APAC Autumn Symposium 2023

The APAC Autumn Symposium will take place on 31st October 2023 at the V&A.

Data and Digital: Preservation and Transformation  

31st October 2023

V&A Hochhauser Auditorium, Learning Centre, Level 1

Morning – DIVA, Gallery 40, Ground level (tickets still available)
In Person Only 
Slots either at 10:45 or 11:15

Lunch – Not provided. Various options are available in the local area, including the V&A café. Attendees also welcome to bring their own.

13:30 – Hochhauser doors open
In Person Only 

13:50-14:00 – Welcomes
Hybrid 

Presentations – Each speaker will have around 5 minutes for questions at the end of their 30-minute time slot.

14:00-14:30 – Sabrina Offord, Theatre and Performance Archivist, V&A: Unlocking Archival Performance Data
Hybrid
In 2020-2021, the V&A embarked on a pilot project to transform access to performance event data held in the Glastonbury Festival Archive.  Almost two years since the launch of the Performing Glastonbury online database, we evaluate the platform and consider potential future options to create innovative models to unlock archival data.

14:30-15:00 – Dr David Taylor, University of Oxford : A Stage in Time: Using AR to Recover 18th-Century Theatre’s Wow Factor
Hybrid 
18th-century theatre was spectacular. Its sets were lavish and its new dramatic forms – above all pantomime – were designed to seize on the potential of new scenographic technologies. How, though, can we recover this visual history, or rather this history of visual experience, when scenery hasn’t survived? This is the question that has driven David’s collaboration with Arcade Ltd, who specialize in using augmented reality to create innovative storytelling experiences. In this talk, David be discussing how we created a smartphone app that takes three set maquettes from the V&A’s collections and transforms them into an immersive experience.

15:00-15:30 – Frédéric Julien, CAPACOA, Director of Research and Development : Leveraging Open Data Along The Performing Arts Value Chain 
Hybrid 
Too much information about the performing arts is unfit for discovery and reuse: it’s either locked in databases or only exists in the form of text documents. In order to solve this fundamental problem, Canadian associations and organizations have turned to linked open data technologies. Five years into this digital transformation, they’ve opened up access to more than 40,000 data records about artists, organizations, places and performances.

15:30-15:45 – Short break for coffee, tea, and biscuits
In Person Only 

15:45-16:15 – Julian Warren, Head of Theatre Collection, University of Bristol: Making A Scene: An Augmented Reality Workshop in a Box
Hybrid 
Funded by a Museums Association Digital Innovation and Engagement Award and shortlisted for A Museums & Heritage Award, Making A Scene is a workshop in a box that combines two dimensional facsimiles from a production archive of Babes in the Wood with three dimensional set models, captured using 3D digitisation techniques and rendered using Augmented Reality.  Developed in partnership with Bristol Old Vic and Bristol-based technology company Zubr-Curio, Julian Warren, Head of the University of Bristol Theatre Collection, will talk about how the project was conceived and developed.

16:15-16:45 – Catherine Troiano, Curator of Photography, V&A: Expansive Images: curating digital photographic practices
Hybrid 
As digital technologies become ever more sophisticated, how do artists, curators and museums engage with creative practice? How has photography been impacted by the fundamental shifts in images and image-making, as a result of digital technologies? Curator Catherine Troiano talks about the digital programme in the V&A’s photography section, spanning acquisitions, commissions, research, displays and preservation.

16:45-17:00 – Wrap-up 
Hybrid

17:00-17:15 – Time to visit the brand new galleries in the Photography Centre and the The Zizi Show 
In Person Only