Hi folks,

Here’s a link to the Storify for the conference: sfy.co/gMkk

I clustered it by sessions (seemed the most intuitive), but let me know if I put anyone in the wrong place! I couldn’t track down GoogleDocs/notepads for several of the sessions – just give me a shout on Twitter (@bdholms) if you have one or I missed something, and I’ll update the Storify accordingly.

Thanks to everyone for a great THATCamp!

Cheers,

Bethany

I propose a session on ways to publish theatre and performance research in a digital age, exploring and brainstorming various options. This could range from the plays themselves to academic research to multi-media ebooks and archives.

I was having coffee today with an entrepreneur whose start-up revolves around the performing arts. Although her background is in law and government she is passionate about the arts and determined not only to fight our thirty year audience decline- but to grow the performing arts audience well beyond it’s current base – and who is that base? Well, therein lies a  large part of the problem. The same entrepreneur told me a story of being at a show last weekend when the person next to her turned and asked “Who do you know in the show?”, the assumption being the only  reason you would buy a ticket is to come support a friend. Why? Because WE ARE OUR AUDIENCE. We are no longer a draw to the lawyers, the babysitters, the waitresses the financiers or the educators of our communities.  We perform for ourselves. As Jason Gots said in his recent article about Peter Brook “Why We Need Theater Now More Than Ever”

the small percentage of New Yorkers who ever attend a play fall mainly into two camps: the once-a-year Broadway tourists and the friends of actors, playwrights, or directors.

Art museums have understood for a long while that they can no longer depend on the audience that visits their buildings – their audiences are everywhere and they need to find ways to excite, involve and engage their everywhere audience. The have not shied away from experimenting with new technologies and social media platforms as a way to speak more authentically to today’s wired art enthusiast, and the result is that museums are experiencing a rise in attendance, even as ticket sales to live performance continue on its decline.

What technologies can live performance utilize to expand our audience in our wired world?  How can we speak to today’s digital centric community while still being true to the live- performance experience?  What darlings must we slay and what aspects of the live-performance experience are sacred? Let’s brainstorm new ways to engage today’s digital community, a community that is eager to create and share, in the live-performing arts.

For centuries, the conventional definition of theatre has been of an event occurring in real time in front of a live audience in a physical space. In the last decade alone, there have been hundreds of examples that have put that categorization to the test (one example: www.digitaltheatre.com).  With the rapid advance of technology, theatre has a responsibility to embrace this (r)evolution or ultimately fall further by the wayside. How can we utilize these advances, both artistically and administratively, to transform the theatrical landscape so we can further investigate, innovate and interact with fellow artists across the globe?

Until recently, theatre hasn’t been able to avoid creating sleep-inducing footage when it’s recorded or digitized. It somehow loses its spirit as fast as the present becomes the past; leaving one with the same feeling one has when they stopped being in love. Where does the spirit go? How can that magic remain? How can we keep it interesting for everyone, not just academics and researchers? Is it just a document of a past event, or can we find a way for it to be a living, breathing experience?

Recent high-profile reports from both Harvard University and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences suggest that the humanities as an academic discipline is under siege.  The most eye-catching statistic from Harvard's report notes that the number of humanities majors has been cut in half over the past forty-five years.  For one of these reports, technology is potentially part of the problem.  Harvard's "Mapping the Future" raises the possibility that technological advances are making the skills engendered by the study of the humanities obsolete.  By contrast, the AAAS argues that technology will be crucial to bringing the study of the humanities to new populations. 

In this "Talk" session, I propose that we discuss the both the contents and the ramifications of these two reports with respect to the relationship between the humanities and technology.  Can technology save the humanities?  Does technology endanger the humanities' long-term survival?  Or are reports of the humanities' demise exaggerated?

I propose a discussion on the possibilities and challenges of incorporating virtually reconstructed performance venues into scholarly research, cultural heritage management, and performance practices. I am trained as a literature and performance studies scholar and have just begun using Sketchup to reconstruct one of the venues I study. I would like to begin our discussion by introducing the London Charter for the Computer-based Visualisation of Cultural Heritage, which “seeks to establish what is required for 3D visualisation to be, and to be seen to be, as intellectually rigorous and robust as any other research method.” The charter emphasizes the importance of intellectual transparency in 3D visualization, which I hope will get us right into a discussion about why we might reconstruct performance venues virtually and how we might best ensure that this quite time-consuming work contributes productively to our respective fields.

Proposing sessions before THATCamp Performing Arts starts is one of the most important things you can do as a participant as it sets the table for the topics we will be discussing and gives us material to create the schedule with. For more information about how and why THATCamp proposals work go here.

While some of you may know how to go about making a proposal, we realize that some might not be familiar with WordPress Multi-Site. So, I figured would make a quick how-to to get you rolling.  Here are the steps:

1. Go to the login page for the WordPress dashboard for THATCamp Performing Arts here (this is a link to open the address http://performingarts2013.thatcamp.org/wp-admin/ on a new page/tab). It should look like this:

2. Enter the username and password to the site that you received when you were made a user of the site. (Email me if you did not receive this info or have any problems with this)

3. Once you enter that information and login you should see the dashboard, which looks like this.

4. On the top left of the dashboard menu select Posts.

5. Now click Add New

6. You should now have a place to create a title for your post and add content. Enjoy!

That’s it!! We’ve just completely filled up for THATCamp Performing Arts on June 20 and 21. So glad that so many people are interested and that such a wide range of personalities and interests are represented in the registrants. The cast of characters really is just amazing and it promises to be a great event.

Unfortunately this means that anyone registering from this point forward will be put on the waiting list. I’ll be monitoring the list closely and as soon as spots upon up due to cancellations I will let people on the waiting list know one at a time.

I’ll be posting more about session proposals, schedules, meals, etc. so stay tuned here and on Twitter (@THATCampPerfArt). Looking forward to meeting everyone in two weeks.

Today’s ever-growing interest in digital humanities research and teaching has coincided with an increased desire by performing artists to learn about appropriate digital tools, applications, and software in order to engage them into their performances.

Our goal is to have a community discussion that will investigate ways in which we can help foster the links between digital humanities and performance via digital social technologies and meetups, bringing together independent artists, coders, developers, big data visualization, hackers, librarians and scholars, and see how best to pair the tools and resources at our disposal to the changing needs of those creating digital performance. We also want to open the floor and hear from performing artists themselves, and explore how they want to engage/inhabit/think through these digital tools and how software/hardware can be a performance medium and not just performance enhancement.

We will be holding this session via a Google hangout, as well as at the Martin Segal Theatre, to help include the wider network of performing artists, librarians, archivists and scholars from outside the NYC Metro area.