Digital Theatre Archive
Digital | Online | Hybrid | Cyber | Transmedia + Theatre & Performance
The Digital Theatre Archive (DTA) documents a broad range of web-based interactive theatre experiments, including podplays and other sonic performance experiments (sound games, sound walks, transoperas, immersive soundscapes), network plays (works of theatre written in blockchain or navigated through on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram), robo- and data plays (algorithmic performances, technobjects, and data-based dramaturgies), Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) plays (video game plays, performances on Second Life, performances which combine VR or AR and live interaction), and other interactive, new media-based theatre and performance projects.- Time
- Location
- Boston, MA
Although a substantial online performance culture currently exists, as of now, there are no available digital humanities models for the preservation, curation, and archivization of these multiplatform theatre works. As long as this remains the case, works by many theatre artists are often undocumented, and thus they are lost, and unrecoverable. Even those which are preserved in some form by their creators remain siloed, without a space of discourse for this newly developing culture to reflect upon itself. Developing methodologies for documenting and archiving digital performance art is essential for theatre and performance research as new digital technologies challenge our understanding of liveness, embodiment, and materiality. The Digital Theatre Archive contributes to this effort by bringing together production information, and links to related materials, providing a shared resource for research and critical discussion.
The Digital Theatre Archive was made possible thanks to the support of The Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies at Univeristy of Toronto and metaLAB (at Harvard).