Siobhan Davies Dance Online

Project start date: 2007-01 Project end date: 2009-07
Siobhan Davies Dance Online is a project that created a fully searchable, online, digital archive of the work of the choreographer Siobhan Davies. In addition to extensive film footage of performances and rehearsals, photographs, programmes etc. it includes scholarly articles, performance reviews, interviews with audience members, analytical commentaries from Siobhan Davies, some of the dancers with the company and others plus a number of other artefacts. Its objectives are: to create a fully functioning database of all of the above; to present this material in a form that reflects and re-presents the work of Siobhan Davies Dance; to faliticate the future development of the archive with a particular view to interative elements (eg. a choreographic game); to make preparations for the continued management and funding of the archive after the lifetime of the project. The wider research context of the project relates to the fact that this is the first dance digital archive in the UK. It provides an opportunity for dance scholars, and others, to study the work of a prominent contemporary dance company and enhancen the profile of dance and dance scholarship.
Era(s): 
Country/region(s): 
Methods usedCategory
2d graphic designPractice-led research
2d scanningPractice-led research
2d Scanning and photographyData capture
Accessibility analysisStrategy and project management
Audio mixingPractice-led research
Resource sharingCommunication and collaboration
Cataloguing and indexingData structuring and enhancement
Disk publishingData publishing and dissemination
CollatingData analysis
Content analysisData analysis
Content-based image retrievalData analysis
Content-based sound retrievalData analysis
Data miningData analysis
Motion captureData capture
Moving image captureData capture
PhotographyPractice-led research
Sound recordingData capture
DocumentationStrategy and project management
Human factors analysisStrategy and project management
Image enhancementData structuring and enhancement
Image feature measurementData analysis
Image manipulationPractice-led research
Image segmentationData analysis
Iterative designStrategy and project management
Text encoding - descriptiveData structuring and enhancement
Text encoding - presentationalData structuring and enhancement
Text encoding - referentialData structuring and enhancement
OverlayingData analysis
PrototypingStrategy and project management
Record linkagesData analysis
Risk managementStrategy and project management
Searching and queryingData analysis
Sound compressionData structuring and enhancement
Sound editingData structuring and enhancement
Sound encodingData structuring and enhancement
Streaming mediaData publishing and dissemination
System quality assurance and code testingStrategy and project management
Security planningStrategy and project management
Version controlStrategy and project management
Text recognitionData capture
Usability analysisStrategy and project management
Interface designData publishing and dissemination
Video editingData structuring and enhancement
Video post productionPractice-led research
Video and moving image compressionData structuring and enhancement
VisualisationData analysis
Web browser scriptingData publishing and dissemination
soundContent types
moving imageContent types
textContent types
mediaDiscipline
Funding sources: 
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Content types created: 
Dataset/structured data, Moving Image, Sound, Still Image/Graphics, Text
Software tools used: 
Adobe Photoshop, Finalcut Pro, Avid Express Pro, Audacity, Open Office, Acrobat PRO, Imagen, Reclaim
Source material used:  
VHS tapes of performances and reheasals, DVcam tapes of rehearsals and performances, DVD's of performances and rehearsals, a variety of older formats of tapes - all held by Siobhan Davies Dance (SDD). Original video footage made by the project team of performances, get-ins and workshops on DVCAM. Digital and some film (35mm amd medium format) photographs - some held by SDD and others held by a variety of individual photographers. Programmes - held by SDD and private contributors. Scholarly articles and audio recordings - a variety of sources including academic journals. Press cuttings and reviews - SDD and private contributors. Masters and PhD theses -individual academics. Costumes & Set - SDD and other companies (e..g. Rambert) Posters & publicity material - held by SDD and performance venues.
Digital resource created:  
The whole content of the archive will be in a digital form. This includes: moving images in a variety of formats; still images - photographs, posters, programmes etc.; text material - scholarly articles, reviews, press cuttings; analytic commentaries; profile pages; sound clips and other material. These will be displayed in a variety of accessible formats including: .Mpeg2; .Mov; .wmv; .Flv; .Wav; .Mp3; .jpeg; .tiff; .pdf; .doc. The theme is obviously contemporary dance and movement, its study and analysis and its context. The purpose of the digital resources is to display the content of the archive in an online, fully searchable form that is accessible to as wide an audience as possible. Also, the form of the archive is intended to encourage further research and collaborations within the field of contemporary dance and will reflect and re-present the work of Siobhan Davies Dance.
Access to digital resource:  
Open Access
Data Formats created: 
Flash Video (FLV), Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), Apple QuickTime Movie (MOV), JPEG File Interchange Format (JPG), Microsoft Word Document (DOC), MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 (MP3), MPEG2, Tagged Image File Format (TIFF), Waveform Audio file (WAV), Windows Media Video (WMV)
Please see above - the archive involves the wholesale transformation of resources from analogue to digital (sometimes digital to digital) for the purpose of resource dissemination.
Metadata standards employed: 
Dublin Core, qualified (DC)
Publications:  
Whatley, Sarah, Allender Paul & Varney Ross "Digitizing Siobhan Davies Dance" Body, Space & Technology online journal Vol 07/Number 02 2008 http://people.brunel.ac.uk/bst/vol0702/home.html

Whatley, Sarah, Allender Paul & Varney, Ross "Siobhan Davies Dance Online: Virtually Ethnographic" Dance Ethnography Forum, De Montfort University School of English and Performance Studies and the Society for Dance Research (online publication forthcoming).

Institutions affiliated with this project: 

UK HE institutions involved:
Coventry University
UK HE institutions involved:
Siobhan Davies Dance

Project staff and expertise: 

Principal staff member:Professor Sarah Whatley
Other staff:Postdoctoral researcher(s) / Research assistant(s)
External expertise:


Metadata on this arts-humanities.net record
Author(s) of recordpaul allender
TitleSiobhan Davies Dance Online
Record created2008-04-21
Record updated2010-06-11 11:17
URL of recordhttp://www.arts-humanities.net/node/2303
Citation of recordpaul allender: Siobhan Davies Dance Online.
<http://www.arts-humanities.net/node/2303>
created: 2008-04-21, last updated 2010-06-11 11:17