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DocPerform Webinar: Internet Theatre

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Date: February 16th 2021 18.30-20-30

Register (closed) : Internet Theatre

View Recording: Internet Theatre

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A panel of academic-practitioners will discuss theatre and performance pieces produced for the internet.

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced theatre-makers to produce work online. In distinction from streaming live and recorded shows, theatre and performance produced for the internet represents a new frontier for artists.

Shows such as Forced Entertainment’s End Meeting For All frame the grid of screens on Zoom as a collage of encounters between six connected yet distant bodies, each one inhabiting a reality that never fully converges into a communal experience, whilst Dead Centre’s To Be A Machine turns the audience into data subjects by having them present as recorded video footage and as viewers watching the performance as a live stream on Vimeo. Other examples of internet theatre include Gob Squad’s Show Me A Good Time, New Diorama and Nathan Ellis’s work_txt_home, Coney’s Telephone, and Dante Or Die’s USER NOT FOUND.

This webinar has been organised to begin developing new discourses of ‘the digital’ beyond questions of liveness and ephemerality to explore how the internet has become a performance medium in its own right. The panel will explore ideas relating to the spectator as a data subject, digital intimacy, and writing plays and devising shows for performance in cyberspace with reference to pieces produced during the lockdown.

DocPerform is an interdisciplinary project based in the Department of Library and Information Science at City, University of London. DocPerform investigates new and emerging documentation technologies used in the performing arts, the performativity of digital information, and concepts of theatricality and unreality as they relate to the contemporary information environment.

Panel:

Elena Araoz

Elena Araoz is a stage director of theater and opera, as well as a writer, choreographer, and performer. She works internationally, Off-Broadway, and across the USA. She is a faculty member in the Program in Theatre at Princeton University. This summer, she will direct the live virtual CGI and motion capture opera Alice in the Pandemic (White Snake Projects) and a virtual production of Virginia Grise’s a farm for meme (Cara Mia Theatre). In this time before her currently postponed productions return to their stages, this research project is fueled by Elena’s passion for innovation in the theatre. She is particularly interested in developing systems to redistribute resources and opportunities within the field and democratize theatre making and consumption. She also hopes that this research will unlock new structures of storytelling for her. Elena holds her MFA in acting from the University of Texas at Austin. http://www.elenaaraoz.com.

Jo Scott

Jo Scott is an intermedial practitioner-researcher and senior lecturer in performance at the University of Salford. Following the completion of her practice as research PhD project at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 2014, Jo has developed both practical and theoretical research in the area of intermedial performance, addressing in particular the intersection of digital computational processes and live performance practices. Her first monograph, Intermedial Praxis and PaR, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2016 and she has also contributed writing to a range of recent books and journals. Jo’s current practice as research project engages digital technologies in creative encounters with wild urban spaces, through live mixing practices, combining video, text, sound and song. See http://www.joanneemmascott.com for publications, projects and documentation.

Harry Robert Wilson

Harry graduated from Theatre Studies at the University of Glasgow in 2008 and has since completed an MPhil and PhD through creative practice at the university (co-supervised at DJCAD, University of Dundee). Harry’s practice sits between live art, contemporary performance and new media and often involves methods of devising through creative response. In his work Harry is interested in exploring the politics of affect and emotion, autobiography, memory, time and the body. Harry has shown work at a number of venues and festivals across the UK including The Arches; the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow; Forest Fringe, Edinburgh; DCA, Dundee; BAC, London; and internationally at Defibrillator Gallery, Chicago and Kilowatt Festival, Sansepolcro. Harry’s research is often practice-based and generally explores the intersections between performance, media and philosophy – from photographic performances (via Roland Barthes), to virtuality and perception in VR.Harry is an associate artist with Glass Performance and has collaborated with Untitled Projects, Cora Bissett, and Magnetic North, amongst others. Between 2018 and 2019 Harry was Digital Thinker in Residence at the National Theatre of Scotland, an AHRC funded artistic research residency supported by the University of Glasgow. Harry has taught theatre, performance and digital art at the University of Glasgow, University of the West of Scotland and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Moderator:

Joseph Dunne-Howrie

Joseph is an academic whose research specialisms include immersive and interactive theatre, archives and performance documentation, intermediality, autobiographical theatre, the politics of audience participation, site-based performance, and the media performativity of contemporary fascism. He is a long-term collaborator with the theatre and digital arts company ZU-UK. He was awarded a PhD from the University of Lincoln in 2015 for his practice research thesis Regenerating the Live: The Archive as the Genesis of a Performance Practice. Since then he has taught drama at postgraduate and undergraduate levels at Rose Bruford College, Mountview Academy, and the University of East London. Joseph currently splits his time as the MA/MFA module year co-ordinator for Performative Writing/Vade Mecum at Rose Bruford and as artist in residence in the Library and Information Science department at City, University of London where he is one of the leaders of the DocPerform project. He has published articles in Performance Research, Desearch, Stanislavski Studies, International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, Proceedings from the Document Academy and Drama Research. See his website for more details about his work josephdunnehowrie.com

To Be A Machine by Dead Centre (2020)

Trans-Participation in the Infosphere

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This is the full version of the paper Joseph Dunne-Howrie gave at the DocPerform 3: Postdigital Symposium on May 16th 2019

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I recently gave a paper where I criticized those immersive performances that denude participants of their critical agency by turning them into dramaturgical content to be managed. It is my intention in this paper to address another side of the immersive story by focusing on the relationship between identity and history as it relates to audience participation in the context of the infosphere. Luciano Floridi describes the infosphere as a space of pervasive connectivity where anything can be connected to anything. The binaries between the off- and online worlds collapse to produce onlife, the merging of the digital and physical realities. In this way, the infosphere is an evolution of the cyberspace imaginary in its distillation of real and virtual realities into informational entities.

‘The cyborg [is] not…only a hybrid of organic, biological and non-organic forms, but [is] a creature able to bridge the gap between the real and representation, between social reality and fiction’

(Giannachi, 2004, p.46)

The infosphere intersects with discourses of post humanism in its framing of the human as part of a bio-technological interactive system. Developments in cybernetics, AI and the mapping of the human genome may well presage the next stage of our evolution, but even as a potential of humanity, bio-technology represents an imaginary of interrelations between organic and machine entities that embody the contemporary experience of the postdigital world. Gabriella Giannachi tells us in the quote above that the figure of the cyborg has always represented a real entity and a narrative construction of humanity.

‘The infosphere will not be a virtual environment supported by a genuinely “material” world. Rather, it will be the world itself that will be increasingly understood informationally, as an expression of the infosphere.’

(Floridi, 2014, p.50)

A key point of differentiation between the infosphere and conventional understandings of virtual reality – which have been significantly influenced by works of fiction, such The Matrix as William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer – is a bio-techno form of interactivity without the presence of a technological interface. Humans in the infosphere are informational organisms – what Floridi calls ‘inforgs’ – whose identity is consciously being constituted and re-constituted through pervasive connectivity.

Medial boundaries collapse in the infosphere. Sarah Bay-Cheng believes we have reached the point where terms such as hypermedia, intermedia and mixed media no longer sufficiently express the postdigital world we live in. She argues that we need a form of performance analysis which assumes ‘all media are always already activated in every cultural object’ (Bay-Cheng 2018).

Trans- encapsulates the bio-techno experience of the postdigital in its framing of identity as a state of hyphenations across mediums. Analysing audience participation with reference to the infosphere allows me to frame immersive performance as communication networks where identities are constructed in collaboration with others.

My point of departure in using the prefix trans- to encapsulate this form of participation comes from Amelia Jones who argues it denotes an emergent state of connections that never settle into a fixed or immutable form (2016). Trans- also expresses a form of knowing that is contingent on participating within expansive communication networks. Trans- treats audience participation as a method of discursive communal thinking as the first step toward political action in the real world within a performative informational environment.

To illustrate this argument I will be discussing two pieces I saw in 2017: Operation Black Antler by Blast Theory and Hydrocracker and One Day, Maybe by dreamthinkspeak. Each piece represents different facets of trans-participation.

In One Day, Maybe, participants’ experience versions of globalised democratic freedom in South Korea from the perspective of the protestors who were killed during the Gwangju uprising in May 1980. One way we participate in the infosphere is through the creation and dissemination of documents. Documents implicate us in a distributed process of knowledge production. I am interested in exploring how the presence of real historical documents in One Day, Maybe produces fictionalised versions of South Korean democratic freedom and intersects with discourses of post-truth reality.

Operation Black Antler tackles the subjects of far right extremism, identity politics, terrorism and state surveillance. Trans-participation in Operation Black Antler has an explicit political imperative by inviting audiences to play a police officer and go undercover to infiltrate a far right group, the National Resistance. The layered identities participants construct with actors and other participants over the course of the performance merges their real selves with fictional identities. In this way, trans-participation in Operation Black Antler resonates with Hannah Arendt’s argument that the imagination has a vital political utility in that it allows us to think discursively, which is to say we make alternative versions of the real world present in the imagination in order to seed the potential of creating new futures through our actions in the present (1981, p.77).

dreamthinspeak’s artistic director Tristan Sharps was inspired to make One Day, Maybe whilst walking through the new retail complexes in Gwangju. He started to think how the ghosts of 1980 would feel about the state of democracy in South Korea if they were alive to see it now. His explicit intention was to avoid creating an historical record of the massacre by allowing the audience to reflect on our globalised world from the perspectives of the dead as a way of exploring how mass consumption constitutes an expression of democratic freedom.

The performance was staged in an anonymous office block in Hull. Upon arrival, the audience were greeted by a team of corporate figures from the Kasang Corporation. Kasang were the selling us the future, which was rendered in a virtual retail environment where we purchased products via the screens installed in the walls. The word ‘kasang’ derives from a Korean word meaning virtual or unreal. In One Day, Maybe it encapsulated the virtuality of democratic freedom and the virtual presence the ghosts of the protestors possess in South Korea’s history. The products being sold to participants were not ‘real’ in the sense we could actually eat the food we bought from the supermarket, but they were no more fictitious than the images we see on Amazon. We can see a similar process operating through the intense mediation of politics. The internet transforms national narratives into an immersive experience we sense but feel we cannot meaningfully participate in. Conversely, when framed as virtual entities, the ghosts of May 1980 attain a more tangible, even domestic, and real presence when contrasted with their commemoration in historical records. The ghosts acted as an imaginative lens for participants to explore how freedom is practiced in liberal free market societies.

