e-Dance project

Picture – 360 degree panoram of the inside of the British Library exhibition room with the e-Dance videos. Very clinical white, with lots of lighting points.

Once you have finished with the videos, interactive screens, touch-table exampes etc., it is quiet a nice place to read your emails.

Well rain could not stop people flocking to the exhibition

… well it was very early.

There will be a show-and-tell at Manchester of local VRE (Virtual Research Environment) projects on 16th December 2010 as part of the SIGGRAPH Chapter series of talks and events.

Today sees the launch of the British Library’s major new exhibition on how digital tools are already transforming how we do research: Growing Knowledge: The Evolution of Research (12 October 2010 – 16 July 2011). [Media coverage]

We’re delighted to say that the e-Dance Project was selected as one of the examples, showcasing how close collaboration between technology researchers (originally developing Access Grid video-conferencing/collaboration tools, and Compendium hypermedia mapping, in an e-Science context) enables arts and humanities researchers, in this case Choreographic researchers/practitioners, to break new ground playing with time and space in their discipline.

The e-Dance exhibit presents video material introducing the project, with examples of the technologies in action. Some of this is on the BLGK demos website,  an extract from an extended podcast playlist.

Browse the blog to learn more, and to download the Access Grid Scene Editor and Compendium e-Dance Edition.

This article sets out the academic rationale for e-Dance:

Bailey, H., Bachler, M., Buckingham Shum, S., Le Blanc, A., Popat, S., Rowley, A. and Turner, M. (2009). Dancing on the Grid: Using e-Science Tools to Extend Choreographic Research. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 13 July 2009, Vol. 367, No. 1898, pp. 2793-2806. [PDF]

During a pre-DRHA workshop the barriers for e-Sciencce take-up and other issues were discussed involving the experiences of the e-Dance project in connection to the national services including the AGSC (Access Grid Support Centre).

“Mapping Information with and without Geography: Approaches to Data Visualization and Structure in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences” EScience 2 day workshop: 30th sep – 1st oct 2009.

There were a series of informal discussions on camparing and debating the use of geospatially locating data (glyphs). Stuart Dunn gave a short presentation of imagery ideas that included eDance items.

The transposition of geography to be mapped or not is a recurring theme to the eDance project and fundamental to the Access Grid (video conferencing) ideology beneth it. An outcome was the issue of network graphs and related associated links – especially the interactive approach and use of large displays to gain a global perspective.

Wrap-up wiki: http://wiki.esi.ac.uk/Mapping_information_wrap_up

This series of movies brings together Choreography researcher Sita Popat and e-Science researcher Simon Buckingham Shum, who demonstrate and discuss the adaptation of one of the project’s e-Science tools for Choreography, the Open University’s Compendium tool for mapping ideas and annotating media. Acknowledgements to Michelle Bachler (Open U.) and Andrew Rowley (U. Manchester) for expert software development, and webcast wizard Ben Hawkridge (Open U.) for helping us migrate the footage to Web. High-resolution versions of the screen recordings are linked to the relevant tracks.

The video-enabled version of Compendium will be going into alpha release this month with invited testers, for full release within a couple of months.

The academic context for this work is set out in a recent article:

Bailey, H., Bachler, M., Buckingham Shum, S., Le Blanc, A., Popat, S., Rowley, A. and Turner, M. (2009). Dancing on the Grid: Using e-Science Tools to Extend Choreographic Research. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 13 July 2009, Vol. 367, No. 1898, pp. 2793-2806. [PDF]

The movie summaries are listed below… high resolution versions of the screen recordings are linked to the web versions for detailed viewing.

1. Demo: Sita takes us through a demonstration which illustrates how Compendium can be used to annotate video footage as part of choreographic scholarship.
2. Background: The e-Dance project conducted rapid application development through asynchronous collaboration between the partners, punctuated with intense day long workshops. At these, the choreographer would demonstrate how she used (or wished she could use) the Compendium e-science tool. The software developer would then code changes for feedback.
3. Demo: Sita explains how and why she requested a feature to create Transition Points in video footage.
4. Demo: Sita explains the value of placing images into key moments in a video, as supplementary material that she can use to support discourse in scholarship or teaching.
5. Demo: Sita explains the value of being able to lay out an arbitrary number of videos on the canvas.
6. Demo: Following the last clip, Sita discusses opportunistic and planned juxtaposition of video.
7. Interview: Simon asks Sita to consider how hypermedia annotation tools such as this could scaffold students’ project work and reflection as they track and communicate their work.
8. Demo: Sita works through an example of linking three interconnected video clips
9. Demo: Following the last example, Sita shows how annotations in one context can co-exist in multiple other projects.
10. Interview: Sita and Simon discuss to what extent a hypermedia tool such as this might shape practice, and reflect on other aspects of the project.

View the movies…

A quick pointer to the “Another Language” newsletter from our friends in Utah: Volume 6 Issue 3 is just out. The next INTERPLAY: EVENT HORIZONS is due in March 26 – April 4, 2010

Following on from the RACE demonstration seesion – we had a discussion of AG, e-Dance and the software recording playback systems across to Drama at University of Manchester.

This included Shantel Ehrenburg, Karen Wood and Dee Reynolds; whose associated work http://www.watchingdance.org/

Two page spread on e-Dance,  e-Curator and Archaeotools in a JISC e-Research/Digital Tools article.

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/inform24.aspx#traditionalsubjects

Issue 24 Spring 2009 – text from Judy Redfearn is above.

“Repository of Access Grid Collaborative Events (RACE) Workshop”
19th February 2009, CS1.10, Kilburn Building, University of Manchester

http://www.rcs.manchester.ac.uk/community/confevents/RACEWorkshop

A short half-day workshop presented various video/AG projects including eDance. Video Conferencing is far more now than just video and audio – but includes interaction with other data formats as well as various ways to present data.

The workshop considered users of video repositories and their use, a questionnare is at:
http://www.rcs.manchester.ac.uk/research/race/usereval

Main RACE web-page:
http://www.rcs.manchester.ac.uk/research/race

The eDance player and editing system was explained in step-by-step detail and demonstrated on a projection system.