PERFORMING ARTS RESOURCE CENTERS

1
PERFORMING ARTS RESOURCE CENTERS
Opening Museums and Archives to A Wider World
2
WHO WE ARE

• What were NOT
• A museum or institution of higher education.
• What we ARE
• The Gertrude Stein Repertory Theatre (GSRT) is a
  theater company based in NYC.
• Our mission is to
• Promote and support innovation in the performing
  arts
• Work internationally to shake up the creative
  environment
• Use innovative technology as a tool for
  encouraging innovation in form and process.
• Our audiences are primarily
• Performing arts professionals
• K12, undergraduate and graduate students in the
  performance arts

and why we have a different perspective on
GloPAC.
3
HOW WERE INVOLVED

• We are developing concepts and templates for
  public facilities (PARCs)
• Interfaces to allow educators, curators, and
  others to pull material from the GloPAC database
  and present them in audience-specific
  environments
• We provide the Russian connection to GloPAC
• St. Petersburg Museum
• Russian historians, translators and archivists
• PARC for Meyerhold Memorial Museum in Moscow
• We are developing systems for archiving Complex
  Media Objects
• Multimedia formats beyond still images ...
  animation, video, 3D models
• We are encouraging involvement of contemporary
  theaters in GloPAC

GSRT is a founding member and consultant to
GloPAC.
4
RELEVANT SKILLS

• Theater and film
• Directors
• Writers
• Stage Managers
• Designers
• Set
• Costume
• Lighting
• Projection
• Technical production
• Cinematographers
• Digital media
• Project managers
• Designers
• Graphics
• Animation
• 3D
• Programmers
• Web

We bring a wide range of digital media, software
design, and performing arts experience to the
GloPAC effort.
5
OUR GLOPAC GOALS

• From our perspective, its important to
  distinguish clearly between the various goal and
  objectives of GloPAC-related projects.
• In the GloPAC scheme of things, there are two
  fundamentally different kinds of initiatives,
  with very different focuses.
• The objective of a GloPAD (Performing Arts
  Database) initiative is to collect and digitize
  items from a specific performing arts collection,
  including the essential archival information
  associated with each item. The primary goal is
  preservation.
• The objective of a GloPARC (Performing Arts
  Resource Center) is to enhance the value of that
  material by making it more interesting and
  accessible to a wider range of audiences,
  including students, artists, and the general
  public. The goal is education, enlightenment,
  entertainment.
• Although many GloPAC pilot projects combine
  activities related to both initiatives, we think
  its important to emphasize the distinction in
  order to clarify our strategies and architectural
  decisions.

PAD BUILDING FOUNDATIONS
PARC OPENING DOORS
6
AUDIENCES

• One of our guiding concepts as performing artists
  is a sensitivity to audiences
• Who is watching the performance?
• How many are sitting in the seats?
• What captures their attention?
• PAD audiences
• The primary audience for a PAD is scholars and
  graduate students for a specific performing arts
  tradition or artist, e.g. Noh, Meyerhold, etc.
• PARC audiences
• PARCs can help expand that audience in several
  different directions
• Scholars outside of the specialization
• Other languages/ cultures
• History, art, literature, film
• Students at different educational levels
• To different professional audiences
• Designers, directors, performers, etc.
• To the general public

Scholars
Inside specialty
Graduate Students
Undergraduates
K12
Outside specialty
Performing Artists
General Public
7
BENEFITS

• There are potentially enormous benefits to
  broadening access to PADs through PARCs
• Greater visibility and awareness of the tradition
  or artist
• Greater insight from combining observations
  across traditions and artists
• Greater support from more and different
  constituencies

MORE VALUE / PERSON X MORE PEOPLE GREATER VALUE
8
OPENING DOORS

• Building on top of the objective information in
  the PAD, we can add elements that reach out to
  new audiences and bring them to the subject
• Organization
• Context
• Interpretation
• Metaphor
• At the same time, we can create communities to
  encourage long-term involvement with the subject
  matter

How do PARCs open doors?
9
OBJECTIVE VS. INTERPRETIVE CONTENT

• The first step is to build an information
  structure that support the addition of
  interpretive material, separated from the
  objective material in the PAD.
• PADs based on objective information which is
  specific to the particular media object.
• In order to create PARCs which are linked to the
  PAD material, we need to allow PARC builders to
  easily add new organizational structure and
  interpretive material, without disrupting the
  objective archival material.
• The same PAD material might be used in many
  PARCs, addressed to a wide variety of audiences
  and purposes.

10
ANNOTATION TOOLS

• The next step is to build tools and facilities
  that make it easy to link PAD assets into PARC
  elements.
• PARC content can be separated into interface
  design and annotation, both of which are
  interpretive decisions by the PARC builder.
• In fact, there are always at least two separate
  interfaces, the Viewer Interface used by the
  end-user (target audience) of the PARC, and an
  authoring interface used by the builder (even
  when building a PARC is done manually by a
  programmer, an interface is still required to the
  underlying data.
• The interface media and the annotation must be
  stored and tracked, just like the archival data
  and media, and the links between objective and
  interpretive data must be preserved.