The postdigital real was experienced most acutely during a game participants played in a maze. Each of us were given a tablet displaying our location in real time. The aim of the game was to complete the maze and avoid the guards who were represented by red dots on the screen. The tablet directed us to nodes in the maze where electronic documents became unlocked. These documents, the Cherokee files, were real communiques between the Korean Special Forces and the US government, who at that time had operational control over the Korean army. The files disprove the US government’s repeated claims that they did not know the military had been instructed to crush the uprising. Indeed, the Cherokee Files indicate the US gave them tacit approval.

Accessing this history within the fictional world of One Day, Maybe represented the process by which we discover and access information in the infosphere. Documents scaffold social relations within communication networks. The immersive world of One Day, Maybe incubated this process by embedding the Cherokee files in the space for us to discover and interpret, but no explicit narrative was present to make sense of the information we received. Indeed, there was little time to read them, but the bits of information we gleaned made us aware of a hidden layer of information within the mise en scène. The technology enabled participants to access a past that continues to be denied by many South Korean politicians.

The Kasang Corporation began to melt away as we progressed through the maze. The maze acted as a portal into the past by leading us to the Gwangju police station of 1980. Korean Special Forces officers lined us up in a car park and marched us into cells to perform a dance for the dead. The movements of the actors were eerily slow. They spoke in quite voices and rarely made eye contact with us. The overall effect was to render the 1980 police station a spatial echo of the real site and the Gwangju uprising. Participation became trans-ed in One Day, Maybe through the performative connections that were established between the spirit of contemporary South Korea and the events of May 1980. What emerged was a space where conflicting national narratives became presence as a network where participants experienced the ideas before they were able to intellectually articulate them.

This sensibility resonates with concerns around so-called post-truth politics. Much critical commentary focuses on the difficulty of establishing consensus perspectives of reality in the immersive information environment of the infosphere. In its broadest sense, post-truth describes an ultra-relativist political discourse where we are free to shape reality and be whoever we wish to be. Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt warns that when opinions are of considered equally valid than the documentary record, then ‘[n]o fact, no event, and no aspect of history has any fixed meaning or content. Any truth can be retold. Any fact can be recast. There is no ultimate historical reality’ (2016: 23). However, the importance of individual perspectives in establishing historical reality should not be disregarded out of hand. Richard J. Evans shows us in his book In Defence of History that cliometrics, a short-lived attempt to produce a purely objective historiography using raw data instead of the historian’s narrative, were a failure because the historian’s voice was absent. The historian is an agent in the formulation of national memory.

‘The language of historical documents is never transparent, and historians have long been aware they cannot simply gaze through it to the historical reality behind’

(Evans, 2018, p.104)

When we consider this quote in the context of One Day, Maybe, we can see that historical reality emerges as a series of interactions between participants, documents, actors and space. The history of the Gwangju uprising is thus trans-ed by becoming actively hyphenated to present day South Korea; not just as an event to be remembered, but as an idea of democratic freedom to be challenged.

Operation Black Antler was inspired by the increasing powers afforded to the security services through the Investigatory Powers Act, colloquially known as the snooper’s charter. Artistic director of Hydrocracker Jem Wall told me that he felt there was too much soft thinking on the left and on the right when it comes to the corrosive effect surveillance culture has on democratic freedoms.

‘Surveillance is no longer merely something external that impinges on “our lives”. It is also something that everyday citizens comply with – willingly and wittingly or not – negotiate, resist, engage with and, in novel ways, even initiate and desire. From being an institutional aspect of modernity or a technologically enhanced mode of social discipline or control, surveillance is not internalized in new ways. It informs everyday reflections on how things are, and the repertoire of everyday practices’

(Lyon, 2018, p.9)

David Lyon argues the Big Brother imaginary of surveillance is outdated in the age of pervasive information. Unlike the people of Oceania, modern surveillance is sustained by our active participation. We voluntarily produce and disseminate information online, thereby turning surveillance into a fluid form of control. The imbrication of surveillance into everyday reality allows us to monitor the activities of others whilst willingly becoming objects of surveillance. But the pervasive quality of modern communication makes it impossible to see as a phenomenon distinct from all other social activities. Operation Black Antler acted as an incubator of surveillance culture so participants could critically reflect on its consequences for political freedoms.

Participants enter Operation Black Antler when they receive a text message instructing them to go to a safe house to meet their handler. We were briefed that the security services were concerned about a new anti-Islamic group, National Resistance. Our mission was to gather intelligence on the group’s activities and decide if they warranted deep dive surveillance.  We were told this allowed the security services to access the most intimate details of their lives without a police warrant. The main action occurred in a pub where the National Resistance were having a party. Over the course of an hour I played a figure who I felt would attract far right sympathies. Unemployed, lonely, despondent, a man who felt his culture was being destroyed by immigration and was eager to meet like-minded people.

Operation Black Antler is structured like a game in that participants must navigate certain obstacles in order to meet the leaders of the group. The actors invite participants to share their political beliefs. Only by conforming to the group’s ideology will they be able to access the necessary information. Participants came together after an hour to decide if a deep dive surveillance operation should be launched.

‘By learning a new language, a person requires a new way of knowing reality and of passing that knowledge on to others…All languages complement each other in achieving the widest, most complete knowledge of what is real’.

‘The liberated spectator, as a whole person, launches into action. No matter that the action is fictional; what matters is that it is action!’

(Boal, 2000, pp.121-122)

The language of the National Resistance was easy to grasp, particularly at a time when ethno-nationalist politics are in the ascendency in Europe and North America.  These lines from Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed emphasizes his interest in theatre as a space of knowledge exchange. As nodes in a surveillance network, participants interact with the National Resistance in order to gain information. But this identity is always doubled with their real selves and resonates with the process of identity construction we undertake in the infosphere. This doubling effect is an important aspect of trans-participation because it allows the identities we perform in performance to become rehearsals of our identities outside the performance space. The political affiliations we perform online are not wholly fictional versions of our real selves. The micro-narratives of the selves that we construct online change our social selves and how we see each other.

‘You may no longer lie so easily about who you are, when hundreds of millions of people are watching. But you may certainly try your best to show them who you may reasonably be, or wish to become, and that will tell a different story about you that, in the long run, will affect who you are, both online and offline.’

(Floridi, 2014, p.64)

In Boal’s terms, trans-participation constitutes political action because it liberates the spectator from pure critical reflection into a subject who can effectuate change in the real world. But action must be informed by judgement, a faculty of mental reasoning that Hannah Arendt argues can only exist in the mind. Spectating is a vital part of judgement for Arendt. She states that the spectator is able to see the whole spectacle and judge it in its entirety, unlike the actor who is a component of the spectacle and is thus unable to determine its truth (Arendt, 1981, p.94). A crucial aspect of Arendtian judgement to grasp is that it is an action executed by an enlarged mentality. Trans-participation is a public thinking event where audiences collectively imagine experience living in postdigital reality in immersive performances.

References

Arendt, H. (1981) The Life of the Mind. London: Harcourt

Bay-Cheng, S. (2016) ‘Postmedia Performance’, Contemporary Theatre Review, [online] 26(2), https://www.contemporarytheatrereview.org/2016/postmedia-performance/, accessed 21 February 2019

Boal, A. (2000) Theater of the Oppressed. London: Pluto Press

Evans, R.J. (2018) In Defence of History. London: Granta

Floridi, L. (2014) The 4th Revolution: How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Giannachi, G. (2004) Virtual Theatres: An Introduction. New York: Routledge

Jones, A. (2016) ‘Introduction’ in Performance Research: Trans-ing Performance, 21:5. 2016, pp.1-11

Lipstadt, D. (2016) Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. London: Penguin

Lyon, D. (2018) The Culture of Surveillance: Watching as a Way of Life. Cambridge: Polity Press

 

Review of DocPerform 3: Postdigital

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Thank you to David Bawden for taking notes during the sessions!

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Temporary Poster

Over 50 participants took part in the third Documenting Performance symposium, held at City, University of London, on 16th May 2019, hosted by CityLIS, the Department of Library & Information Science. DocPerform is a part of the wider CityLIS project examining The Future of Documents.

The introductory session was opened by Sarah Rubidge, Professor Emerita at the University of Chichester, and long-standing member of the DocPerform team, who set the day into context. From the first symposium which focused mainly on conventional records of performance in libraries and archives, DocPerform has moved to deal more and more with the digital realm. This matches the changes in performance itself, which, from the 1980s onwards, has moved beyond the stage into other spaces, including the digital. In turn this leads to a number of questions;

– how do we document temporal media?
– how do we document improvised performances?
– how do we document performance systems and installations, especially immersive installations?
– how do we document processes?
– how do we document and preserve digital works, which are already disappearing as systems and software become obsolete?

Solving these problems requires research, not just applying existing archival methods.

The keynote presentation, The experience parlour, was given by Lyn Robinson from CityLIS, who reminded participants that the perspective of DocPerform is from that of library and information science, the remit of which is keeping the record of humankind. It is inspired in one way by Bruce Shuman’s vision of thirty years ago of a library as an experience parlour or experiencybrary, which would store immersive experiences which could be accessed by the library’s patrons. Virtual and augmented reality technologies, which now offer the prospect of an unreal reality, seem to offer the prospect of making Shuman’s vision a practical proposition. In order to bring this about, we will need to fully understand the nature of these new forms of documents, in order to be able to describe and use them properly. This will require extensive research, rooted in the concepts of document theory as originally outlined by Paul Otlet and Susanne Briet.

The first full session, devoted to Technologies, had four speakers.

Mark Underwood, an experienced sound designer now undertaking a PhD at the University of Surry, gave a presentation Exploring the extent to which sound design enhances temporal and somatic user experiences in mixed reality environments. This examined how intelligent sound design can help make such experiences as immersive as possible, with immersion understood as a deep mental involvement. Immersion has both psychological and sensory aspects. The former can be attained, for example by reading a book, while the latter is the aspect of immersion enhanced by sound. Mark showed, by playing a film clip with and without sound, that when sound is absent we may notice visual inputs more clearly; more sensory input is not, in itself, an advantage, it has to be carefully designed. By implication, this will influence the impact of documented experiences.

