Wiss.Dir.Dr. Herbert Arlt (Polylogue Centre, Vienna, Austria) [ Bio ]
Email: arlt@polylogzentrum.at
It is a great honour for me, to appear before you as keynote speaker to present the project “Digital World Museum of Mountains”. (1) This is a proposition of cooperation to the University of Oran 2, but also to other institutions and colleagues in Algeria and worldwide. (2) This is also a project, which deals with all the terms and concepts of this conference about “Languages, Employability and Higher Education” (3) and shows how important this conference in Oran is.
The project “Digital World Museum of Mountains” has to go beyond status quo with new thinking about the main processes in this world and suggest even more new ways. The development builds on a prologue from 1998 and is evident because of the perspectives for the upcoming years. It is a step beyond 0 and 1 (4) – a step beyond the digital world – to a world of the identity of none identity, a world of a new importance of languages, a new importance of literature, the arts, knowledge productions for societies.
I want to begin with high lighting some aspects of the importance of this conference in Oran and its connection to the project “Digital World Museum of Mountains”.
I start with the first element of the conference title:
Languages
The prologue of the Digital World Museum started as World Project of Mountains. The title of the first part of the World project was: The name of the mountains.
This was a new approach within the preparation of the UN Year of the Mountains in 2002.
Kyrgyzstan had proposed to the UN in 1996 to organize such a year. At the time of the proposal the most important concerns were water, agriculture, and tourism. INST added to that culture. And a 2001 resolution of the General Assembly of UNESCO supported this INST approach, the approach of its World project of Mountains. (5)
As Scientific Director of INST I presented results of this project at the UN Mountain Summit in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, in 2002. I made this presentation together with Presidents, Ministers as well as the important author Tschingis Aitmatow.
UNESCO understood that the part of the World project of Mountains – the names of the Mountains – was the key to understanding the cultural dimension of the mountains. The names showed the usual cultural practices of mankind in dealing with mountains:
- Their common practice by naming on the basis of the same principles/ and in this perspective it is also a project of showing aspects of the Unifying moments of cultures
- The importance of myths and religion in the first time of naming mountains
- The importance of the Enlightenment in 18th century for naming mountains, mountaineering etc.
Hundreds of colleagues and institutions worldwide worked together to make these principles visible and understandable as unifying aspects in their specific way. The basis for this project was the UNESCO document “Our Creative Diversity” (6) which includes about 25.000 languages in this world. And it was INST with its project that fulfilled the programmatic concept of this very important UNESCO document.
I now turn to the importance of the second element of the conference title and the project “Digital World Museum of Mountains”:
Employability – and I add: Universities
First example:
Kilimanjaro is known as the mountain of the snow in Africa treacherous even to a leopard as we can read in the novel of Ernest Hemingway “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and see in the Hollywood film with the same title.
But in reality about 1 million people live at the slops of Kilimanjaro speaking about two dozen languages and developing more than two dozen cultures.
And Kilimanjaro is not the name of the summit. Kilimanjaro is a mountain massif as big as half of Austria with several summits. And the name of the highest peak in Africa – a part of the massif Kilimanjaro – is Uhuru peak. This name of this summit means in English Freedom peak.
There are a lot of songs, prose texts and films which deal with this aspect of Kilimanjaro – the importance of the freedom fight in Africa. A name which means in English “little village by Jaro”. This name shows one of several misunderstandings in landscape naming, which arose, as Europeans tried to discover and colonize Africa.
In 2004 I organized a cultural expedition on Kilimanjaro/ Uhuru peak and published a book about languages, cultures, cooking etc. on the slops of Kilimanjaro. (7)
There was a very good cooperation with the University of Dar-es-Salaam. The Rector of this University was at that time also the Vice President of Tanzania.
About employment: 60.000 Tanzanian live from the about 100.000 tourists, who try to climb the Uhuru Peak every year. And this is employment not only for the guides, for the peasants, for the handicraft producers and vendors, but also for a lot of scientists. And a very important background for that is the knowledge of the languages. But there are also a lot of other scientific disciplines, which are involved to make Kilimanjaro an African success.
In this and other cases tourism also supports the regional cultures and their enrichment. Because we know, without money cultures cannot flourish. And Universities can also do a lot in this regard to make regions and countries flourishing.
