Dance Mapping - Arts Council England

Research
The importance of a relationship with higher education comes out strongly in the report. The
facilities and in-kind support often available to artists provides a useful experimentation and
creative output as well as giving access to higher education funding for research. Arts funding
on the other hand was supporting the public showing of the work. There was a distinction
made by the artists between ongoing research, which is academically valid, and processes
that lead to work for public showing.
The following is an illustration of work supported between two universities – Chichester and
Brisbane. It demonstrates the potential and also the complexity of such collaborations
highlighted above in the section on Creative issues.
global drifts – the digital making process
global drifts was a distributed digital choreographic event by Sarah Rubidge and Hellen Sky,
with Seunghye Kim, Hyojung Seo, and Stan Wijnans.
global drifts was made over a two-year period between 2004 and 2006. It was supported by
the University of Chichester (in the form of a research fellowship for Sarah Rubidge and use
of facilities) and Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. The creative process
comprised blocks of five or six weeks with the collaborators working together at Chichester
and Queensland, interspersed with extended time apart, but in contact via phone/web during
which time systems and ideas were developed. The lengthy timeframe and combination of
live and remote working are typical of the making process for interactive live/virtual work.
global drifts comprised three ‘choreographic’ events, global drifts (Brisbane), a durational
digital performance event; global drifts (London), a live video-capture installation linked to the
Brisbane event via the internet, and global drifts (Seoul), an interactive installation linked to
Brisbane and London via the internet. global drifts (Brisbane) was a durational event, which
was interwoven with a multi-sited site-specific performance event entitled accented body (dir.
Cheryl Stock). global drifts was created using Isadora, Max/MSP and Jitter.
Source – Gibson R and Porter L (2008)
Marketing and communications
There is a move by arts organisations to use the web beyond putting their publicity material
and a booking facility online, to developing a far greater interactive presence. However this is
always modified by the critical mass of web and digital technology users. Marketing staff are
aware of the potential power of social networking and are now exploiting this widespread and
easily accessible phenomenon.
There are some good examples: Random and the Royal Opera House (ROH) are developing
their online presence in an holistic way, as an interactive resource to communicate about their
entire output to a range of communities of interest, including research, education, social
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