Hansjörg Schmidt and Nick Hunt described their interactive installation Traces, an aspect of their wider Library of Light project at Rose Bruford College, which is developing repository for lighting practices in various creative disciplines. Traces allows light effects to be recorded with a camera or smart phone, enabling an investigation of the relation between the ways we experience light, and the ways we can record and document it. The installation was made available in a separate room for participants to experience during the day.

https://performinglightblog.wordpress.com/schedule/traces/

The presentation by Tom Ensom and Jack McConchie, curators at the Tate galleries, Preserving virtual reality artworks, outlined the potential, and the challenges, of documenting digital installation artworks which employ virtual reality (VR), and which offer immersive and multi-sensory experiences. VR engines such as Unity, Source, Unreal Engine and CryEngine, originally developed for videogame development, can be used for this purpose. There remain considerable practical difficulties, not least cost and effort of collaborating with the VR industry. At a minimum, however, to stand the best chance of preserving such works, we can, and should:

  • start collecting now
  • create and archive a disk image of the running artwork
  • gather and create documentation that shows how to do this
  • create and archive a disk image of the production materials in a software environment in which they can be accessed
  • monitor the evolution of technologies, to identify problems and opportunities.

Joseph Dunne-Howrie, from CityLIS, gave a presentation on Trans-participation in the infosphere. Luciano Floridi’s concept of the infosphere, the contemporary digital information environment, is taken as a framework . The production and dissemination of media acts as the infrastructure of the infosphere, replicating our presence across platforms and communication networks. Audience participation in the infosphere and the condition of onlife, where the physical and virtual worlds fuse seamlessly, provides new forms of interaction and identity, as evidenced by examples from immersive theatre.

The second session, entitled Transcience, also featured four presentations.

Clarice Hilton, giving a presentation of behalf of herself and her fellow VR researcher Shivani Hassard, discussed Frictional forces in creating the effect of presence in immersive experiences. Presence in virtual reality is promoted by the effective illusions of place (creating the belief that we are somewhere we are not) and of plausibility (creating the belief that was is happening is natural and sensible). A contribution to plausibility is given by providing the sense of friction in VR experiences, making such experiences involve actual physical effort, so reinforcing the physicality of the actual body.

Piotr Woycicki from Aberystwyth University presented AR remediation/documentation of Our Lady of Shadows, an example of an augmented reality space which is at the same time enclosed but also open to the outside world. The work is an AR adaption of a radio play, giving a reimagining of Tennyson’s poem The Lady of Shalott. The discussion of this presentation led to the idea that, although we may think of audience interaction as a feature of modern and novel formats, it may be that radio drama allows audiences to be active participants [Tim Crook, Radio Drama, London: Routledge, 1999].

Harry Robert Wilson, Digital Thinker in Residence, for the National Theatre of Scotland, gave a presentation on Immersive media and the multi-modal document in PaR. This reflected on the documentation of immersive media in light of the definitions of document and documentation given by Angela Piccini and Caroline Rye [Of fevered archives and the quest for total documentation, in L. Allegue et al. (eds.) Practice-as-Research in performance and screen. London: Palgrave Macmillam, 2009), 34-39]. There are two distinctive features of VR documentation of performance. It puts the audience, in a sense, inside the document; and it integrates other forms of document, such as video, photographs, text, sound, and set design. However, it would wise not to claim uncritical and absolute “immersion” or “presence” from any currently feasible VR documents.

Sarah Rubidge presented an interactive artwork of which she was co-creator, Sensuous Geographies, a performative sound and video installation. Now that artwork itself is no longer active, would it be feasible to recreate the experience in VR? The presentation raised many questions about how to translate an experience in physical reality into virtual reality, while capturing sufficient of the essence of the experience to say that the VR version was, in some sense, the same. These questions are fundamental to the documentation of any interactive performance of artwork, and more broadly to new forms of digital document. See: Sensuous Geographies

The closing session was devoted to Structures and Interfaces.

A third CityLIS speaker, Deborah Lee, discussed Documenting interactivity and post-digital performances: exploring the application of data models and standards for augmented reality performance. This presentation examined the limitations of the standard library metadata models for describing performance documentation. The essential problem is that performance does not fit well into the bibliographic world described by standards such as the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and the Library Reference Model (LRM). These models assume that there is a single creator of a work, and hence cannot adequately describe interactive or participatory works. Indeed, they do not cope well with works defined in space and time; they are fine for recording the text of a play, for example, but not a single performance. Nor do they recognise AR and VR among their defined media types. These problems had been noted a while ago, before experience had been gained in the used for FRBR and its associated standards [D. Miller and P. Le Boeuf, “Such stuff as dreams are made on”: how does FRBR fit performing arts? Cataloguing and Classification Quarterly, 39(3-4), 151-178]. Discussion of this presentation suggested that these were philosophical issues, of fundamental importance in keeping records of performance documentation. In turn, documenting performance is a good test bed for examining the issues which will arise with other new forms of document.

To close the day, the True Heart theatre company presented The Genie is out of the bottle: who’s got a story to tell? Taking comments from members of the audience on their impressions and experiences of the day, they presented them as Playback Theatre – short improvised performances interpreting and representing experiences – without any of the digital or technological means discussed throughout the day.

Installations and performances were available to the participants throughout the day. Apart from Traces, already mentioned, the Itinerant Poetry Library opened, and Rebecca McCutcheon’s virtual reality performances Affective bodies in dynamic spaces: documenting site-specific theatre practice were made available for participants to experience.

Further information about the symposium is available on the website. The full papers will appear in a special issue of Proceedings from the Document Academy.

 

Immersion: A New(ish) Way to Experience Art and the World

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This post was originally published on the CityLIS blog.

As technology becomes more interactive and digital information becomes more pervasive, theatre-makers are experimenting with new forms of audience participation. The potential technology has to distribute a performance over time and distance is collapsing medial boundaries. In this post, I explore how immersion no longer denotes just the spatial dynamics of a performance by including multiple forms of audience interactivity, which may well constitute new forms of collaboration and co-authorship. 

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Immersive theatre has become a popular term in the UK over the past decade. It encompasses quite a broad range of performance practices, but at it’s most basic immersive theatre denotes performances that occur around the audience, who unlike in conventional theatre spaces experience the piece by moving inside a fictional world. But immersion does not just denote spatial characteristics. Participation is also a common trope, where artists aim to give audiences some agency over how they experience the story they are immersed inside of.

When I was an undergraduate student studying drama in the mid-2000s, what is now called immersive theatre was more commonly referred to as promenade theatre. Moving inside a performance was closely aligned to the concept of total theatre – a theatre that activates all of the senses and emotions to take the audience on a cathartic journey through a drama, thereby leaving them spiritually transformed. Originally published in 1938, Antonin Artaud The Theatre and It’s Double contains an early description of this theatre:

We intend to do away with stage and auditorium, replacing them by a kind of single, undivided locale without any partitions of any kind and this will become the very scene of the action. Direct contact will be established between the audience and the show, between actors and audience, from the very fact that the audience is seated in the centre of the action and is encircled by it. This encirclement comes from the shape of the house itself. Abandoning the architecture of present-day theatres, we will rent some kind of barn or hangar rebuilt along lines of certain Tibetan temples (2001, p.74).

A good example of the kind of space Artaud describes was Area 10. This former steel mill in Peckham, South East London was used as an art space in the late 2000s. It had no seating or any defined performance space. In 2009, I performed in Living Structures’ devised show Biosphere. The show began with the audience sat in a circle watching performers fertilising a plant with their excrement. Then, to a burst of choral singing, a different group of performers  – which I was a part of –  emerged from a plume of smoke, wearing nothing but white underpants and reindeer masks. Once the audience were ushered from the space, a large hessian tent was erected, which they were then free to explore. The inside of the tent was designed like a maze, with a series of installations located at certain nodes. The audience were given reindeer masks and hessian robes to wear. The costume was an attempt to deepen their immersion in the drama by making them part of the aesthetic environment and so become embedded in the narrative unfolding around them.

Whilst Biosphere conforms to many of the conventions of immersive theatre in terms of environmental envelopment and physical proximity between actors and audience, it is more closely aligned with promenade theatre through it’s absence of audience participation. Save for the final third act when the audience explored the maze, much of the audience’s time was taken up with watching dramatic action unfold before and around them rather than taking part in it. This “taking part” can manifest on a number of levels, from direct and improvisational contact with characters, to making choices that determine how a performance unfolds for the individual and for the audience as a whole.

A common characteristic of much immersive theatre is the fragmentation of dramatic narrative, which enables spectators to create their own version of the story. Punchdrunk’s The Drowned Man (2014) is the most elaborate piece of immersive theatre I have seen to date, both in terms of it’s scale and sheer detail. The world of The Drowned Man was one that could have been plucked from David Lynch’s imagination. Part abandoned movie set, part Americana dreamscape, part Frankensteinian nightmare, this was a world that I could never fully grasp. Yet it was the very impossibility of experiencing the drama in it’s entirety that drove my movement through it. This impulse is noted as a key characteristic of immersion in theatre by Josephine Machon, who frames it in terms of exploration: “Rediscovery is central to the experience: of space, narrative, character, theme, and sometimes even of unknown depths, or hidden emotions and memories specific to that individual participant”​ (2013, p.28). The version of The Drowned Man I experienced was not the same as my partner’s nor, indeed, anyone else who saw it. True, we inevitably saw some of the same scenes, but the order in which we experienced them in relation to what we had seen previously informed our interpretation of the overall narrative. The relationships between the characters was experienced out of sync or, rather, experienced as pieces of a puzzle we could not hope to assemble as a cohesive whole in a few hours.

We can see, here, links between immersive theatre and the genre of open world games. Games like Skyrim (2011) and the Fallout series (1997-) allow players to explore highly elaborate worlds with far fewer limitations imposed on them than games that have a linear story structure. The lack of definite goal or quest in these games and The Drowned Man creates a far more tangible reality for the spectator or the player because they are not required to follow one path. Instead, they are given a choice of routes inside a virtual reality. Open worlds create many potential experiences for players compared with those that are available in linear game narratives. The ostensive freedom this structure affords audiences and players more closely aligns it with the experience of everyday life.

The links between theatre and gaming can be developed further to address how immersive worlds are built as a collaborative partnership between actors and audiences. ZU-UK’s executive director Jorge Ramos discusses participation in the context of the “experience economy” where audiences, or “players”, act as co-authors of art live art works (2015, p.8). This was evident in ZU-UK’s six hour, overnight epic Hotel Medea (2009-2012). During this re-telling of the Medea myth, players frequently interacted with characters improvisationally. Ramos uses the term “micro-events” to describe these interactions to proffer an approach to immersive theatre that he expresses as “the dramaturgy of participation” (ibid, p.3). The degree of participation increased over the course of the performance in a way that allowed the audience to gradually become part of the story rather than as invertentionist elements.