11
PARC COMPONENTS

• What kind of components does a PARC have, and
  what is its relationship to the PAD components?
• Below are some of the elements of theater-related
  sites that GSRT has built
• Articles and essays
• Timelines
• Annotated maps or graphics
• Annotated media (video, audio)
• Annotated scripts
• Glossaries and dictionaries
• Customized lists and queries
• Other interactive experiences (exercises, 3D
  models with annotation, etc.)

12
THE PARC BUILDER CONCEPT
Articles
Timelines
Annotated Maps
Annotated Video
Annotated Scripts
Customized Queries
GloPAD

• GSRT is working with GloPAC to develop a
  comprehensive PARC Builder facility
• The PARC Builder will consist of an integrated
  series of tools that make it easier to create a
  variety of different kinds of PARCs for different
  audiences
• Each tool represents a different interface to PAD
  assets and data
• The interfaces are designed to assist PARC
  authors to achieve their pedagogical goals,
  explicate and dramatize specialized topics, and
  provide context to GloPAD content

13
ORGANIZING EXPERIENCES
Linear Experience

• In essence, a media archive is inherently
  multidimensional.
• On the other hand, an audience experience, like
  an undergraduate course, is fundamentally linear,
  a series of content elements designed to be
  experienced over time.

Intro to Asian Theater 201
Annotated Scripts
Interactive Exercises
Annotated Video
Maps
Timelines
Essays

• One of the most fundamental challenges is helping
  PARC authors to organize archival data into
  meaningful experiences

Multidimensional Archive
14
DRAG AND DROP
The Monkey King

• The PARC Builder tools will allow PARC authors to
  drag and drop elements from GloPADs into
  end-user interfaces that are organized around a
  linear metaphor, e.g. an annotated play script.

Annotated Script
Photos, Costume Designs, Video Clips

• The objective of the PARC Builder tools is to
  make it easy for authors to editorialize,
  mediating between the objective multidimensional
  PAD and the more linear interpretive PARC.

15
METAPHORS

• We are planning to use software development
  facilities that allow for a wide range of
  interactive metaphors and experiences, beyond
  those available with basic HTML.
• Interface software may include Flash, streaming
  media, VRML, Ajax, etc.

• Many of the PARC tools are based on an organizing
  metaphor a map, timeline, stage or set.

16
PROTO-PARC EXAMPLES

• The PARC Builder tools, like GloPAD, are under
  construction
• However, GSRT has developed a number of
  proto-PARC facilities and concepts
• On the following pages are some examples

17
INTERACTIVE STUDY GUIDE

• These early web-based study guides, sponsored by
  IBM in 1996, featured interactive graphics,
  video, and 3D sets.

18
ONLINE THEATRE SURVEY TEXTBOOK
A rich-media textbook on the web supported a
semester-long undergraduate course focused on
dramatic theory and critical writing..
19
RUSSIAN TEXTBOOK
This online textbook supported a graduate course
with students from theater, film, history, and
Russian language departments.
20
3D THEATER MODELS
Both textbooks included audio, video, and
interactive exercises, including a variety of
animated and interactive 3D theater and set
models that were linked with digital archives.
21
MEYERHOLD WEB SITE
The Meyerhold website is a prototype for a
community PARC that would link to GloPAD, and
pull together scholars and students interested in
Meyerhold from around the world.
22
MEYERHOLD ETUDE STUDY
The prototype includes video, panoramic
photographs, 3D models and historical timelines.
For example, an interactive video application
allows users to view a performance of one of
Meyerholds Biomechanics Etudes from 5 different
angles.
23
MEYERHOLD TIMELINE AND ARCHIVE
This historical timeline is linked to set designs
and production photos.
24
COSTUME COLLECTION
For the Theater Development Fund, we created a
prototype of an online version of their costume
collection, with over 50,000 items.
25
COSTUME COLLECTION RESEARCH PAGE
Besides extensive query facilities, the prototype
included historical background, video tutorials
and 3D object movies, allowing you to see a
costume from all directions.
26
COSTUME COLLECTION TIMELINE
A timeline provided an historical overview with
links to archival images and background essays.
27
CONCLUSIONS

• PARCs are the public face of PADs.
• As new projects and collections are developed,
  new opportunities will be created to provide
  wider access.
• Both efforts are synergistic and mutually
  dependent
• A PARC is useless without a PAD, and a PAD
  without a PARC has limited value to the world
  outside the specialist community.
• As online audiences and technologies grow, the
  opportunities will expand exponentially.
• From K12 to the general public, all segments of
  global society are turning to Internet-based
  content for education and entertainment.
• GloPAC today is just at the beginning of an
  exciting effort to open up performing arts
  collections to a wider world.

The concepts and tools that support PARCs will
evolve as GloPAD expands its collections.