Second Example: Elbrus
A second example for employment and Universities and the World Project of Mountains – as a prologue for the project Digital World Museum of Mountains – was a cooperation INST had in the Elbrus region with the biggest University in South Russia – the Kabardino-Balkarian State University in Nalchik. (8)
This University has an observatory and a hotel in the Elbrus region. It trains the mountain guides and also has a department of European languages etc.
As Elbrus is the highest mountain in Europe with an altitude of5.643 meters, this project made sense. It made also sense because of the languages and cultures in Caucasus.
But the project in this region did not work because of the violence in a very complex situation (criminal activities, terrorism, religious and ethnic fights etc.). So in 2014 the region was not involved into the Winter Olympics as had been planned, because there are cable cars etc. up to 4.000 meter and the Glacier guaranteed snow.
But the violence stopped the enrichment of this region and its people on the basis of billions which should have been invested. And even now it is a region of unemployment, bad infrastructure and great unrealized possibilities.
Tanzania could handle the problems of violence (in this case mostly criminal activities). Especially the Rector of the University of Dar-es-Salaam and Vice President of Tanzania played a very positive role. But in the South of Russia it was not possible. It is a pity for the people there, because with the help of the University and the cultural tourism in the Elbrus area not only agriculture, the handicraft, but also science and education could have been enriched.
Once again we see, violence led to poverty as it ever leads to poorness in all other cases.
Third Example: Austria
Also in Austria the mountains were for some time a symbol for the fight between modernism and anti-modernism, for the fight between the Austrofascists, the Nazis on the one hand and the labour movement, the liberal bourgeoisie on the other hand.
The interpretation of the anti-modernist was that the mountainous world could show their ideological principles (a pure life of patriarchs, racists etc.). But in reality the “beauty of the mountains” was discovered by the proponents of the enlightenment. The culture of mountaineering was invented by men and women from the cities.
But after the liberation from Nazi dictatorships in 1945 the mountainous regions began flourishing – not only the cities. The principle in the background was a new form of tourism which was the machine for Austrian development in agriculture, handicrafts, but also industry. For example Doppelmayr in Austria is the worldwide leading producer of cable cars in the world.
Also in this case scientific knowledge has played an important role for all the aspects of development.
The third element of the conference title:
Higher Education
And I add: necessity
After the liberation from the Nazi dictatorship – also supported by Austrians under arms – it was enough for tourism in Austria just to rent a room in a peasant house etc. But in our days this does not work. The key word for the necessities of our days is Cultural Tourism.
The background is that every part of everyday life was developed and transformed in the context of knowledge which science developed and Universities taught.
Just take the houses. In former times the windows were small. The reason was that the coldness should not come into the room. Now there are new windows. They allow that the light comes in so that new views are possible.
Take the clothes, the shoes. There has been a total change of the materials within the last decades. And these materials are also an important background to enable mountaineers to climb mountains with over 8,000 meters highs.
Take the food. When I climbed mountains in my youth, I was told, that bacon etc. would be best. Today everyone knows that bacon requires too much oxygen for the digestion. And the higher you climb, the less oxygen will come into your lungs. At the top of Kilimanjaro or Elbrus there is just 50% of oxygen in the air than we have here in Oran or in Vienna.
So even for the simple things of every day’s life higher education will be helpful. Not only to climb up a mountain, but to manage also every day’s life at a cost of a sea as in Oran.
But this means, not to study language as language, but to understand language as a key to societies and nature – with all the innovations which come from scientific based knowledge. And higher Education means to get access to this key.
I come to the Aspect of my speech that this conference is a Highlight, because there are not only connections between the conference title and the project “World Project of Mountains” or “Digital World Museum of Mountains” because of my presentation within this conference. The presentation is rather the highlight of about 15 years of cooperation with colleagues from Oran.
One highlight within these 15 years was the participation of colleagues of Oran 2005 at one of 8 World Conferences I organized in Paris (there: UNESCO headquarters) and in Vienna from 1999 to 2010.
This is the background explaining why Professor Rabeh Sebaa is a member of the board of Polylogue Centre which coordinates the project Digital World Museum of Mountains.