These micro-events can be understood as private or secret dramas known only to those who experience them.  Participation in the context of immersion includes the building of imaginary worlds through interactivity. In this way, immersive performance  “aims to provide, in everyday activities at the moment of the encounter, modest but pervasive communication, provisional social consensus and micro-utopias”​ (Harvie, 2013, p.7). Describing it in these terms might appear to exaggerate the impact immersive performance can potentially have on the real world until we remember that utopias are non-places of the imagination. The physical immersion in these fictional worlds allows audiences to temporarily inhabit societies that we may celebrate or fear.

The popularity of immersive theatre is partly a product of our contemporary media ecology, which places interaction at it’s centre. Technologically mediated communication has become a significant part of everyday experience. Social media enables these interactions to stretch over time, distance, place and device, thus making the locus of communicative exchanges highly diffuse. Patrick Longeran argues that Facebook, Twitter and the like act as stages where we perform identities to a “network of followers”. When analysed in the context of theatre, online communication produces a distributed mode of performance which “can extend a production both temporally and spatially, pushing [performances] beyond the boundaries of the stage, and beyond the performance of the action in real time” (2015, pp.2-4). Moreover, interaction is not just a feature of the event, but constitutes the event itself:“What makes social media distinctive from other forms of digital performance is the extent to which interactivity is not just a context for reception, but a core element of the overall composition” (ibid, p.21).

Blast Theory’s 2097: We Made Ourselves Over (2017) pushes the envelope of immersive theatre by spreading the immersive world in live and recorded iterations. 2097 presents a dystopian vision of Hull and the Danish city Aarhus following an ecological catastrophe. On 1st October 2017, every public telephone rang in Hull at 2pm. The audience listened to a voice from the future, Hessa, who invited them to record a message to send to her community about what they think is the most important thing to preserve from the present. The piece also consists of five short sci-fi films and one interactive film for smartphones. All of these different iterations act as portals into a fictional world that is embedded in reality through technology, and is therefore not confined to the spatial-temporal zone of live theatre.2097 is neither live or non-live (if we consider ‘live’ to denote physical proximity and ephemerality). It inhabits a temporal plane inbetween or outside of this binary.

Charlie Gere argues that technology has become so embedded into reality that the term digital culture “risks becoming a tautology” (2008, p.7). Whilst the importance of maintaining body-to-body contact in theatre continues to be debated, it is undeniable that performance-makers are embracing the affordances of online communication to find new ways of engaging with audiences. Matt Adams argues that the “most significant characteristic of the ‘digital revolution’ is an explosive new amount of interaction and participation from what has gone before”​ (Adams in Blake, 2014, p.ix). The link he makes between interaction and participation is important to understand when discussing the kinds of activity immersive experiences engender in audiences. Immersion in theatre is an expanding term that is now encompassing communication networks. No single event exists in this form of immersion because it is composed of individual experiences that occur over time and distance.

The immersive spaces of the performance are created by the participation of the audience. This idea resonates with Floridi’s notion of “onlife” – the merging of the digital and offline worlds to create the “infosphere” (2014). The immersive qualities of technology are beginning to be utilised by theatre and performance artists as a way of enriching how audiences can participate in their aesthetic experiences. Immersion in art could constitute a revolution in how theatre is not just experienced but also produced in collaboration with audiences. Moreover, it might allow us the opportunity to rehearse how we can live in a hyper-connected environment without becoming subsumed into a digital fugue of voices and images by providing temporary spaces for genuine intimacy and dialogue.

Adams, M. (2014) Foreword. In: B. Blake, Theatre & the Digital. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.viii-xi

Artaud, A. (2001) The Theatre and Its Double. London: Calder

Floridi, L. (2014) The Fourth Revolution: How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Gere, C. (2008) Digital Culture. 2nd ed. London: Reaktion

Harvie, J. (2013) Fair Play: Art, Performance and Neoliberalism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

Longeran, P. (2015) Theatre & Social Media. London: Palgrave

Machon. J. (2013) Immersive Theatres: Intimacy and Immediacy in Contemporary Performance. London: Palgrave Macmillan

***

You can follow Joe on Twitter.

Notes Made in the Theatre and in the Dark: An exploration of the methods used in ballet documentation and reconstruction by Adelaide Robinson

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Notes Made in the Theatre and in the Dark:
An exploration of the methods used in ballet documentation and reconstruction

Adelaide Robinson, Department of Library & Information Science, City, University of London

This text was written by Adelaide as a student assignment, in fulfilment of the requirements set for the Independent Study module at CityLIS, 2016/17.

Follow Adelaide Robinson on Twitter: @adafrobinson

***

Introduction

The documentation of dance is a complicated field. As with any kind of live performance, there is a strong divide between what is technically possible to record, and what is possible to be reconstructed from those records. Not only is there a technical difficulty in recording a live performance – with video, written accounts, notation, or otherwise – but some artists believe that to try and document something in an inherently ephemeral medium goes against the point of their art. Therefore dance and theatre historians face challenges on many levels when trying to find documents and recreate performances for a new audience. Theatrical researchers usually have the luxury of scripts, scores, and written accounts from directors and actors, but those looking for ballet documentation have to work around the difficulty that is writing down a narrative with no words.

While documentation can be read and studied satisfactorily by those who simply have an interest in ballet, the job of reconstructing a past performance relies on these often fragmented and conflicting records. Methods of documentation in balletic dance history differ wildly from ballet to ballet: records can vary from informal sketches of dancers to highly complex sheets of notation. (Note; for the purposes of this essay, “dance” will refer to the European balletic tradition.) For some ballets we have no record of the production whatsoever, other than a name. In the modern, digital age, video cameras and new computer software – capable of recognising, recording, and storing movement – may or may not usher in a new era of ballet that will remain perfectly preserved for future generations. But whether or not even this will allow for a genuine reconstruction of any performance from the past remains to be seen. Using the various reconstruction and recreation efforts associated with Nijinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps as a case study, this paper aims to explore the most common methods used throughout the history of dance documentation for ballet, and evaluate their effectiveness when it comes to reconstruction while keeping the following questions in mind; how and why has dance documentation evolved? And if the complete reconstruction of a ballet is impossible, then what is the point of documentation?

Dance Notation

In a 1986 review of recent developments in European dance history, Meredith Little presented the following argument.

“Studies in dance history may be boring to read because the material presented refers to nothing in our own experience; we must invent our own examples in order to make any sense out of it at all. How interesting would studies of Shakespeare be if, at best, only fragments of plays had survived?”[1]

While more standardised methods of notation and the increasing accessibility of filmed performances have proliferated in the ballet world in recent years, making reconstruction an easier task for future directors, reconstructors at present still have to work with these older “fragments” that the previous generation of choreographers left behind.

Dance notation is older than one might expect; European dance notation is generally agreed to have started with Pierre Beauchamp-Feuillet’s system of recording Baroque dance, (1700, in his work Choréographie), which was commissioned by Louis XIV. (It should be noted that other systems of dance notation were used before this publication, but in much the same way that Shakespeare is credited with inventing words as he recorded contemporary colloquial speech, Beauchamp codified existing systems into the first standardised notation system. It is also seen as especially relevant for being authorised by the French monarch.)[2] Dance notation then evolved through various forms and off-shoots devised by choreographers and dancers with different needs to fulfil. This diversity, while fascinating to study, does not lend itself to easy reconstruction of pre-modern ballet.

The most common and popular form of notation used today is Benesh, devised by Rudolph and Joan Benesh (1950s), with Labanotation (1928) a close second. Many directors now employ a notation expert, or “notator”, to work alongside choreographers and ensure that new productions are recorded to the full extent of their ability to be so. Notation experts are now often credited in programmes, as well as the original authors of notation scores, showing that notation has become something well-used and of value in the modern ballet world.

Some dance history scholars have expressed concerns about the growing dependence on notation scores in the current ballet world. Judy van Zile – professor of dance at the University of Hawai’i – argues that depending on the services of a professional notator diminishes the score’s accuracy, as the dance is being recorded by someone other than the person who created (or is dancing) it. This brings up several questions; most importantly, can a separate party accurately record a dance?[3] For the companies putting on popular ballets, this is not a problem; there is always someone available to teach who has danced Juliet before, for example, and this first-hand experience improves the process. For reconstructors of older and less well-documented ballets, trusting one person’s notes – a person who they may never be able to meet or ask questions of – can be a difficult, almost impossible experience. Dance notation is also not easy to read. As Meredith Little puts it, “researchers are finding that each notation system is a language with its own syntax; symbols have different meanings in different contact, and one must translate phrases, sections and whole pieces as well as individual steps and step units.”[4] If a company is without a skilled notation expert, possessing complex scores may be of little value to them.

Pictured: a section from the Sunday 18 March 2017 programme for “The Human Seasons/After The Rain/Flight Pattern” at the Royal Opera House. “Flight Pattern” premiered on 16 March 2017, and the Benesh notator for the production was Gregory Mislin.[5]

Documentation in the Digital Age

As documentation in the library and information sector in the digital age has become increasingly computerised, and many documents are now ‘digital-born’, so has the world of dance documentation made tentative steps towards the same. As Judith Gray put it: “Of all the arts, dance would seem the least likely to accede to the vagaries of rapid change and the relentless advances of this modern technology,” yet computer software has become far more prevalent in the field of dance notation recently.[6] Janos Fügedi’s 1998 review of the application available for recording and preserving dance, while dated, still gives us an insightful look at the potential for these types of software. Computer applications for dance generally include the following outputs; computer animations based on dancers’ movements, born-digital dance notation, and databases of scores. Fügedi has a positive outlook on computer applications, stating that dance research can gain “great benefits” from computer applications in the field and ends his review on the hopeful note that “the connection of local dance notation collections to the Internet (…) will open a new horizon for factual, documented dance based comparative research.”[7] Unfortunately, the majority of dance notation collections are still only available in physical libraries, with computer applications reserved for those with a higher knowledge level of programming and better resources for the more intense processes such as motion capture.

