“The Digital Performance Archive”
Rachael
Beach
The Nottingham Trent University, UK
While digital performance events and experiments proliferate and new performance
genres are beginning to emerge, no central record or archive of these
developments is currently being collated. The Digital Performance Archive (DPA)
aims to fill that gap by archiving and critically analysing significant new
interdisciplinary developments in performance which draw upon (or exist within)
digital media in its varied forms. To this end, The Digital Performance Archive
will undertake a comprehensive study and recording of the development of
'digital performance' in the last decade of the Twentieth Century.
The study will cover both digital resources used in performance and digital
resources on performance created in the two year period 1999 to 2000 (with
important precedents of the 90's also being catalogued). Digital resources in
performance include theatrical productions and live-art installations that
incorporate electronic media, to live-broadcast World Wide Web performances and
Internet based collaborations, to interactive drama and the new performative
'virtual environments' of MUDS, MOOs and IRC. Digital resources on performance
include those being used to document, analyse and critique performance: from
performing arts databases, websites and mailing lists, to academic CD-ROMS and
laser discs. The project aims to be of value to researchers across a wide range
of academic disciplines, from drama and performance to art and design, from the
social sciences to computer science and cybernetics.
The Digital Performance Archive will have several outcomes. Firstly it will
collate an extensive searchable database on the World Wide Web, in order that
the public will be able to gain access to work held by the DPA, in particular to
the websites and digital files provided by practitioners. Secondly, as material
for a DVD, the DPA will document exemplars of digital performance on video. This
interactive DVD will also include other significant documents and examples of
digitally related performance, all of which will be critically examined. Lastly,
the DPA will produce an academic publication presenting a critical overview of
the field. As already stated there is currently no other archive that is devoted
specifically to this type of work. Perhaps the main reasons for this are that
these types of works are so current, so diverse and developing at such an
extraordinary rate that there is, as yet, no accepted methodology for dealing
with them. Whilst one of the DPA's objectives is to create this web-searchable
database archive of the works within the field, clearly it also has an important
role to play in beginning to create a structure for the study of the works in
its collection and of the field as a whole. It is these seemingly conflicting
roles of provider of raw information on the web and of interpreter in such a
fast moving 'discipline' that make the project so interesting and ambitious.
In no part of the project is this paradox more evident than in the Web based
database of works. Here the archive benefits from a comparison with photographs
and photographic archives. Sekula writes that,
“The photographic archives' components are not conventional lexical
units, but rather are subject to the circumstantial character of all
that is photographable. Thus it is absurd to imagine a dictionary of
photographs, unless one is willing to disregard the specificity of
individual images in favor of some model of typicality ... Clearly one
way of 'taming' photography is by means of this transformation of the
circumstantial and idiosyncratic into the typical and emblematic. This
is usually achieved by a stylistic or interpretive feat, or by a
sampling of the archive's offerings for a 'representative'
instance.”
Clearly, as in the above description, the DPA, whilst dealing with files and
information of similar types, will not be dealing with standard content within
these types, especially in such a broad and shifting field. However, an
interpretative ' taming' route will be taken with the material chosen by the DPA
for the DVD and publication. This approach however is not viable for the
searchable web database whose aim is to provide files to the researcher as the
practitioner meant them to be seen. If this is not wholly possible visually, the
files should at least be as free as possible from any interpretation that might
be placed on them by the DPA.
Sekula continues:
“Another way is to invent a machine, or rather a clerical apparatus, a
filing system, which allows the operator/researcher/editor to retrieve
the individual instance from the huge quantity of images contained
within the archive. Here the photograph is not regarded as necessarily
typical or emblematic of anything, but only as a particular image which
had been isolated for purposes of inspection.”
The creation of such a filing system is the ultimate aim of the DPA web database.
However, Sekula creates a picture of an ideal situation in which a user finds
exactly what they are looking for in the filing system. He does not consider
that there are inherent biases in the creation of such a system. When attaching
metadata to practitioners' files in order to allow database searches, the DPA
must respect the descriptions attached to them by practitioners themselves,
whilst also trying to create a system which is coherent and consistent (or
typical and emblematic) across all the works. In addition, there needs to be
some mediation between these two biases and the searches that the user brings to
the database. It is a challenging aspect of the project.
This poster will provide delegates with the opportunity to see the breadth of
works that the DPA must archive and define. It will be a chance to see how far
the DPA has progressed with its acquisitions and with placing these acquisitions
within its web 'filing system'. The poster will give delegates the opportunity
to test this web searchable database and provide comment. The DPA will welcome
the opportunity to discuss with delegates any similar problems and solutions
they have encountered.
The archive is a joint project between Digital Research Unit of the Department of
Visual and Performing Arts at The Nottingham Trent University, and the Media and
Performance Research Unit, Department of Media and Performance at the University
of Salford.
References
A. Sekula. “The Body and the Archive.” The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography. Ed. R. Bolton. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996.