Documentation of the creation of www.contactencyclopedia.net
From Contactencyclopedia
by Norbert Pape
May 19th 2008
A Bachelor thesis for Studies of Contemporary and Classical Dance at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main
Ausbildungsbereich Zeitgenössischer und Klassischer Tanz
Introduction
Fragments
Recursively writing this introduction, I realize this documentation itself is much the same as the project it is documenting. This documentation is a collection of fragments written at different times out of a need for clarifying and shaping thoughts and/or out of a need for communicating my results to others. Very little was written purely for the sake of documenting.
Having to print this document, I had to put the fragments in a certain order. Even though the chronological order of a diary appealed to me, I decided to apply an order that gives a clear image of what the site is today and at the same time reveals what the site might be tomorrow or what we thought it could turn into in the past. Yet the documentation remains fragmented. The jumps in time are documented in the footnotes.
The process has taken unpredictable turns is due to its participatory nature, putting me in a position of initiating steps that always need to be revised by a community. The task is to create flexible for Contactencyclopedia.net. Another important factor inhibiting the direct realization of ideas is the complexity and costs of the technology involved. With the great help of Tinu Hettich, we considered each vision and tried to find the most appropriate solution with the free software to be found in the Internet. We chose to find cheap practical solutions and to test them before designing expensive and maybe more innovative tools. The benefit of the site for the contact community will hopefully legitimate further investigations and financial investments.
Article for Contact Quarterly
published summer 2008 in CQ Volume 33 Number 2
DICTIONARY OF DELIGHT:
Invitation to a participatory project
D: disorientation, distance, diversity, dictionary of delight, double helix roll, dance, danger, direct / redirect, double duet
Initiated by Dieter Heitkamp, [Frankfurt, Germany], and developed by the participants of the Israeli Contact Festival 2006, a list of terms related to CI was gathered. The structure of the alphabet helped brainstorming without trying to make sense of CI by thinking of contents, categories, or other borders. Even though the end of the festival put a first stop to the project, titled the “dictionary of delight” (dod), it is still waiting for further growth.
Due to my interest in writing my thesis on CI, Dieter Heitkamp offered to work on the dod, suggesting to help develop it into a pedagogical tool for CI. Going through the list, I was astonished by the diversity of the vocabulary, words coming from a wide range of fields such as physics, emotions, biology and movement analysis. Even though many terms were familiar to me, I faced many difficulties trying to give them definitions:
- What is the difference between “bench” and “crawler”?
- How could “vacuuming” be best described? I noticed my understanding of terms is closely connected to the way they were taught. Thinking about “vacuuming,” Martin Keogh’s name shot through my mind. I started thinking about which teacher I associate with which terms. While some seemed free of author, others reminded of specific teachers, like “three ways of going across” – Bronja Novak, “underscore” – Nancy Stark Smith, “double helix” – Steve Paxton.
- How do definition and content relate to the choice of words and images, instructions used for teaching?
- How and where has the development of CI been documented?
While analyzing the dod, my mind also started to create categories, re-sorting the vocabulary, making sense of it: exercises, qualities, terminology for space, physics, biology. The categories tended to split up into even smaller bits: basics, advanced skills, specific approaches. And then, the categories never really worked out, some terms not fitting anywhere, others wanting to be in a few at a time.
The dod was not meant to be a finished product, but a starting point for a never ending process. It became obvious that knowledge about CI is similar to its organizational structure, a decentralized network in constant development, in/formed by a community. This implies that a pedagogical tool in form of a book or DVD is not sufficient.
Once put in those words, it was evident that collaborative internet databases were models for what we needed to make the next step to continue the development of the dod. Tinu Hettich [Bern, Switzerland], DIETER HEITKAMP and I created www.contactencyclopedia.net using the software also used by Wikipedia.
As well as other texts, articles, and publications, the “dictionary of delight” is located there. Clicking on terms out of the list leads to their definition. Like Wikipedia, the site enables readers to participate by contributing articles, creating links between articles and to other sites, USING FORUMS FOR DISCUSSION, etc.