The last highlight within this cooperation was a Skype Symposion on 8 December 2016 which was organized by Professor Seddiki. There were half a dozen colleagues from the University of Oran 2 who participated and prepared the request for financing the project “Digital World Museum of Mountains” by EU. But still further steps are needed. One important step should be taken within this conference.
For the progress of preparing such a request the project as a project has to be understood.
To use a platform such as the project “Digital World Museum of Mountains” for transnational cooperation it is useful to be familiar with several principles.
These principles come up from the Enlightenment which gave languages, the arts, and science, research and knowledge production new perspectives within societies.
And this means, first of all, that progress depends on people having the freedom to develop concepts and to make suggestions. Also of primary importance is the interest to deal with and develop questions.
Another principle is that the import of languages is also an import of knowledge. The original purpose for the founding the Académie Française in 1654 was the language import. And thousands of names of tools were imported. And that was very important for the enrichment and the importance of France.
The restrictive role for the Académie Française came later on – with colonialism, with war. And that was in the context of millions who died. And these restrictions were also very important and one of the main reason for poverty, sickness etc.
So the study of languages is not only to study another language. When you study for example German or Austrian German, you study also Latin, Greek, Hungarian, Czech and even Arabian or Hindi language.
But it is also necessary to know the law of the European Union and to accept the rules for the projects – to participate in a way which allows the coordinator to take the necessary steps. Every invention of one’s own rules can make such a project – or a part of it – fail.
So the main thing is to study reality, the languages which are used for the realities and the language of the administration, the law, which gives an important frame. And these are not only other words; these are other realities to study.
Most important is reality. From Algeria a very interesting and relevant input will be possible with Tassili Mountains (9) and its paintings. Some of them are older than 12.000 years. (10)
This is very different from the Alps, where the corpus of archaeological finds dates back about 10.000 years. But these finds are minerals, tools, clothes etc. (11)
In the Tassili mountains were more than 15.000 paintings found. And they do more than to document how human beings survived. The paintings show the imagination of human beings. And because of that they should be in the centre of the presentation of the Digital World Museum of Mountains. And as art they show also the way beyond zero and one, a way beyond the digital world – a way which is opened by quantum as we will see.
From the beginning on there was also the support by the Austrian Government for the World project. And even when in Austria – as in Algeria – there are not such high mountains also in that case art plays an important role. Algeria is seen in this perspective as the country of light and Austria as a country of colours. These seem to be very important aspects to develop the Digital World Museum of Mountains.
For example the Austrian federal states like Vienna, Lower Austria and Carinthia support the project in this phase of development (other federal states of Austria supported other parts of the project or its prologue before).(12)
At first glance it may not seem clear, why a city like Vienna has anything to do with mountains. But the Digital World Museum of Mountains will show, that the skiing, the cable Cars etc. started not in the mountains but in the cities. Vienna has in this perspective a pioneering role. (13)
Lower Austria is on the other hand a perfect example for a sort of tourism which started with city people who since the 19th century have taken their holidays in a peasant land.
One important aspect of the name of the mountains in Carinthia is that there are several names for one mountain, one landscape. That has to do with Austria as a multilingual country. Nowadays sometimes it is forgotten, that the multilingualism, the pluriculturalism was the source for the richness of Austria for centuries.
EU
After a long prologue with a lot of results (cultural expeditions to Kilimanjaro, Elbrus, Ararat, Arctic etc., homepage, books, exhibitions, films etc.) we come now to the period of presentation. For that the Polylogue Centre was founded.
My fear as the President of this Polylogue Centre at this point is that by now the implementation of principals of cooperation, the collection of materials, the technology of presentation (including knowledge from quantum theory) may not seem advanced enough for the request of 4 million Euros from EU. Also still a lot of countries should be involved – but not all of the 200 at this point. But those countries – as Algeria – with an important input.
In this context we will also see for example how cooperation with the University of Oran 2 can be developed. The Polylogue Centre has received after the conference interesting suggestions and invitations as from Djanet. (14)
And such cooperative efforts could have a further perspective, as the Polylogue Centre shall be established as an EU centre with a budget of about 20 million Euros a year (as estimated without the income of projects etc.).
But it could also be a beginning of a new area of cultural tourism in the Mediterranean area, an area of richness.
For these concepts, plans exist a Context of practice.