Putting a greater focus on dance documentation in the digital era has already changed how ballet is produced and shared. For example, the copyrighting of a live performance has been especially difficult for choreographers in the past, as original choreography needs to be “fixed” before it can be put under copyright: the performance is not enough. With the proliferation of better notation systems and the introduction of video cameras to most theatres and dance studios, choreographers now have much better access to enforcing copyright of their original works.[8] Dance documentation also looks to become even more digitally-minded in the future. When computer software for dance notation was new, the hope was that it would lead to a program that would deliver an ‘enhanced’ score, with video and music to accompany the notation. As described by Wilmer and Resende, “in this way a student would simultaneously (1) hear the music of the ballet, (2) have access to the music score, (3) watch a performance of the ballet, (4) see the dance score, (5) see illustrations of each position or movement of the dancers body and (6) find out the name of each position or movement.”[9] Although there is no such definitive program yet, dancers and choreographers do now have much easier access to filmed performances, and the advance of motion capture and animation in documentation software enables a greater understanding of recorded movement than a simple, printed dance score.

Case Study: Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring)

Le Sacre occupies a special place in the history of dance reconstruction and recreation. There are over a hundred different productions associated with Stravinsky’s original score.[10] While most of these are completely different dancers, some have tried to recreate Nijinsky’s original choreography; using sketches, eyewitness accounts, and reviews. The lure of the Rite of Spring most likely stems from the fantastical stories of its first performance on May 29, 1913 in Paris. The combination of Stravinsky’s intense, overwhelming score, and Nijinsky’s modern choreography produced a hostile environment for the audience and led to a riot. The performance ran for only six more nights in its original run. The scandal of “the riot of spring” has been a key ingredient of its popularity ever since.

The difficulty of reconstructing Nijinsky’s Sacre has been part of an enduring myth of “the lost masterpiece”. Years after the ballet was dropped from the repertoire, by the director of the Ballet Russes, Serge Diaghilev, it was put up for revival by the same man. According to reports at the time, “apparently no one could remember the movement, even though some of the original cast were still performing with the company.”[11] A revival was in fact staged, but was unsuccessful and used practically new choreography. The most true to life reconstruction of the Sacre was researched and written by Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer, and staged by the Joffrey Ballet in 1987. It is the methods of dance documentation used for this reconstruction, and the accounts of Hodson and Archer themselves on the process, which will make up the largest portion of this case study. The fragments available to them demonstrated many different varieties of dance documentation; from sketches, to notation, to eyewitness accounts written down in interviews and diaries.

There are almost no records of any notation for Le Sacre. As the production was unlike any ballet that had come before it, there was a difficulty in fitting the expressive new movements in Nijinsky’s choreography into established notation systems. Nijinsky himself seemed to be frustrated with notation, having been quoted as saying:

“I am forced to cry for a ‘partition of movements’ where to place my instruments – which are the human bodies – in a manner that is in absolute accordance with a white canvas for Bakst or group of islands for Debussy. My composition is even less simple because the human body does not possess just 4 strings but an infinite multitude of sensitive and expressive elements.”[12] (Quoted in Hector Cahusac’s, “Debussy et Nijinsky,” 14 May 1913.)

However, although no score from Nijinsky has been found, there was a rumour that he intended to produce one. In Hodson’s preface to the reconstructed score, she quotes a contemporary of Nijinsky, as having heard the choreographer say:

“I have invented symbols to represent the dancers. The note on the stave represents the head, their gestures are indicated by stylised attitudes. I have transcribed the Sacre and intend to transcribe all of (my ballets)… And in ten, twenty, a hundred years, they will be able to dance these ballets as they danced them today.”[13]

The reconstruction process would certainly have been easier if Nijinsky had followed through on this statement.

Rarely does a reconstructor have to rely on a score (whole or otherwise) alone; the most successful projects have had access to a multitude of different, less official records to help the process. While notation systems are useful and complex enough to record the more complicated aspects of movement, it is important to not discount other, more informal forms of records; such as sketches, written accounts from company members and other involved peoples, reviews, programs, costumes, and other such souvenirs and mementoes associated with attending a dance. Much of the information we have on ballets lost to history is due to reviews. As documents, reviews can provide dance historians and reconstructors with a wealth of important information. An example of this can be seen below:

 Pictured: an illustration accompanying a review of the 1921 run of Le Sacre du Printemps in ‘The Sketch’. [14]

This illustration, although meant to provide humorous insights for the review, actually contains a wealth of useful information about the 1921 revival. Firstly, it gives us the name of the principal dancer, Lydia Sokolova, which is useful as the names of individual dancers were not always recorded in early 20th century programmes. There are the sketched out costumes, which provide valuable reference points for costume reconstructors; showing clothing, accessories, the weight and hang of the material, and the fact that the dancers appear not to wear pointe shoes. Most importantly, in the illustrations and in the jokes in the captions, we find useful descriptions of the actual movements of the dance. While ‘oranges and lemons’ is meant to be a humorous commentary, it and the accompanying illustration tells a reconstructor that a movement occurs in the dance where a dancer moves through two lines of parallel dancers with their hands linked. The series of illustrations above the main picture provides an even clearer representation of a particular movement, sketched out in stages. While this document was not intended to be a record of this kind, documents such as this can be invaluable to a reconstructor. Written accounts in reviews are also useful. However, reviews are by their very nature biased, and do not present an objective record of a performance. Reviews in papers can be sensationalised to sell more copies of a publication. This may be a problem in the case of “the riot of spring”, where different accounts of Le Sacre’s first performance may be unreliable due to being repeated and embellished in a ‘Chinese whispers’ style.

In a place where performance studies and fan studies intersect, documentation of any live performance owes much to the devotion of its audience. Many sketches of the original 1913 Sacre have been found and used in reconstruction attempts. The most influential were drawn by Valentine Hugo (née Gross); an illustrator, painter, and ballet enthusiast whose works can now be found in the Valentine Gross Archive in the Victoria and Albert museum’s Department of Theatre and Performance.[15] Valentine Hugo, a devoted follower of the Ballet Russes, made many sketches of their rehearsals and performances between 1910 to 1914. Her motivations and process were described by Richard Buckle in the following quote, presented in the introduction of a book of Hugo’s sketches:

“The motive, of course, behind the tireless jottings of Valentine Gross, was to record a series of uplifting theatrical experiences (…). Her notes made in the theatre and in the dark could be caught unconscious, because she did not know what or how she was drawing. Together with the scribbled name of a dancer or the collar of a costume they were an aide-mémoire which might turn out to be legible and helpful, or as happened in a number of cases, might not. She would not consider these notes as drawings and would probably shrink from showing them to anyone else.”[16]

Pictured: Page of a sketch book showing blue crayon preliminary sketch made in Théâtre de Champs-Elysées during rehearsal or performance of Le Sacre du Printemps, Diaghilev Ballets Russes, 1913. Sketch by Valentine Gross.[17]

These informal forms of documentation should not be discounted; in many ways, Valentine Hugo’s “scribbled” sketches may have been of more use to reconstructors than any attempts at notation the choreographer tried to make. Drawings from a passionate fan can record more emotional context than even the most complex of notation systems. Hodson and Archer’s reconstruction of Le Sacre du Printemps hinged on two important documents; Stravinsky’s musical score, on which he had written descriptions of some movements above the stage, and Nijinsky’s contemporary Marie Rambert’s recreation of the score based on Dalcroze eurythmics, which was recovered after her death in 1982.[18] Despite this, it may have been the ‘unofficial’ documents that were the most useful to the reconstruction efforts.

Conclusion

If a perfect reproduction of a live performance is impossible, then what is the point of dance documentation? Many artists shy away from documenting, (specifically filming) their work, arguing that to document a live performance is to go against its inherently ephemeral nature. However, Renée Conroy argues that the purpose of documentation is vital in order “to enable today’s dancers to have a more robust kinaesthetic understanding of the works that pave the way for contemporary choreographic masters”.[19] By having more access to documents that record dances and dancers in their historical context, choreographers will be able to study the technical aspects of dance in a way that they may have not previously explored. Having a stronger focus on historical records of dance; including notation scores, photographs and pictures, and notes, could improve the choreographic process for many a company, and bringing dance documentation out of shoeboxes and old journals could improve the overall standing of dance history. Had the sketches of Valentine Gross been ignored, for example, a wealth of essential information on the Sacre, and several others of Nijinsky’s ballets, would have been lost. In his introduction to her works, Buckle praises her efforts: “dancers, choreographers and historians must for ever be grateful to her for the pains she took.”[20] While most methods of dance documentation – even film – are arguably unsuccessful in completely capturing a performance, documentation should still be treated as a vital part of the production process. Without it, many productions would be lost to history.

There is also the argument, as Sarah Rubidge puts it, that “works are artistically valuable in themselves, and should be made available to contemporary audiences for their intrinsic, rather than solely for their historical, value.”[21] Ballet enthusiasts should be able to relive the productions of the past in as much detail as possible; not just to learn, but to enjoy. If dance documentation continues to evolve in the digital age, those wanting to re-experience a production should not have to analyse sketches and score fragments, but instead should be able to watch the performance from their own homes or their local theatre and performance collections. With virtual reality making its way into the arts, balletomanes may even have the chance to relive ballets in a totally immersive experience. While many companies have put up 360 degree videos of rehearsals and behind-the-scenes featurettes before, the Dutch National Ballet were the first company to premiere a ballet that was created and produced for virtual reality. The show, ‘Night Fall’ was created in conjunction with the Samsung virtual reality department, premiered with free access online on World Ballet Day in 2016, and was also available to watch at the VR cinema in Amsterdam on the weekend of the 27th of August. This ground-breaking event highlights the third reason that dance should be documented; for posterity, for the dance itself, and also for the wider opening of access to the arts. Richard Heideman, press manager for the Dutch National Opera & Ballet, told Digital Trends that “it is also meant to see if we can reach a new audience with this project. We intended to reach out to people who would normally not buy a ticket to a theater or ballet performance, but are willing to try the VR project — and we hope it gets them inspired and excited to also try the live on stage experience one day.”[22]

Not only is documentation essential for reconstructing the ballets of the past, but it should also be used to introduce more people to the ballet of the present. Valentine Gross’s sketches were sold to tourists and ballet lovers in programmes as Le Sacre du Printemps played in Paris. These pictures were no doubt regarded fondly by those who never made it to the original, seven-show run, as they are regarded fondly by dance historians and enthusiasts today. As dance documentation evolves further into the digital age, it should continue make wider access to live performance art a priority.