During the process of creation, we envisioned the potential of the site going far beyond gathering and defining terms. Being aware that the usage and value of it is partly determined by its guidelines, rules, and structures, we carefully designed a flexible frame. Much like the dod, we consider the content and form of www.contactencyclopedia.net to be a point of departure. It can be much more than a tool for sharing and finding documents and already existing websites through links. It could help to become aware of the traditions and contexts CI takes place in.
We hope that substantial contributions of the CI community will help the site to expand in many directions. Suggestions, comments, doubts and discussions are welcome.
How can this tool foster the needs of the CI community and beyond?
FURTHER, we hope it will be a source of inspiration for new impulses and open up new spaces- a meeting point, a tool and a site for communication, free of geographic distances.
[Norbert Pape, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, papenorbert@web.de]
Archiving today
Starting from the will to dedicate my thesis to the research and practice of translating contact improvisation into text and other media for pedagogical purposes, I ended up diving into the vast and highly actual field of archiving. Considering archives as structures for organizing data, which can be e.g. objects or events in time, opened up new ways of thinking about most anything, ranging from the arrangement of books in shelves to choreographic choices or choices being made in group improvisations.
With the development of digital technologies, the archive, which used to be a repository of artifacts (printed or written material, objects, etc.), has changed its function. “The archive [is] less […] a container of the accidental trace and more […] a site of a deliberate project.” (Arjun Appardurai, Information is alive p. 24)
In the case of surveillance, the creation of archives (memory) is clearly motivated by a present need (desire) and a will to impose changes to the world. Foucault’s observations on mechanisms of power and control led to a new understanding of the notion of the archive, at the same time redefining common sense notion of identity and community. The archive today can be seen as a “site for the production of anticipated memories by intentional communities.” (Arjun Appardurai) “Intentional” is understood as the opposite of “default” communities, such as states or nations. This aspect of intentionality is of particular relevance for communities challenging political, cultural and geographical boundaries. For them, the online archive, the collaborative website is an essential tool for exchange and collective memory. “[…] The migrant archive is increasingly characterized by the presence of voice, agency and debate, rather than of mere reading, reception and interpellation.” (Arjun Appardurai)
Ever since it’s very beginning contact improvisation has been challenging boundaries: stretching the limits of the field of art, challenging gender rolls and notions of identity, disregarding geographical and political frontiers, following own ideals and values instead of commercial marketing strategies, placing “difference” at the core of its community. Exchange within the scattered community occurs through dancing, traveling, workshops, festivals, the magazine Contact Quarterly , mailing lists and websites.
Very little documentation of the history of contact exists. Even though recently there has been an urge to reflect the development of the dance form, there seems never to have been much of a desire for archiving in a classical way. The focus of the community lies in the present, in the practice, in the dancing, being and doing. Contact Quarterly is a place where practice meets memory. Even though it is printed material, it titles itself “a vehicle for moving ideas”. The magazine is not about memory. It is about exchange, shaping the present and future of a community, thereby creating collective memory.
Contact Quarterly is remarkable in many ways, one of them being its function as a central channel for information. It is essential for the creation of a sense of community for a group as scattered and diverse as the contact community. Such a central organ has not yet been created in the Internet. Numerous informative websites exist, rendered accessible by search engines such as Google and links from one contact page to another. What is yet lacking is a tool for channeling information, inter linking the data, not only the websites.
“Unlike classical archive forms, recent digital databases need not be ordered linearly – grid-like and hierarchically. They are made accessible through complex linking technologies which no longer work linearly, […] but as random and non-linear as you like. Search engines can be designed to find the proverbial needle in the haystack, or even to create a haystack where there are only needles, that is, build patterns where there seemed to be only fragments. Intelligent agents, or knowbots, can link information in any way you never thought of yourself, while expressing your very own interpretation of the world. As soon as new information enters a networked database, the structure of the database can reorganize itself, just like old songs change over time with the changing audiences and changing social, political or cultural circumstances. Flexibility and instability have become technical qualities instead of problems to be controlled. Digital archives are unstable, plastic, living entities, as stories and rituals were in oral cultures.” (Joke Brouwer and Arjen Mulder, Information is alive, p. 5)
www.contactencyclopedia.net
Powered by MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a free software wiki package originally written for Wikipedia. It is now used by several other projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and by many other wikis.
