How Are On-Line Digital Libraries Changing Theatre Studies and Memories?

Abstract

The on-line access to digital video allows for a new management of Performing Arts documents. The audiovisual document, conceived in the past by its creator as a complete work in itself now has to be flexible and open to suit the needs of its on-line users.

Information Retrieval’s activities for Performing Arts have to be improved by finding new tools and by developing a specific P. A. semantic.

We have to be aware that the abundance of available items on a given subject could transform an opportunity into a challenge.

A new pedagogy of abundance has to be reshaped, based on User-generated content, not losing track of the first original document, via an authenthicity assessment of the digital record. Original works - first created electronically now through digital technologies - have to be reconsidered as new content, not as old content on new platforms. From Antonin Artaud’s radio recordings of 1947 to portable Electronic Arts of the Seventies, ending with the Digital New Media of the new millenium, a new aesthetic and a new imaginary are rising, and it is strongly different from the old way of describing the world.

The Performing Arts studies are shifting from scarcity to abundance of digital data, witnessing the scarcity of available funds to preserve culture.

The more the digital archives will be open to new formats and free downloading, the more we will encourage the diffusion of European primary values and, in the same time, get a chance to preserve the millenary history of the Performing Arts.