Visceral Histories, Visual Arguments: Dance-Based Approaches to Data

While dancers and dance scholars understand movement and gesture to be sites of knowledge production, the field of dance history has been reluctant to adopt data-driven analytic methods, which are presumed to be dematerializing and reductive. Grounded in the specific needs of dance scholarship, 'Visceral Histories, Visual Arguments' engages with emerging digital techniques and technologies from the perspective of dance-based knowledge practices, with the aim to develop a methodology of 'visceral data analysis' that explicitly focuses on data drawn from and reflective of bodily experience. The Fellow's previous collaborative research pioneered the application of scalable digital methods to the field of dance history; this new work focuses on the adaptation of data-driven research to the medium of dance that serves to enable this broader paradigm shift. The new methodology of visceral data analysis will offer an interdisciplinary approach to the challenge of analyzing moving bodies as subjects of data-driven historical inquiry, which will further benefit all fields that grapple with maintaining the complexity of bodies when they are represented as data.

'Visceral Histories, Visual Arguments' draws together individuals and ideas from dance studies, artistic research in dance-technology, archival science, museology, digital humanities, critical data studies, human computer interaction, visual communication, and data science. The Fellow will engage in a three-phase programme of research with Collaborating Organizations and Project Partners, including museums and archives exploring digital innovation (the San-Francisco-based Museum of Dance; the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas; the National Archives of Data on Arts and Culture; The National Archives), emerging technology and design centres at two US universities (Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design at The Ohio State University and Augmented Environments Lab at Georgia Institute of Technology), and community dance stakeholders (the US-based Institute for Dunham Technique Certification). In the process, the Fellow will build international peer networks of interdisciplinary and intersectoral interlocutors and develop research leadership by mentoring and inspiring innovative research, including among next generation ECRs. These substantive knowledge exchanges will provide access to technical domain knowledge and resources, enabling the Fellow to address the conceptual and technological challenges of developing data-driven analytic approaches tailored to the medium of dance. Collaborators will benefit from new insights into the qualitative dimensions of visceral data, including what such data may feel like, and how these feelings can translate into palpable visual arguments for historical dance data in the form of digital visualizations and immersive experiences that are guided by choreographic principles.
The Fellow will convene a bi-monthly Visceral Data Discussion Group to establish an interdisciplinary community of practice and shared vocabulary, and ultimately set the trajectory of future research in visceral data analysis. Findings will be disseminated through an edited collection of essays and additional digital and print peer-reviewed publications, including a dataset, an essay, and a research blog, and through scholarly and cultural industries presentations and networking opportunities, and two interactive digital installations. The Fellow will be mentored by an internal mentor who has a track record of leading data-driven research in theatre history, an external CLORE mentor who specializes in arts leadership, and by senior advisors drawn from Partner organizations. Collaboration will provide pathways to impact for Project Partners in the cultural sector to develop and enhance their own practices and ways of working by centering dance-based knowledge in technological innovation, and making dance's historical archives more accessible to broader publics.