Creative Commons License
The content of Contactencyclopedia.net is available under the license Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.
The original description of the license to be found on the creative commons website reads as follows:
You are free:
to Share— to copy, distribute and transmit the contents
to Remix — to adapt the contents
Under the following conditions:
Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.
For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page.
Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author's moral rights.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/)
Articles: The structure of contactencyclopedia.net
Contactencyclopedia.net is a container for text-based articles. Each article has:
- a title
- a content
- a subpage for discussion
- a history.
According to the choice of the author, an article can be modified by other users or be protected. The original version of an article is saved should an article be modified. Older version are listed in the subpage “history”.
All articles are primarily equal in value, there is no hierarchy of documents defined by the software. Using links and categories (see chapter 2.4) Links and categories) the users of the site can network the articles themselves. Even though the structure of all articles are the same, their functions will differ. Some will focus on content and others will serve as links and structures.
Examples of content oriented articles:
- Definition of a banana roll
- Biographies
Examples of structure oriented articles:
- Main page
- New articles and current projects
We have decided the article “Main page” to be the first one visible when entering the website. It functions as a guide for uninformed users and as a platform for news concerning the site. The main page leads to another structuring article: “New articles and current projects”. Both pages will be updated by the administrators of contactencyclopedia.net.
Links and categories
Links between articles create networks of information. This makes it possible to embed smaller bits and pieces of information into a greater context. Each word of a sentence could lead to an article relating to that word. Words that link to other articles appear in blue or in red
Blue: the article linked to exists.
Red: the article linked to still needs to be created.
Each article can have an indefinite number of attributes, called categories . It can, for example,
- have a certain form (tutorial, essay, creative writing, list, biography, etc.)
- have one or more topics (history, architecture, technique, etc.)
- be about specific people, places or events (Lisa Nelson, Contact Quarterly, CI36).
Articles with coinciding attributes form groups listed in categories. It is possible for one article to be listed in many different categories.
The videotutorial of a banana roll by Kay Grothusen created in the year 2004 could be part of the groups “videotutorials”, “technique”, and “2002”.
The software creates and updates the list of all categories. A category is a group of articles sharing a similar attribute. One article can be listed in no, one, or more categories.
The search engine
The central search engine finds any document containing the entered keyword(s).
Navigation menu
The navigation menu contains following links:
- Main page: a simple way of returning to the main page to find a new entry into the database
- Categories: a list of all existing categories
- Current events: see Chapter 2.6) New articles and current events
- Recent changes: shows the changes that have recently been made.
- Random article: chooses randomly an article.
- Help: links to an article explaining how to navigate, how to contribute, and giving more information about the site. See chapters 2.7, 2.8 and 2.9
- Thanks to: links to an article expressing gratitude to the people and institutions who supported the project
New articles and current projects
New articles features the articles recently posted on the site. The list will be updated regularly by the administrators of the site.
Projects are initiated through a seminal article which invites the creation of further articles for a certain purpose. The “dictionary of delight” is an example of a project. It contains a list of contact terms. Each term leads to an article defining the term. This definition can be developed or, if inexistent, be created.
Some articles can already be considered projects by themselves, those that ask to be written collaboratively. The seminal article of “dictionary of delight” is already a project. It invites the contact community to add further terms to the list.
Other Projects:
- Documenting the history of CI. This project already contains one contribution titled “CI history in Berlin”.
- Music recommendations: a list of recordings used for teaching and dancing. First contributions have been made.
- Reports of events. A list of coming events has been generated. Ulla Mäkinen is working on a report about the Tokyo Contact Festival.
How to navigate
The following text is taken from the website.
Using the search engine
By using the search engine located under the navigation menu on the left side of this window, you will obtain a list all the articles containing the entered keyword.
Using the navigation menu
Main Pagewill always bring you back to the page that appears when you first open up the site.
Categories: Each item (text, photo, video) in the database is assigned one or more categories. Clicking on one of the terms of the list of categories will lead you to the contents related to that term.
