DocPerform 2: New Technologies

Interdisciplinary Symposium: 6th-7th November 2017 City, University of London

Organisers: Lyn Robinson & Joseph Dunne

Programme: https://documentingperformance.com/symposia/docperform-2/programme-2017/

Website: https://documentingperformance.com

Twitter: #DocPerform #CityLIS

Following our successful launch last year, the DocPerform project team are delighted to announce that our second symposium will take place over 6th and 7th November 2017 at City, University of London.

This event is open to anyone with an interest in how we might understand performance as a document, and the subsequent documentation of performance, from the perspective of research, teaching or practice, within the fields of library & information science, performing arts, digital arts, museums, archives or cultural heritage.

Further information for participants, and details of the programme are available from our website.

DocPerform is an interdisciplinary research project led by scholars and practitioners from the fields of performing arts and library & information science. The project concerns conceptual, methodological and technological innovations in the documentation of performance, and the extent to which performance may itself be considered to be a document.

Advances in technology including 360° recording, virtual reality, augmented reality, binaural sound, multisensory internet, pervasive computing and the internet of things, have revolutionised how we create content, and interact with the digital world. Consequently, audience/reader engagement and expectations are changing. Technologies have brought about a convergence of data files, webpages, eBooks, interactive narratives, video games, television programming, video and films, so that boundaries between these existing categories of documents are no longer distinctive.

Technology allows us to create new types of documents, and at the same time provides us with new ways to record, archive, preserve, access, replay and re-experience documents of all kinds. The act of archiving or recording, is also an act of creation, as the archival version is in itself, another document. As our understanding of, and interaction with documents evolves, so do the ways in which we experience, record and remember events which are demanding of temporal and locational parameters, such as performance.

When we experience performance, participation and immersion are two key elements; the former implies the degree of agency experienced, whilst the latter is the extent to which unreality is perceived as reality. These elements are facilitated and augmented by technologies such as transmedia and pervasive computing, VR and AR, wherein readers/observers or audience members experience a high level of ‘presence’, and can readily switch between the role of observer, participant or creator.

The means by which performance, specifically theatre and dance, is created will inevitably have to respond to the burgeoning demands of online, immersive, participatory culture. We are thus compelled to investigate how performance documentation is evolving in terms of changing reasearcher, audience and readership expectations and behaviours.

The Symposium will be focused around presentations and provocations on four themes:

Theme 1: Technological Concepts

• Why do we document performance? Who are we documenting for?
• Performance as a document, documents as performance
• What is missing in our current documentation, the records and archives of performance?

Theme 2: Technologies for Creation

• Innovative use of technology to create performance
• Distributed or diffuse performance systems using transmedia technologies
• Performance created using social media
• Online performances

Theme 3: Technologies for Documentation

• Innovative use of technology in recording, preserving and re-experiencing performance
• The potential functions of performance documentation beyond creating a record of evidence (new works, remixing)
• Approaches to exceeding the document as a record of evidence
• Models of documenting using interactive interfaces
• Documentation systems that incorporate user-generated interfaces
• Potential roles of archivists, documentalists and information professionals in theatre and dance production processes

Theme 4: Technologies for the Audience

• Changing readership/audience behaviours in the context of digital culture
• Models of audience participation online platforms
• Elisions between spectator/performer, author/reader

See our call for papers; now closed.