When I talk about the Digital World Museum of Mountains I do not talk only about theory. I talk also about of lot of projects, results etc.
First example: World Conferences
I started to organize conferences in the year 1983. The first was a conference in Vienna about “Peace and war in the Austrian Literature”. 1991 I organized my first conference abroad – together with the University of the Saarland in Saarbrucken about Europe, Multiculturalism and Jura Soyfer. (Jura Soyfer is an author who died in the Concentration Camp Buchenwald 1939 at the age of 26 years. Soyfer is a symbol of resistance in Austria and Central Europe. And I am the president of the Jura Soyfer Society.) In 1999 there followed my first World Conference. I organized it in UNESCO headquarters with about 1.000 participants from all over the world.)
The basis for all my 8 World Conferences, 25 Soyfer conferences and some dozen others was the same basis as now: to establish cooperation’s. These efforts are necessary because one scientist can know only very little. So it is necessary to find the best way of exchanges and synergies. This became possible through the World conferences, the World projects and a public created with the electronic journal TRANS. TRANS – founded in 1997 – has for many years been on the ERIH list of EU as one of the best scientific journals in Europe with about 2.000 authors. (15)
The basis for that was also a new language. An example for that is the project Encyclopaedia of multilingual cultural studies. (16)
Second example for the context:
The EU project “Virtuality and new Knowledge structures” (17)
This was a project from 2004 to 2006. It was based on cooperation between the University of Győr und INST. As coordinator of the project I presented the results at the Viennese Lectures in the City Hall of Vienna and also together with my Hungarian partner in the City Hall of Győr in October 2006.
The main idea was that concepts and plans gain a new quality of importance. And that is the reason, why it is necessary to build up new knowledge structures. And such a new knowledge structure shall be established with the project “Digital World Museum of Mountains” that also has its importance for higher education.
Third example for the context:
Development of Digital World
In 2005 a World conference – with participation of colleagues from the University of Oran – was dedicated to the theme Innovations and Reproductions. (18) And until now the innovation has been concentrated worldwide on reproduction, because 0 and 1 – the basics for the digital world – exclude the identity of none identity. The new approach is to combine for example Quantum theory and Machine translation. For that I developed in 1995 a theory of a Quantum computer. I now am also working on a project to use this knowledge to develop the Digital World Museum of Mountains beyond the digital world. But far beyond that is the project to develop the language of quantum machines.
In other words: no scientist would accept the world as black and white. Every scientist knows, the reality, the world is different. But the digital world is 0 and 1, it is a world of black and white. And human beings, who are just seen as numbers, are also seen as worthless. And it is not a coincidence that IBM cards played a role in German Concentration Camps. An important song of Jura Soyfer shows the difference: Das Lied des einfachen Menschen. (19)
Structure of the project
Within this contribution it is only possible to present some key words about the project. The most important elements of this project are:
The Main idea:
Building up a multilingual knowledge structure with new technology/ to choose mountains as a subject is no coincidence/ this comes up from the importance of mountains for mankind.
Platforms:
Realizing the project on different platforms which use the structures to create synergy which have been developed by INST since its first World conference in UNESCO headquarter in 1999.
Realizing it as a process of combining several projects
Realizing the Museum as a digital museum, but going beyond by using knowledge from the quantum theory.
The sinister part of such project is the administration. Enterprises like PWC makes billions with bureaucracy. And those in Austria or in the European Union who say “less state” mean regularly more bureaucracy with private benefit.
Over the years a lot could be changed. And this is very good. In any case it is necessary to stick to the rules and principles. That means, when the Polylogue Centre makes a request for EU money, all the partners have to accept the rules for the project. No minister or president can help. And responsible are those, who are responsible for the project. No one else will help them, when things go wrong. And that means, that for the project Digital World Museum of Mountains I am in charge, I am responsible, I have to make the rules clear. And I have experiences with cultural projects since 1973.
Because of my experience I know that these things can last. But this is the same as climbing up mountains. When you think it is not necessary to do this step by step, you or your project will fail. But I do not want to fail. I know the art of going step by step, climbing handgrip by handgrip. And I have been successful with that.
In this perspective the effort of this conference seems to point in all aspects toward successful ways of strengthening the societies, make them richer. It is a conference which deals also in this sense very well with the project Digital World Museum of Mountains.
