Welcome to Archived'it
Launch Date: 12th June 2012 at Midday archivedit.org
Back in summer 2011 I pitched the idea of working with Dartington Hall Trust’s Archive Collection to create a web application that would encourage an online audience to engage with the archive creatively. A year on, and with the help of filmmaker Alice Powell, web developer Luke Shumard and composer Ólafur Arnalds, Archived’it is finally here!
We’ve been working with a silent black and white piece of archive footage titled ‘Dance on Steps’ (1934). The film features the enchanting dance and mime student Teda de Moor performing angular and bound movement, swaying back and forth as she progresses up constructed stairs on a stage. Cutting in at just under a minute we set ourselves the task of giving ‘Dance on Steps’ a new lease of life.
I taught myself Teda de Moor’s movement, played around with reacting to it as if she were in the studio with me then created my own choreographic response. Alice filmed the material in a green room then incorporated my response into the original footage.
How it works
The HTML5 web application allows the user to create their own version of ‘Dance on Steps’ using the remixed content. Using a + interface concept, Archived'it has been created purely from open source technology. Ólafur’s music will automatically attach itself to your film; so it’s up to you how much of the track you use.
The idea is once arranged to your liking, save and share!
One response to digitised archive
Jaron Lanier states in his inspired book ‘You Are Not A Gadget’ (2011)
“Ironically, advertising is now singled out as the only form of expression meriting genuine commercial protection in the new world to come. Any other form of expression is to be remashed, anonymized, and decontextualized to the point of meaninglessness”
I’d like to think with Archived’it we have been able to find one way of ‘remashing’ with meaning. We have taken a piece of incomplete archive footage, the author lost to time, and deconstructed/re-imagined the 55 seconds of content into an artistic statement that has not only been informed by the past but responds to a digital future.
- Adrienne
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