Bibliography

Anderson, Jack. “THE JOFFREY BALLET RESTORES NIJINSKY’S ‘RITE OF SPRING.’” The New York Times. October 25, 1987. http://www.nytimes.com/1987/10/25/arts/the-joffrey-ballet-restores-nijinsky-s-rite-of-spring.html?pagewanted=all&pagewanted=print.

Conroy, Renee. “Dancework Reconstruction: Kinesthetic Preservation or Danceworld Kitsch?” American Society for Aesthetics, 2016, 5–9.

David, Irving. “Choreography and Copyright – Make the Right Moves.” Dance UK, 2012. http://www.danceuk.org/news/article/choreography-and-copyright/.

Dormehl, Luke. “The World’s First Virtual Reality Ballet Experience.” Digital Trends, 2016.

Fügedi, János. “Computer Applications in the Field of Dance Notation.” Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 2/4, no. 39 (1998): 421–41.

Gray, Judith A. “Dance Technology: Current Applications and Future Trends.” In The Evolution of Dance Technology. The American Alliance for Health, Physical Educations, Recreation and Dance, 1989.

Hodson, Millicent. Nijisnky’s Crime Against Grace: Reconstruction Score of the Original Choreography for Le Sacre Du Printemps. Pendragon Press, 1996.

Hugo, Valentine. Nijinsky On Stage. Edited by Jean Hugo and Richard Buckle. First. London: Studio Vista Publishers, 1971.

Jarvinen, Hannah. “Kinesthesia, Synesthesia and Le Sacre Du Printemps: Responses to Dance Modernism.” The Senses and Society 1, no. 1 (2006).

Koegler, Horst. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Ballet. London: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Little, Meredith. “Recent Research in European Dance, 1400-1800.” Early Music 14, no. 1 (1986): 4–14. doi:10.1093/earlyj/14.1.4.

Rubidge, Sarah. “Reconstruction and Its Problems.” Dance Journal 2, no. 1 (1995).

V&A Collection. “Le Sacre Du Printemps | Gross, Valentine | V&A Search the Collections.” Accessed April 20, 2017. http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1253870/le-sacre-du-printemps-drawing-gross-valentine/.

V&A Theatre and Performance Collection. “Le Sacre Du Printemps | Gross, Valentine.” V&A Collections. Accessed April 17, 2017. http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1112109/le-sacre-du-printemps-drawing-gross-valentine/.

Wilmer, Celso, Cristiana Lara, and Cristiana Lara Resende. “Illustrations and Nomenclature Stave for Dance Movements: What Visual Communication Can Do for Dance.” Resende Source: Leonardo 31, no. 2 (1998): 111–17. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1576513.

Zile, Judy Van. “What Is the Dance? Implications for Dance Notation” 17, no. 2 (2009): 41–47.

[1] Meredith Little, “Recent Research in European Dance, 1400-1800,” Early Music 14, no. 1 (1986): p. 4

[2] Horst Koegler, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Ballet (London: Oxford University Press, 1977). p. 60

[3] Judy Van Zile, “What Is the Dance? Implications for Dance Notation” 17, no. 2 (2009): 41–47.

[4] Little, “Recent Research in European Dance, 1400-1800.”

[5] Cast sheet: The Human Seasons/After the Rain/Flight Pattern, 18th March 2017, Royal Ballet, London. (London: Royal Opera House, 2017)

[6] Judith A Gray, “Dance Technology: Current Applications and Future Trends,” in The Evolution of Dance Technology (The American Alliance for Health, Physical Educations, Recreation and Dance, 1989).

[7] János Fügedi, “Computer Applications in the Field of Dance Notation,” Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 2/4, no. 39 (1998): 421–41.

[8] Irving David, “Choreography and Copyright – Make the Right Moves,” Dance UK, 2012, http://www.danceuk.org/news/article/choreography-and-copyright/.

[9] Celso Wilmer, Cristiana Lara, and Cristiana Lara Resende, “Illustrations and Nomenclature Stave for Dance Movements: What Visual Communication Can Do for Dance,” Resende Source: Leonardo 31, no. 2 (1998): 111–17, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1576513.

[10] Millicent Hodson, Nijisnky’s Crime Against Grace: Reconstruction Score of the Original Choreography for Le Sacre Du Printemps (Pendragon Press, 1996). (Introduction).

[11] Ibid. p.7

[12] Hannah Jarvinen, “Kinesthesia, Synesthesia and Le Sacre Du Printemps: Responses to Dance Modernism,” The Senses and Society 1, no. 1 (2006). p. 78

[13] Hodson, Nijisnky’s Crime Against Grace: Reconstruction Score of the Original Choreography for Le Sacre Du Printemps., p. 23

[14] De Grineau, Brian. The Pagan “Shimmy Shake” at the Prince’s. July 6, 1921. V&A Theatre and Performance Collection, Blythe House, London.

[15] V&A Theatre and Performance Collection, “Le Sacre Du Printemps | Gross, Valentine,” V&A Collections, accessed April 17, 2017, http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1112109/le-sacre-du-printemps-drawing-gross-valentine/.

[16] Valentine Hugo, Nijinsky On Stage, ed. Jean Hugo and Richard Buckle, First (London: Studio Vista Publishers, 1971). p. 12

[17] V&A Collection, “Le Sacre Du Printemps | Gross, Valentine | V&A Search the Collections,” accessed April 20, 2017, http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1253870/le-sacre-du-printemps-drawing-gross-valentine/.

[18] Jack Anderson, “THE JOFFREY BALLET RESTORES NIJINSKY’S ‘RITE OF SPRING,’” The New York Times, October 25, 1987, http://www.nytimes.com/1987/10/25/arts/the-joffrey-ballet-restores-nijinsky-s-rite-of-spring.html?pagewanted=all&pagewanted=print.

[19] Renee Conroy, “Dancework Reconstruction: Kinesthetic Preservation or Danceworld Kitsch?,” American Society for Aesthetics, 2016, 5–9. p. 2

[20] Richard Buckle in Hugo, Nijinsky On Stage. p. 14

[21] Sarah Rubidge, “Reconstruction and Its Problems,” Dance Journal 2, no. 1 (1995).

[22] Luke Dormehl, “The World’s First Virtual Reality Ballet Experience,” Digital Trends, 2016.

Documenting Dance: The Rite of Spring

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This post, by Adelaide ‘Ada’ Robinson, originally appeared on her blog “The Accidental Scientist“, on February 3rd, 2017. It is reposted here with permission.

The text outlines Ada’s idea to research the documentation of “The Rite of Spring” for her Independent Study module, which is part of the MA Library Science at #CityLIS.

Ada has a longstanding interest in ballet, and was inspired to combine her knowledge and enthusiasm for the art with her academic studies in library science, after attending the #docperform symposium last year.

UPDATE: 30/7/2017 Ada’s completed essay is now available Notes Made in the Theatre and in the Dark.

We also hope to encourage more dance documentation enthusiasts to join us.

You can follow Ada on Twitter @adafrobinson

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“So what does ballet have to do with library science?”

… Is a question people have been asking me a lot over the past week. Hopefully, I’ll soon have an answer. Welcome to Independent Study: dance edition.

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The question of how to document dance first came to me at the ‘Documenting Performance’ conference, (October 31st, 2016), which had a mix of fascinating talks by speakers from both LIS and performance studies. Topics covered included theatre, live street entertainment, darkness, and dance. Since that day – as a huge ballet fan and library science student – I’ve been thinking about the idea of documenting dance more and more.

While researching Stravinsky’s ‘The Rite of Spring’ for work, I found that there are over 150 different versions of the production. Different dances, set to the same music. However, the original Ballet Russes production, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, has been lost. When the time came for someone to attempt a first revival of the show, they found that no-one remembered the original choreography.

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Dancers from the Ballet Russes in costume for the first ever production of The Rite of Spring in 1913.  Photograph: Keystone/Getty. The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/music/gallery/2013/feb/12/igor-stravinsky-rite-of-spring).

While this might be par for the course for some ballets – I have a children’s encyclopedia (featured in the first photo above) that describes a multitude of shows lost to the ages – you would have thought that the Rite would have escaped that fate. Because on May 29th, 1913, the first performance of ‘The Rite of Spring’ ended in a riot. Stravinsky’s innovative and intense music, coupled with Nijinsky’s avant-garde choreography (depicting a human sacrifice), terrified and incensed their first audience in Paris. It was a scandal that rocked the arts world, and was possibly the most talked about performance of its time.

My first question: And no-one thought to write down the steps?

Second question: How do you even write down choreography?

This forms the beginning of my as-of-yet-untitled Independent Study. The topics I am going to cover in my research – and in weekly blog updates – will be as follows:

  • How ballet choreography is documented and passed on to companies.
  • How/why choreography etc can be ‘forgotten’.
  • What methods different choreographers have used to recreate forgotten or lost productions.
  • ‘The Rite of Spring’ as a case study.
  • Why performance studies can be useful to LIS.

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(The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Ballet, Horst Koegler, OUP, 1977).

I go to the ballet a lot, and I’m pretty active in the balletomane community. However, I don’t know a great deal about how choreography works and how shows are documented. I have DVDs of certain productions, but I’m still not sure on how the choreography of classic ballets survived in the pre-camera era. That will be the first question I tackle, and next week I’ll update with a short review of my findings.

I also thought it would be fun to show videos of dancers in rehearsal at the end of each post, so here is a clip from a rehearsal of Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works, which is currently showing at the Royal Opera House. If you get a chance – go. I saw it last night and I think it’s one of the best modern ballets there is, and the score is absolutely beautiful too.

Alessandra Ferri and Federico Bonelli rehearse Woolf Works (The Royal Ballet)

On Documenting Performance and Suzanne Briet

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This post was written by Tom Ash, and originally appeared on his blog ‘Adventures in Library and Information Science‘ on 28/11/16.

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Tom’s reference to Toni Sant’s presentation, and indeed, Toni’s presentation per se, highlights the differences and connections between the concepts of documents, and the processes of documentation.

These terms appear straightforward in meaning, but on closer examination, prove more complex.

Briet suggests that the definition of a document may be considered from a wide conceptual basis, beyond a text, to include paintings, sculptures and even animals. The issue being whether the entity stands as ‘evidence in support of fact’.