Current events contains a list of recent articles and projects that are being worked on.
Random page will randomly choose an article for you.
Links. The words marked in blue lead to articles relating to those words or to external websites.
How to contribute
The following text is taken from the website.
IN ORDER TO MAKE ANY CONTRIBUTION, YOU NEED TO BE LOGGED IN.
How to create a new article
1) Search contactencyclopedia first to make sure that there is not already an article on that subject.
2) Should the search engine have found no articles under the title you typed in, following text should appear:
There is no page titled "...". You can create this page.
3) Click on "create this page" and enter your article.
4) The brackets [category:........] allow you to add certain keywords to your article which will later facilitate the sorting, searching and viewing of the articles. Categories could be, for example: date, place, theme, author, content. Please fill in as many of the ones we propose and add as many as you want. Click here for a list of existing categories.
Before you create an article, please read our rules and guidelines.
How to edit existing articles
Every article has different tabs above it. The edit tab brings you to the editor that enables you to edit the article.
Before you edit articles, please read our rules and guidelines.
Rules and Guidelines
1) no corrections
We think that in the field of dance / art, correction might not be the right mode of editing. To support diversity and contradiciton, we ask to add differing definitions or opinions to the content of the article instead of correcting it.
2) categories
Add as many categories as you find helpful to your article. Check the list of categories to see if you can use existing ones before you create your own.
More information about the site
The following text is taken from the website.
Contactencylopedia is a website for Contact Improvisation. It is collaboratively written by volunteers all over the world. It contains interlinked articles meant for learning, sharing, researching, developing and discussing issues of contact improvisation. Based on the Mediawiki Software, it is similar to wikipedia, which might be familiar to you. Help provides information on how to use the site. To easely get an overview of the new features, articles, and running projects, click on Current projects.
The aim of this site is to facilitate the archiving and distribution of the work of the contact community:
- for informative purposes and for facilitating research
- for archiving the history of a dance form that is constantly developing and placing the work of individuals in a historical and geographic context
- to give people the opportunity to share their research results
- to give credit to dancers / teachers / institutions for their work in developing and fostering contact improvisation.
- to help define a vocabulary for teaching and exchange about CI (a continuation of the dictionary of delight)
- to facilitate discussion through an online site freely accessible
The site:
- provides a search engine for finding specific documents,
- enables links between texts to embed specific information into networks and greater topics, this making even small contributions of different forms relevant (interviews, reports, biographies, thesis, maybe even drafts or simply questions),
- provides space for discussion, different views, approaches and esthetics.
To keep contactencyclopedia.net a useful tool we would like you to respect certain guidelines. They differ slightly from the guidelines of wikipedia, but have a similar aim: creating a freely accessible network of information that can be navigated easily.
We encourage anyone to contribute to this site by posting texts, images or videos. Posting information about institutions, biographies can contribute to advertisement or self-promotion, but should not follow only this purpose. Please be sure that any article contributes to the understanding of contact improvisation. To keep the site functional, administrators and editors will overview the contributions made, create links between articles, develop structures to organize information and contact contributors if they feel articles do not fit the site.
We hope this site will enhance sharing, communication, discussion within the contact community.
Archive
This site is a database, an archive which enables users to contribute information. It is a collection of text-based articles which can also contain other media (pictures, videos, sound). Anyone can start new articles or add to existing ones by clicking on the "Edit this page" tab. Even though changes appear instantly, the previous versions of the article a stored and can be viewed in the "history" tab of the article.
[edit] Research
Articles can be found using the search engine, which lists all the articles containing the word looked after. The articles are all inter-linked. Whereever a word is colored, a link exists to an article relevant to that word. This enables a non-linear organisation of knowledge, embedding single articles into a network of information.
Current projects
Contactencylopedia is not only a tool for documenting the past. Various projects can take place there, such as the "Dictionary of delight". It provides a place for exchange and communication for a worlwide community.
Discussion
Each article has a "discussion" tab. Comments, doubts and questions can be posted there.
contactencyclopedia.net news
This section of the Main page is reserved to news regarding the site, about changes in its structure, form, rules and guidelines.
