the activity is provided. At the end of each topic, the students have access to a self-evaluation activity to review the most relevant contents. Likewise, the platform offers an automatic follow-up system that shows the students what they have done and what is left to be done, and places them at the point they were when they left the last session. These characteristics make this material ideal for autonomous work.

The material has been developed by Silknow researchers of the University of Valencia (Universitat de València), which has relied on the developers of the company ALTEN,  and in collaboration with Instituto Cervantes, which has provided advice on the design and revision process, and has piloted it in its network of centres. We would like to thank the students and teachers of the Cervantes Institute centres in Belo Horizonte, Bucharest, Cairo, Lyon, Oran, Sao Paulo and Warsaw for their participation in the piloting of this material.

La Ruta de la Seda is freely accessible through https://silknow.uv.es/moodle/login/

Information for teachers. Table of contents.

– I found it so interesting that I started watching the “Marco Polo” series on Netflix.

– I liked the cultural content and discovering new things about cities I had visited in my travels.

– Combination between texts with many new words and grammar

Students who participated in the pilot

– This is a subject little known to my students, besides being a very dynamic, interactive and fun language learning experience…

– Attractive, fun, cultural, enriching material

Teachers who participated in the pilot

Information in Spanish

We have launched a new version (v1.00) of the Virtual Loom. This version is available as a desktop app and can be downloaded either for MAC users or Windows.

New features and improvements are:

• It has more help issues to users
• A new splash screen
• A new weave viewer
• New visual appearance to improve user experience
• Weaves selection menu improved
• Weaves & yarns revised
• 3D navigation has been revised & improved
• Language menu

Download the desktop version for MAC or WINDOWS

If it does not have a name, it does not exist 

The cultural heritage domain is characterized by large, rich and heterogeneous data sets, while institutions in charge of preserving the world’s memory strive to obtain controlled vocabularies based on their own collections. The result is multitudes of vocabularies in different languages that are difficult to standardize.  This problem increases when dealing with textile records and specifically with silk ones, which comes from multiple sources that have been mixed up across time and space. Moreover, it changes according to specialties (weavers or historians), nationalities (Europe or North America), or disciplines (ethnographic specialists versus art historians), etc. For example, local variations of a term are rarely taken into account (e.g. espolín has different meanings in some regions of Spain). This has led to the use of different terminology in specialized organizations in order to describe their artifacts. This makes data interoperability very difficult between independent catalogues. Among that, the interaction level of existing resources is low, complex queries are not possible and results are poorly shown.  

To meet these challenges, SILKNOW has built a multilingual thesaurus in four languages: Spanish, French, English and Italian, dedicated to the specific vocabulary of historic silk textiles, which also includes local term variants. It collects more than 800 terms that not only come from academic and historical sources but also from oral history, as knowledge coming from weavers is something that SILKNOW intends to preserve. Terms that can be found include silk weaving techniques, designs, looms, costumes, etc.

https://skosmos.silknow.org/en/

The thesaurus, freely accessible and free for users, offers a specific controlled silk vocabulary, which did not exist until now, since there were only some thesaurus on fabrics of all types and some others of private nature. It is geared to researchers, students and cultural heritage professionals. For example, a researcher may use the thesaurus to connect terms that she or he could have found in historical documentation, providing updated, standard naming for these terms. In addition, when planning exhibitions, a curator often needs to either write the exhibition catalogue or ask for a loan to another museum. In these cases, artworks coming from other countries can be identified in their vernacular languages. Having a thesaurus will help curators to standardize terminology. Art history and conservation students will be familiarized with a variety of textile terms. 

The thesaurus will help heritage institutions to provide access to and preserve silk heritage in the digital environment. Participating and collaborating institutions will radically improve their cataloging practices and digital data retention. Therefore, the thesaurus will serve as an example of the benefits of shared cataloging frameworks and data interoperability.

• SILKNOW Thesaurus website: https://skosmos.silknow.org/en/

If you are an institution dedicated to the conservation, preservation and dissemination of silk heritage, we encourage you to use our thesaurus, and we will be happy to hear from you in this survey!

• English survey
• Spanish survey
• Italian survey
• French survey

Silk Heritage and Digital Technologies

30 November 2020 – 4 December 2020

The aim of this international conference is to spread current research about historic fabrics together with the latest technology applied to cultural heritage. The forum will merge professionals from different areas as museums, tourism, creative industries, innovative hubs, universities, etc. where heritage and technology are the junction points.  
A further goal is to generate a collaborative code of practices to promote defence and safeguarding of textile heritage. It should include methodologies on cataloguing and inventory that will increase the cooperation among institutions to share data and provide open access to it.

We invite researchers and professors from the academic area, undergraduate, postgraduate and Ph.D. students; private companies related to tourism, creative industries, arts, crafts and traditional industries; fashion professionals and business-related to the silk industry to submit your abstracts.

Topics

• TOPIC 1: Information Technologies (ICT) and textile heritage communication
• TOPIC 2: Silk Museums
• TOPIC 3: Creative Industries & Social Innovation applied to Silk Heritage
• TOPIC 4: Sustainable Tourism applied to Silk Heritage 
• TOPIC 5: Conservation and Restoration of Silk Heritage

Instructions – Call for papers

All participants are invited to submit their proposals before 30 October 2020, specifying the group/topic in which the paper or poster is addressed to. Proposals must include the following information:

1. Abstract (maximum 10 lines)
2. Keywords (between 5 and 7)
3. Name, surname and e-mail of the authors
4. Institutional affiliation of the authors (name, postal address and telephone)

The contribution must be original and must have not been previously presented to any other meeting or submitted for publication. The paper must be submitted by e-mail attachment to the conference secretariat:

The paper prepared according to the template should be prepared in English or Spanish language. The Scientific Committee will review all papers and will send the acceptance as oral presentation or poster. The volume will be published by Universitat de València.

Please send your abstract to: info@silknow.eu

Deadline: 30 October 2020

More information: https://weaving-europe.silknow.eu/

Silk has been present throughout the history of fashion. The most luxurious models and the courts dressed in such precious material.

The concept of fashion emerged during the Renaissance as we understand it nowadays, introducing new genres and acquiring more and more professionalism. Pleats, vertical fabric droppings, embroidery decorations, rich trimmings and elaborated lace predominated. In the 16th century, short pants were like knickerbockers, and the doublet and ornaments such as the ruff were still used. The corset along with skirts of great volume appeared in women’s outfits.

In the 17th century, sober & austere forms predominated, because of religious influence. The cloth was the most used material, and silk was only affordable by the upper classes. The doublet evolved into a jacket, with the collar of lace starched flounces, and the breach lengthened and fell under high boots.

In France, Louis XIV’s court favoured haute couture, beginning to dictate fashion’s evolution at the European level. At that moment, the tie appeared, initially in a bow’s form, tied around the neck. The morning suite also appeared with a long-fitted jacket with a flared bottom.

The French Revolution supposed more uniformity in the way of dressing, with short jackets and long pants for men. For women bodices, round skirts and cloth shawls. The lead on fashion moved to England, where men wore morning suits with wide and turned-down necks, knee-length shorts, and top hat. Women abandoned the corset and crinoline and inspired their outfit in Ancient Greece, with long fitted dresses with a ribbon under the chest.

The richest velvets, damasks, brocades, embroideries … have dressed Europe’s history. These fabrics can be seen in portraits painted by famous artists such as Goya, Jean Cluet or Bronzino. Today, fashion continues using silk as it happens in collections of the most fashionable haute-couture houses such as Dior, Dolce and Gabanna, Francis Montesinos and many others that keep weaving the past into the future.