It is widely deemed that the processes of documentation aim to record the endeavors and the outputs of humankind. To maintain ‘the record’. Documentation is about collecting, organising and interpreting the ‘evidence’ or the documents, to allow for use/reuse at a future time.

But what exactly do we mean by ‘the record’? Are there different sorts of ‘record’? Is ‘the record’ ever complete? How much ‘evidence’ is needed to form ‘the record’. Can a single ‘document’ fully represent ‘the record’?

We could consider that documents, in themselves, provide only a partial representation of an event, an idea or concept. That they only partially represent ‘the record’. Whilst the goal of documentation is to create, ideally, a complete record of an phenomenon or happening,  the work is undertaken within the context of the availabe ‘documents’. As complete a record as possible is facilitated by the instantiation, dissemination, indexing, organisation, understanding and interlinking of documents.

Ideally, one could imagine that the purpose of documentation is to create such an accurate record of an event, that the ‘reader’ (viewer, participant, audience, player), cannot distinguish between an original event and a ‘playback’ from the library or archive.

This latter experience is afforded by what I have referred to as  ‘immersive‘ documents.

There is much to consider here: how does documentation of a book, or a newspaper, differ from documentation of performance? Can we reconcile and even integrate the approaches to documentation, from LIS and performance studies?

The work of Briet, and other documentalists, is worth examination, and Tom’s thoughtful post here takes a step in that direction.

LR 29/11/2016

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On 31st October #citylis hosted an fascinating event called The Future of Documents: Documenting Performance. The one day interdisciplinary symposium was intended to “bring together scholars, researchers, artists and practitioners from the disciplines of library & information science and theatre & performance, to share and consider respective conceptual views of documents, and the processes and procedures associated with documentation“1

The event was ‘sold out‘ with attendees from a wide range of performance organisations as well as library and information scientists and a contingent of interested #citylis students, including myself, in the capacity of both technical support and attendee.

The event was organised by Dr Lyn Robinson and Joseph Dunne of Rose Bruford College, born out their mutual interest in the documentation of participatory experience, performance and partially-immersive, or complex documents, described by Robinson as:

“.. (these documents) provide the reader (player, participant, viewer) with a compelling and realistic world, but one which is delineated to varying extents from actual reality. The reader knows that they, and the document with which they are engaging, are a part of the real world (for want of a better phrase). This is in contrast to the experience delivered by fully immersive-document (as yet theoretical) where the reader cannot distinguish between the unreality and reality, and the interface between human and computer is invisible and frictionless.”2

The day was arranged into 3 acts or sessions. In the first session, Documents and Documentation, the focus was on how memory institutions document performance. Following on from that Exploring Performance as a Document looked at how we can document non-traditional aspects of performance. The third and final act, Beyond the Boundaries, considered what should be documented from newer forms of performance.

Performance Documents or Performance Documentation?

Following a warm welcome and introduction from Lyn and Joseph, the first session featured an excellent talk by Toni Sant, titled The Future of Documenting Performance: Plenty of Performance Documents but Not Enough Performance Documentation. Sant has a background in Performance Studies, (holding an MA and PhD from New York University) has also lectured on performance and digital technology, in Malta, New York, and most recently he has worked in the United Kingdom as Reader in Digital Curation at the University of  Hull.

In his talk Sant spoke about Documentation from a Library and Information Science perspective and referred to the work of Suzanne Briet, whose manifesto on Documentation Qu’est-ce que la documentation?, was highly influential to a number of LIS thinkers, particularly Michael Buckland, whilst earning her the nickname Madame Documentation. In talking about Performance Documentation Sant used Briet’s definition of a document as ‘evidence in support of fact’ 3 and:

“any physical or symbolic sign, preserved or recorded, intended to represent, to reconstruct, or to  demonstrate a physical or conceptual phenomenon” 

As Buckland states, in his article What is a “document?” the implication of Briet’s work is that Documentation should not be concerned solely with texts, but with access to evidence.3   Sant champions Briet’s work on documentation over those of performance studies scholars such as Peggy Phelan, who claimed in her writings that performance cannot be documented:

 “Performance’s only life is in the present. Performance cannot be saved,  recorded, documented, or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations: once it does so it becomes something other than performance”4

Sant went on to argue that documentation of performance is often an afterthought and that there is a tendency to mistake documents for documentation. Documentation he said is the process of storing and organizing documents (physical and digital)  in a systematic way to ensure long-term access.

Sant’s talk was a call to action, saying “forget Peggy Phelan” and arguing there was a need to focus less on documents and more on Documentation.

Connaissez-vous Suzanne Briet? 

Renée-Marie-Hélène-Suzanne Briet was born in Ardennes, 1 February 1894, but grew up in Paris. She was part of a generation of women who would come of age in the wake of the First World War. After spending time as a teacher, Briet began her career in Librarianship, at the Bibliothèque National in 1924, and would not only bear witness to but also influence the development of the Library profession in France as a result of its convergence with the field of Documentation. In his article Suzanne Briet:  An Appreciation Ronald E. Day claims that Briet’s vision of documents and documentation agencies:

“…constituted a revision of librarianship and a radical redefinition of what we consider to be documents.” 5

Recognising the importance of the work of the staff in the national  library, Briet wrote that it was the duty of librarians “to conserve, to catalog, to make [materials] accessible on the one hand; to orient and instruct on the other.“6

Her time at the BNF coincided with a great sea of technological change, the year of her appointment (1924) saw the electrification of the 17th century Richelieu building,  she described the effect of this writing:

 “I attended the birth of electricity at the BN. . . . During winter season, and under cloudy skies, all work was impossible in the reading rooms and offices after three in the afternoon. . . . It was an unforgettable spectacle to see the green lamps burst into flower on the tables”7

Administrator Pierre-René Roland-Marcel’s efforts to modernize the services and structure of the BNF led to the creation of the Office of Documentation. In 1928 after remarking that the already ‘overburdened’ staff were struggling to answer written requests for information from the office, as it disrupted their normal activity flow, Briet was assigned responsibility for coordinating all such requests, assigning them to qualified Librarians or forwarding them onto the Office of Documentation, as necessary.8

In 1927 Briet was assigned the task of compiling a directory of special collections held across major French Libraries. At this time she was influenced by the Institute of Intellectual Co-operation (IIC) of the League of Nations, which made a number of recommendations regarding the establishment of national information centres in  national libraries. According to Naack these recommendations included:

 (1) each national library establish a “national information center” where   researchers could find out in which library or special collection the printed materials or documentation they needed would be located; (2) that the national information center be adequately funded and provided with card catalogues, printed bibliographies, biographical sources, union catalogues and directories of  special collections throughout the country; (3) that these national centers be in close contact with one another in  order to answer questions about resources within their home country and to centralize researchers’ requests for information that would need to be answered abroad.9

Over the next two years Roland-Marcel and Briet laid the foundations for such a centre at the BNF,  and developed plans for a Centre d’Orientation that would respond to requests for information from French and international researchers. From 1934 to 1954 Briet was in charge of the Salles des Catalogues et des Bibliographies, more commonly known today as Salle X.

Briet alongside chemist Jean Gérard was responsible for co-founding the Union Française des Organismes de Documentation (UFOD) in 1931, the french equivalent of  ASLIB or the American Documentation Institution.  Soon after she was tasked with surveying documentation centers across the country the results of which were published in a 1935 directory (Répertoire des centres de documentation en France).  In 1937 she attended the World Congress of Universal Documentation, in Paris, alongside other notable figures such as Paul Otlet, Henri De La Fontaine and H.G. Wells, the latter of whom gave a lecture in which he argued that his concept of the ‘world-brain‘(a form of world encylopaedia) was a precursor for the concepts under discussion at the conference.10 

In 1950 Briet became the founding director of studies for the  l’Institut National des Techniques de la Documentation, one of the oldest Library schools in France when the training programme of the UFOD was formally adopted by the prestigious  Conservatoire Nationale des Arts et Metiers. Briet herself was closely involved with the curriculum including being a teacher. The programme was spread over two years and:

“…included a general introduction to selection, acquisitions, cataloging, classification, indexing, diffusion, exploitation, and   reproduction of documents.   The second year focused on research and on documentation in the specialized fields, including the social sciences and economics as well as science and technology.”11

Following on from her interest in ‘professional education’, Briet was awarded a Fulbright grant to visit the United States from 1951 – 52, and whilst there she continued her survey of professional education. According to Maack, she also sought to understand the meaning of ‘reference work’, with a focus on technique rather than technology, and on users and reference services, rather than information retrieval.12

In 1954 at the age of 60, she took early retirement to pursue a 2nd career, as a historian, studying Rimbaud, Rimbaud’s mother and Jean, Comte de Montdejeux. When her memoirs, were  published, in 1976, she arranged them in alphabetical order, dispensing with a chronological order in favour of  presenting her recollections under key words, described by Maack as ‘idiosyncratic’.13

Briet died in Boulogne at the age of 95. When looking reflecting back upon her life and career she expressed the following as summary:

 “At the age of twenty, I had as my motto: ‘To weep perhaps, but never to hate.’ At forty it was: ‘To serve.’ At eighty it could be: ‘To return to the Spirit’ “(l’Esprit) (1976, p.30).

Pour Briet Qu’est-ce que la documentation?

Briet’s treatise on documentation which was published in 1951 by EDIT, the publishing arm of the UFOD, was not some lengthy treatise, but rather a slim volume stretching to around 37 pages long. It largely went unnoticed outside of France until the publication of Michael Buckland’s What is a Document? in 1997.

