The first conference of the EVA (Electronic Information, the Visual Arts & Beyond) series in Vienna under the topic “Digital Cultural Heritage - Essential for Tourism” was organized by the Pattern Recognition and Image Processing (PRIP) Group and the Austrian Computer Society (OCG). The conference was endorsed by the IAPR-TC19 “Computer Vision for Cultural Heritage Applications” http://iapr-tc19.prip.tuwien.ac.at/).

 

The main aim of this first EVA Event in Vienna was to create a forum for discussions between the cultural heritage research community, technology researchers and cultural institutions. Our mission is to establish new technical tools for experts in the cultural heritage field. The accompanying motto of the conference is "Digital Cultural Heritage – Essential for Tourism". Therefore, the conference was focused on image analysis, cultural tourism, speech and communication in cultural heritage, archaeography, and museum and archaeological applications. The focus was on applied work as well as theoretical advances.

 

EVA Vienna was a small but very successful event, which brought together more than forty participants from fifteen different countries. Fifteen out of thirty contributions were accepted and presented in five oral sessions. These sessions where devoted to Classification & Communication in Cultural Heritage,  2D/3D Reconstruction, Cultural Tourism, Archaeological Applications, and Documentation from Multimedia. The EVA Vienna conference also hosted two successful workshops, one on “IT and Cultural Tourism” and the other on “Cultural Archives for Virtual Tourists”.

 

The success of the conference was due to the authors who have contributed their work to the symposium, to the dedicated work of the members of the program committee, and, finally, to  the organizing committee. Following the tradition of all EVA conferences, the conference will not only impact on the current research of the readers but will also represent important archival material.

 

The EVA Vienna also featured an outstanding venue at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and a well organized social program with trips to Cultural Heritage sites in Bratislava and the castle of Schönbrunn.

 

The next TC19-EVA conference is planned in 2008.

.

Workshop Report:  EVA Vienna 2006