ABSTRACT
Tara McPherson (2009) makes a useful distinction between the “computing humanities,” which establish infrastructure, platforms, and collections, and the “blogging humanities,” which produce peer-to-peer communication methods and writing, and in fact, the multi-modality of the Digital Dance Archives was designed to deliver a bit of both for dance research. The project team, including Sarah Whatley, Helen Roberts, John Collomosse, and myself, wanted to bridge the apparent divide between the use of historical dance materials and objects within the material archive of the NRCD and the recent development of choreographic technologies for artistic practice and documentation. Our investigations were thus both pragmatic and conceptual-how to select a metadata scheme in order to build a digital infrastructure from the existing catalogues? What website design would function across dierent search engines?—as well as more analytical, such as how might a non-linear cultural history arise if visual materials from dierent dance styles and historical periods could be retrieved? How would a transversal temporality of dance images modify understandings of continuity or adaptation within choreography? By privileging the user experience in relation to the eld of human computer interaction, we wanted to acknowledge that the user drives the mode of discovery and enquiry in an online environment in order to make knowledge an interaction that might be both personalized and self-reexive. Finally, the project team was interested in identifying ways in which an online archival resource might reect and respond to the visuality of dance and the viewer’s speculation with movement in an online environment.