It begins with the definition of a document, not in terms of material objects such as the book that Paul Otlet, favoured, but by declaring, “Un document est une preuve à l’appui d’un fait” “A document is evidence in support of a fact.” She then provides a more detailed definition claiming that a document is:

“any concrete or symbolic indexical sign[indice], preserved or recorded towards the ends of representing, of reconstituting, or of proving a physical or intellectual phenomenon.”14

Briet’s definition, dispenses with the notion of tieing documents to a physical format and instead focuses on a wider definition of documents, giving an example as follows:

“Is a star a document? Is a pebble rolled by a torrent a document? Is a living animal a document? No. But the photographs and the catalogues of stars, the stones in a museum of mineralogy , and the animals that are cataloged and shown in a zoo, are documents.”15

Briet’s explanation of documents is that objects can be documents when placed into a system such as a taxonomy, catalogue, or indice. Most famously she claims that even an Antelope could be a document, in the circumstance of it being a newly discovered species placed inside a botanical garden:

“Let us admire the documentary fertility of a simple originary fact: for example, an antelope of a new kind has been encountered in Africa by an explorer who has succeeded in capturing an individual that is then brought back  to Europe for our Botanical Garden [Jardin de Plantes]. A press release makes the event known by newspaper, by radio, and by newsreels. The discovery becomes the topic of an announcement at the Academy of Sciences. A professor of the Museum discusses it in his courses.The living animal is placed in a cage and cataloged (zoological garden). Once it is dead, it will be stuffed and preserved (in the Musuem). It is loaned to an Exposition. It is played on a soundtrack at the cinema. Its voice recorded on a disk. The first monograph serves to establish part of a treatise with plates, then a special encyclopedia(zoological), then  general encyclopedia. The works are cataloged in a Library, after having been announced at publication…The documents that relate to this event are the object of scientific classifying (fauna) and of an ideologic [idéologique] classifying (classification). Their ultimate conservation and utilization are determined by some general techniques and by methods that apply to all documents-methods that are studied in national association and international Congresses.”16

Lastly she argues “The cataloged antelope is an initial and the other documents are secondary or derived.” By this reasoning objects such as paintings, sculpture, photographs and films are documents, and even a person being studied perhaps for scientific, medical or anthropological reasons could be described as a document. Michael Buckland, in his article about Briet’s definition argues that although she doesn’t make her rules explicit the following can be inferred about defining documents:

Briet’s rules for determining when an object has become a document are not made clear. We infer, however, from her discussion that:

1. There is materiality: Physical objects and physical signs only;

2. There is intentionality: It is intended that the object be treated as evidence;

3. The objects have to be processed: They have to be made into documents; and, we think,

4. There is a phenomenological position: The object is perceived to be a document.

This situation is reminiscent of discussions of how an image is made art by framing it as art. Did Briet mean that just as “art” is made art by “framing” (i.e. treating) it as art, so an object becomes a “document” when it is treated as a document, i.e. as a physical or symbolic sign, preserved or recorded, intended to represent, to reconstruct, or to demonstrate a physical or conceptual phenomenon?17

Wild Antelopes

Returning to performance and performance documentation, we must ask what can Briet’s rules and Buckland’s interpretation of them tell us about how we document performance? Taking the rules as defined above the performance itself is not a document, any more than a wild antelope running around the plains of Africa, but writings, photographs, sound recordings and so forth of the performance can be considered documents. And these documents can, it could be said, in the spirit of Briet’s original assertion, be considered as the “evidence in support of fact” that the performance exists or took place in that they are “intended to represent, to reconstruct, or to  demonstrate a physical or conceptual phenomenon”.

 – Fin –

References

  1. Robinson, L. (2016 )Documenting Performance: the backstory.
  2. ibid
  3. Buckland, M.K. (1997)”What Is a “Document”?”, Journal of the American Society for Information Science 48(9) pp. 804-809.
  4. Phelan, P. (2003) Unmarked : The Politics of Performance (1), Routledge, Florence, US. Available from: ProQuest ebrary. p.146
  5. Day, R, E. (2006) Suzanne Briet:  An Appreciation.  Bulletin December 2006/ January 2007
  6. Maack, M. N. (2004) The Lady and the Antelope: Suzanne Briet’s Contribution to the French Documentation Movement. Library Trends 52(4): 719-747 
  7. Briet 1976:66 in Maack 2004
  8. Maack
  9. ibid

  10. World Congress of Universal Documentation En.wikipedia.org. (2016). World Congress of Universal Documentation

  11. Maack

  12. ibid
  13. Briet, S. 1976 l’Esprit 1976, p.30 In Maack 2004
  14. Briet, S 1951 p.10 in Briet, S., Day, R. E., Martinet, L., & Anghelescu, H., G., B. (2006). What is documentation? : English translation of the classic French text. Scarecrow Press.
  15. ibid
  16. ibid
  17. Buckland, M.K. (1997)”What Is a “Document”?”, Journal of the American Society for Information Science 48(9) pp. 804-809.

Further reading

How do we document performance?

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This post is by Louise Wallace, who attended our Symposium on Documenting Performance on 31/10/16. Here Louise writes about the presentations, and the concepts of ‘whose point of view’, and ‘who for’, in respect to documentation. This post first appeared on Louise’s blog (a library odyssey) on November 6th.
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On Monday I attended a symposium at City, called ‘The Future of Documents: documenting performance’. As both a library school student and someone with an embarrasingly large collection of theatre programmes and tickets, this was bound to be a fascinating and enjoyable event! The day left me with a lot to think about, especially the different ways in which we document performance, whose point of view we are documenting, and who we are doing it for.

The first speaker of the day was Toni Sant, and he called for a focus on “documentation” rather than just “documents”. I think that for me this means thinking about the purpose of documentation and what future users will get from it, rather than being dismissive of traditional “documents” themselves.

What we might think of as traditional documents related to performing arts are scripts, programmes, posters, photographs, technical plans, designs, reviews and articles. Liz Harper told us about her work at the Royal Albert Hall, and how their archives are used for education and promotion. A wonderful example of this is the mural by Peter Blake, composed of photos of performers drawn from the archive, which now adorns the entrance hall.

Interactive version and quiz of the Peter Blake mural: http://appearing.royalalberthall.com/

It was exciting to hear from Jenny Fewster about the development of AusStage, a database of performing art events, venues and resources in Australia. Ramona Riedzewski from the V&A spoke about their collaboration, using AusStage as a basis for creating a database for UK performing arts. An “IMDB for the performing arts” sounds like it would be a fantastic resource for researchers, professionals and enthusiasts alike!

Video is another way of documenting performance, normally from the point of view of the audience. Archival videos are often filmed with a single static camera, such as those filmed for the National Video Archive of Performance held at the V&A, or for the British Library’s collection. Other, multi-camera recordings are made for commercial use, such as for National Theatre Live or Digital Theatre. Stacie Lee Bennett spoke about the use of hand-held cameras and GoPros in developing training resources for actors and dancers, using the camera to capture the performer’s perspective. GoPros were also suggested as a way of creating an immersive experience of a perfomance, with multiple possible viewpoints.

Sound recordings are also used as a way of documenting performance. Eva del Rey spoke about the British Library’s Drama and Literature recordings, which include gems such as the only known recordings of James Joyce’s voice (reading from Ulysses), as well as oral histories and audio recordings of live performances. The BL’s ‘Save Our Sounds’ project highlights the problem of format obsolescence and degredation (or “plastic-rot”) which affects archives such as these.

Listen to James Joyce reading from Ulysses: http://blogs.bl.uk/english-and-drama/2013/04/james-joyce-on-record.html

Audio recordings can be a better choice for documenting performance, as Yaron Shyldkrot demonstrated in his paper about theatre in the dark. In this case, there is a focus on the atmosphere of anxiety and isolation created by being in complete darkness. This feeling can be recreated more effectively using sound and headphones, rather than trying to film or photograph the performers.

It was great to hear about documenting another aspect of performance when Hansjorg Schmidt spoke about The Library of Light. I think it is exciting to explore the different ways of documentation that are possible, for example the use of network technologies, as explored by Zeta Kolokythopoulou in her presentation. She described the use of livestreaming and Twitter in Forced Entertainment’s Speak Bitterness, which encouraged audience members all over the world to partipate with their own contributions using the hashtag #FESpeaklive.

Article by Time Etchells of Forced Entertainment about Speak Bitterness: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/oct/16/speak-bitterness-confessions-forced-entertainment-live-stream-tim-etchells

An interesting comment came from an attendee, suggesting that we should not dismiss the effectiveness of a paper document over current trends for video and technology, for example the prompt book (a master copy of the script, annotated with the actors’ moves and technical cues), which may be a better record of a complex performance. It is important to think about who we are documenting performance for and what future users will want to get from it, whether it is the perfomers or companies themselves, audience or researchers, or all of the above.

The question of whether a performance can ever be truly documented, or if it is a unique live experience that cannot be captured is an interesting and, I expect, eternal one. However, the importance of the documention that is possible cannot be ignored, as was demonstrated by the breadth of possibilities explored at this event. I would like to thank all of the speakers, and I am sorry that I have not managed to mention every one in this post!

See the full programme and abstracts here.

The event on Storify.

APAC (Association of Performing Arts Collections): http://www.performingartscollections.org.uk/

Left in Sehgal’s darkness

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This post is by  James Hobbs, who attended our Symposium about Documenting Performance on 31st October 2016. Here James reflects on the session presented by Yaron Shyldkrot, Documenting Darkness. This post originally appeared on James’ blog on November 4th 2016.
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Left in Sehgal’s darkness

When the Berlin-based artist Tino Sehgal has a new exhibition, it can be hard to find out what is going to take place. He forbids any of the normal digital or paper trails of exhibition marketing and publicity: there are no videos of the work, no catalogues or wall texts. Even contracts with the exhibition organisers are verbal only.

Sehgal’s name came was mentioned in The Future of Documents: Documenting Performance, a symposium at City, University of London on 31 October 2016. Yaron Shyldkrot, who is working on a PhD at the University of Surrey, was talking about documenting darkness in theatre and dance, and the disorientation and uncertainty it creates for viewers. “You can’t be in the same picture as the dark,” as the writer and performer Chris Goode puts it. Sehgal has used darkness in some past works, which usually involve performers interacting spontaneously with spectators, leaving no physical residue once they are finished.

documentingperformance

Yaron Shyldkrot presenting at #docperform 31/10/16 by James Hobbs

The darkness of Sehgal’s non-documentary approach shone out for me during the day. It is an approach that “minimises discourse to maximise the experience”, the curator of his new show at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris says. The question of just who performances are being documented for was a recurring question through the day of the symposium. While many performers, choreographers and archivists recognise the importance of retaining at least some tangible form of memory of a fleeting moment, Sehgal turns that on its head, leaving us, metaphorically and sometimes literally, in the dark.

This way of working, it seems to me, is less about the artist leaving documented legacy (his approach is very well documented, if not his work), and more about his anti-market views and myth constructing. (Would he be as well known if he did allow his work to be documented?) But even in our age of the ubiquitous camera, he encourages us to focus on the moment of the performance rather than see it through a lens or discuss it to oblivion. And it certainly frees up time for archivists to get on with other things.

It was a great thought-provoking day – thanks to Lyn Robinson and Joseph Dunne for organising it.