Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
Coventry University
Siobhan Davies RePlay
‘RePlay’ is the first digital archive of a dance collection of this kind and on this scale in Europe, and possibly the world. Funded by the AHRC Resource Enhancement Scheme, the project developed over 30 months through collaboration with Siobhan Davies Dance. The archive required the identification, selection, description, analysis and organisation of a significant range of video, text and audio content, together with the development of a bespoke metadata schema, and an interface that would reflect and represent the particular aesthetic of the artist, whilst providing clear search functionality and navigation pathways to accommodate a wide range of users. It also required the development of a robust methodology for obtaining licenses, and to manage the complex process of copyright and intellectual property in relation to the archival content.
Through its design, breadth of content and the inclusion of a number of online tools for search and discovery, ‘RePlay’provides users with the chance to develop new interpretations and understandings of dance. It has also developed new understandings of the process of digitising, curating and designing online collections of ephemeral and intangible cultural heritage, and in particular dance. By drawing together a body of work that spans the development of contemporary dance in the UK it provides access to content that has hitherto been unavailable for viewing. The archive has led to other digital dance projects and has been a reference point for other digital archival projects (e.g., the Digital Dance Archives, UK; Routledge performance archive, UK; the Walker Art Gallery digital archive, USA).