Actual news:
- 19th of May 2008: Contributions can be made in any language! The chosen categories should be in English.
Visions and visualization
Temporality of articles
The idea described in this chapter has not yet been turned into practice. We are still looking for technical solutions.
Articles have different temporalities. This should be taken in consideration through some form of input mask when creating new articles or searching for existing ones.
1st time mode: The article created is finite and does not relate to any other particular date or time. It therefore has only a date of creation. Example: CD-ROM by Kay Grothusen
2nd time mode: The article relates to a certain date: date of a festival, date of a performance, etc.
a) The date lies in the future
b) The date lies in the past
3rd time mode: The article relates to something happening regularly: a weekly jam, a monthly performance cycle
Documenting events that have not happened yet has the advantage of making it possible to use the site as a calendar or to announce events with no costs of advertisement. The event announced is at the same time documented, and the short article created to announce the event can function as a space holder for a later documentation.
Processing data
The primary function of the site is to collect and share information about contact improvisation. The collected data will later enable us to analyze, process and visualize it in different ways, leading to results relevant to the further development of the dance form.
Example 1: Visualization of articles:
The online news of „Tagesschau.de“ offer a map of the world, with articles located in the geographical location of the event described.
Example 2: Analyzing data
Day after day is an artistic project by Mauricio Arango presented on the site http://victims.labforculture.org .
“Day After Day presents a world map based on coverage of 'victim’ related news. On this map, those countries whose victims produce the highest resonance in the news media appear the most prominent, while those that do not make the news gradually disappear from sight.”
This outcome of the analysis shows clearly that image conveyed by media coverage does not well represent the victims of the “real world”, but rather creates “privileged” victims worthy of representation.
Other dance websites in comparison
Blog type sites:
http://www.dance-tech.net/
http://www.the-inter-mission.com/
http://thewinger.com/
Blog type sites emphasize the personalities of its members and the social dynamics more than the creation of a common pool of knowledge. Users create online identities with pictures, groups of friends and personal preferences. The contributions are either listed by date or by users, but not by content. This type of site supports exchange and discussions between personalities but does not facilitate research or information for non-participants.
Wiki type sites:
http://trac.tanzology.com/wiki
This is the only other wiki dance site I have found. Contents have not yet been posted.
Interactive but non collaborative sites:
http://accad.osu.edu/oneflatthing/html/about.html
The aim of this project, initiated by William Forsythe, is to inform users about the choreographic principles of „One flat thing reproduced“. It will also be released as an interactive DVD.
Contact websites with collaborative calendar:
www.contactimprovisation.ch
This site, created by Tinu Hettich, lists different writings about contact and offers a wonderful collaborative calendar. There might bet the possibility of linking contactencyclopedia.net to this site to make use of the calendar already established instead of creating a new one.
Further steps
Some of the next steps to take have been listed above. But apart from working on the content and shape of the site, it seems most important now to engage the contact community. The article in contact quarterly will soon appear and we are curious to see its effects. Email invitations to friends have been sent and we have received very positive resonance but little active participation. We are planning to go to festivals coming up in the next few months (contact context at the Tanzfabrik Berlin, CI36 satellite celebration at Ponderosa, Tanzwerkstatt Europa in München). Besides participating, dancing and teaching, we will present the website, initiate discussions, and document the events on the site.
Following topics have not found their place in this documentation.
- The usage audiovisual media on the site and its potential further development.
- The graphical layout of the site. This topic already has been given some thought, but we prefer first creating a functioning tool before making it graphically more suitable and inviting.
- The development of the software to better serve the needs of the contact community. One of the aims is to make the site more user-friendly, but also to invent functions that are not part of the Mediawiki package.
- Linkage to other contact websites
- Linkage to other web based archives such as Youtube.
- Costs and financial support.
This documentation will be stored on the website under the title: Documentation of the creation of www.contactencyclopedia.net.
Sources
“Information Is Alive: Art And Theory On Archiving And Retrieving Data”, NAi Publishers (July 2, 2003)
http://victims.labforculture.org, 17.05.08
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/, 17.05.08
http://victims.labforculture.org, 17.05.08
http://tagesschau.de, 17.05.08
