4th March 2016

Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE)

ICE Building, Coventry University

 *Registration now open*

For the 6^th edition of the Digital Echoes Symposium, we focus on participation as one of the most prominent legacies of the digital, in particular how it invokes processes of collectivity, democratisation and decentring. We consider participation as a process, a framework for access and production, but also increasingly becoming a philosophy and a culture. In response to this theme, we invite researchers and practitioners in dance, the arts and the humanities, to reflect on practices of collecting, archiving and safekeeping, how these traces are being used to configure new ways of imagining futures, and how such practices highlight the legacy of the digital on humanistic and artistic disciplines.

As the title suggests, we will reflect upon and critically examine digital archival practices, with a focus on dance and neighbouring art forms. We look at the future through a frame of making, or crafting, which evokes discourses on materiality and immateriality, tangible and intangible, conversion and representation. Through representation in digital formats ephemeral performative acts gain tangible qualities. Yet tangibility does not mean fixation; as digital representations are manipulated, stored, accessed, retrieved and re-used they are simultaneously objectified and re-formed, as they are increasingly used and re-used in different formats and in new contexts.  We invite contributions that consider the impacts of public/user participation on archival practice and research, and their legacy for the future.  

We are delighted to announce the keynote presentation, ‘Just Fun Enough to go Completely Mad About: on games, procedures and amusement’ from Professor Matthew Fuller (Goldsmiths University).

Themes for the day include:

●      The politics of participation in performing arts archival and documentation practices: How does public or citizen involvement in archival practices affect established hierarchies and canons? How does it affect taken for granted ideas about whose ideas and practice are given visibility and represented, and how?

●      Collectivity and co-creative practices: What are the potentials and problematics of collectives? How does co-creation function in artistic and archival practices? How do collaborative relationships between archivists, technologists, artists and researchers cultivate generative interdisciplinary exchanges? What are the meeting points or sticking points? How might we create innovate archival projects that cross disciplinary frameworks?

●      The reuse and reconfiguration of artistic and cultural content: The reuse of cultural content, and the ways that users might enrich existing sources through creative activities.

●      Between amateurism and citizen science: What are the sources of legitimacy for user involvement? What distinguishes citizen science from amateurism? What are the boundaries of involvement, so that the foundations for research credibility and validity are not affected? What are the forms, best practices, promises and limits of crowdsourcing?

●      Epistemologies, languages, vocabularies: Which forms of knowledge are cultivated and disseminated through participatory archival projects? How might linguistic frameworks usher in fresh forms of thinking and reveal underlying frameworks?

●      Impacts on practice. How does the reuse of cultural content feed back into artistic and scholarly practices? How does the fictional user inform on the development of archival practices?

●      Processes and tools: What processes, flows, methodologies are there that support rewarding ways of involving the user and the public in storing, classifying, and configuring access pathways to archival material? What digital tools, platforms and infrastructures?

 

Registration for the event is £20 (£15 for concessions) which includes lunch and refreshments. Please register before Friday 26^th February by following the link below:

Registration will open at 9.15am and the talks will run from 9.45am – 5.15pm. The schedule will be released on the C-DaRE website by Friday 12^th February.  Please see: 

The event will be held at Institute for Creative Enterprise (ICE), Parkside, Coventry, West Midlands CV1 2NE. Information about the venue can be found here: 

If you have any accessibility requirements or any questions about the event please email Hetty Blades: 

Organising committee: David Bennett, Hetty Blades, Rosamaria Cisneros, Lily Hayward-Smith, Rebecca Stancliffe and Sarah Whatley.