I have made during the preparation the experience of multilingual competence, of excellent organisation skills with the colleagues in Oran. And I have also realized that modern tools like skype can be used to develop such an important project with Oran 2.
We need a future in peace, countries where the people can stay and be happy with their lives. This has been my guiding idea since my first cultural project in 1973, my first conference in 1983.
And a possibility to realize this is a transnational project like “Digital World Museum of Mountains” with important inputs from Algeria, from Austria, and also inputs from up to 200 countries.
For that it is necessary to have a public. The marches for Science in over 500 cities of this world [ http://science.orf.at/stories/2838213/ ] on Saturday the 22 April 2017 are not enough. And they showed that they have a week position in the societies of their countries.
In my opinion it is necessary to have a strong public as platform for the members of the International Scientific Community, but also as a public for knowledge transfer to Societies.
So I suggested publishing the contributions to this conference in TRANS, an electronic journal, which I founded with colleagues from different countries in the year 1997 – as I said before. The languages of this electronic journal are German, English, and French. But there were exceptions under special conditions and the Arabian language is also a language of INST, which is the society supporting TRANS. And as founder and Scientific Director since its foundation in 1994 I am also the responsible and in charge to make suggestions.
This electronic journal TRANS is listed not only by EU as one of the best scientific journals of Europe. In other countries TRANS is also on the top of the best lists of scientific journals and it is very helpful to have a contribution in TRANS, when you want to advance in your career. Even CNKI, the biggest Scientific Information Society of the world which is situated in China, distributes TRANS. And it was one of the first journals, which was archived by the Austrian National Library, because different National Libraries – including the Austrian – in Europe participated at INST conferences and seminars. Also the City of Vienna with its Academy of Science, several Universities with very old traditions such as the University of Vienna which was founded 652 years ago and about 320 scientific societies highlights TRANS as one of its best scientific journal from Vienna.
But not only these honours are important. TRANS has up to 16, 5 million searches a month. And this means a very special worldwide public, which is helpful for backing projects or distributing scientific knowledge.
Footnote:
(1) The project page in WWW: http://www.polylogzentrum.at/weltprojekt-der-berge/ This page is by July 2017 still in German, but the contributions to this page are also in English and in French. – The keynote speech was on 23 April 2017.
(2) The follow up conference shall be in March 2018 in Oran 2 about Languages, the Arts, Internet, Universities and Employment.
(3) Program of the conference: http://www.arltherbert.at/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Final-programme.pdf
(4) See also: Zelko Wiener: Zwischen │Between 0 und │ and 1. Kunst im digitalen Umbruch │ Art in the Digital Revolution. Walter de Gruyter: Berlin, Boston 2016. More: http://www.musa.at/kataloge/item/2961-zelko-wiener-zwischen-0-und-1-kunst-im-digitalen-umbruch
(5) See: http://www.polylogzentrum.at/weltprojekt-der-berge/
(6) Our Creative Diversity: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0010/001055/105586e.pdf
(7) Uhuru Peak/ Kilimanjaro – die kulturelle Dimension (Freedom Peak/ Kilimanjaro – the cultural dimension): http://www.inst.at/burei/CBand2.htm
(8) About this cooperation: http://www.polylogzentrum.at/das-inst-weltprojekt-der-berge-als-forschungsprojekt/
(9) Images for example: Alain Sèbe: Le Sahara des Tassilis. Éditions de La Martinière: Paris 2010.
(10) These http://www.inst.at/burei/CBand6.htm paintings are a part of the World heritage: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/179
(11) See for example: http://www.arltherbert.at/10-000-jahre-bergbau-in-den-ostalpen/
(12) See: http://www.polylogzentrum.at/foerderungen/
(13) See: https://www.wien.gv.at/wiki/index.php?title=Alpinismus
(14) See about Djanet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djanet
(15) TRANS: http://www.inst.at/trans/ Documentation of its history: http://www.inst.at/trans/trans-dokumentationen/
(16) http://www.inst.at/ausstellung/enzy/index.htm
(17) Documentation: http://www.inst.at/burei/CBand6.htm
(18) Documentation: http://www.inst.at/burei/CBand6.htm
(19) Jura Soyfer Edition 2012 in 4 volumes, volume 1, p. 285.