Digital Annotation in Dance

Dance, with its ephemeral and embodied nature, presents a continuing challenge when it comes to the preservation and transfer of knowledge, and different methods and technologies have emerged to capture and communicate it. Annotation tools offer the possibility, especially in the case of time-based media such as audiovisual recordings and documentaries from the field of dance cultural heritage, to capture different aspects of dance and examine its frame and content in-depth and share that with other viewers of the media as well.

In its working area Archive and Practice, the International Theatre Institute Germany (ITI) brings up questions of practical audiovisual documentation. Within this frame, the cooperation project ITI ♥ MOTION BANK has been developed and implemented by ITI in collaboration with the Motion Bank team as part of the program "Kulturerbe Tanz”. ITI ♥ MOTION BANK has a twofold aim: to explore how a video annotation tool can be of use to dance artists in their creative work, and how it can be put into practice in the archival (data) environment as well. These two levels of research were approached in parallel within the structure of ITI:

- The Media Library for Dance and Theatre which concentrates on documentation and research of performing arts,

- and the STUDIO2, which provides space for developing ideas at the interface of dance, theatre and performance.

Motion Bank's interdisciplinary research focuses on the fundamentals of digital dance research, the digital documentation of dance and the use of digital technologies in dance practice. Since 2010, the Motion Bank research project has been developing software and methods for the annotation of time-based media, primarily video, in the field of contemporary dance.

About Motion Bank Systems

The current version of Motion Bank Systems, which was tested during this project, is a web-based tool with the main function of adding annotations (text, images, audio, links…) to specific moments in a video or other time-based media. The software is created to be easy to navigate, and getting started is as low-threshold as possible. The characteristic that enables the ongoing research of and with the annotation tool is that there is not just one “how to” when it comes to the use, and the tool doesn’t impose anything on the user either. While Motion Bank tries to provide the annotation tool to as many people as possible, it’s important to note that it’s not a commercial software product, but a research project with a small core team. It also means that collaborations such as this one can prompt discussions about possible improvements or new ideas on approaching documentation in a dance context.

The following text refers to various aspects and features of the Motion Bank Systems, specifically the toolset around video annotation. While annotation workflows without a video recording to relate to was also touched on within this project, the toolset using a video can present a good starting point for discovering the tools and features that can also be applied outside of a video context. To ensure clarity in the context of this topic, the foundational components of this toolset can be described as: 

- a central video player showing a selected video recording alongside various playback controls,

- a vertical list of created annotations of various forms accompanied by timestamps and sorted by their time of occurrence within the video on the left side of the interface, as well as on the bottom of the interface a horizontal timeline visualization of the duration of the video with annotations from the represented as coloured markers

Most other features mentioned in this text are nested within these main sections of the annotation interface. Screenshots of the main interface for video annotation showing the video player, annotation list and timeline are available as images linked to this text and can be found at the bottom of the page. An informative overview of the features is also available via Motion Bank’s tutorial page (with reference to a previous version of the software).

Project aims and timeframe

ITI ♥ MOTION BANK took place between April and December 2024. The project was developed with a central question of what video annotation can offer as a possibility in the field of performing arts and which could be the methods and strategies of annotating dance or other physical practices in the following use case trials:

- To annotate materials from the Collection of the Media Library for Dance and Theatre (MTT) using the current version of the software to test its applicability in the archival setting for on-site viewing, as well as for documenting artistic and discursive activities

- To adapt the Motion Bank Systems software and then implement it within the infrastructure of the Media Library for Dance and Theatre to allow users to annotate videos from the collection

- To conduct an artistic residency at STUDIO2 with open-ended artistic research using the video annotation tool.

Two further texts are available as an outcome of these explorations: one discussing the practical use of the annotation tool in STUDIO2 for production and documentation, and the other exploring the application of Motion Bank Systems in the Media Library for Dance and Theatre, focusing on the tool's potential for archival research.

A publication by Rebecca Stancliffe (Trinity Laban Conservatoire), David Rittershaus (Motion Bank) and Scott deLahunta (Motion Bank, Coventry University) on Digital Annotation and the Understanding of Bodily Practices is available for further reading about the topic. It contains a collection of articles on practice-based research which do not only refer to the Motion Bank tool, but also other annotation tools and practices. Another recommendation for diving deeper into the subject is Motion Bank’s Medium page, where reports about the research at Motion Bank / Hochschule Mainz can be found.

If you are interested in using the current version of Motion Bank Systems, you can directly contact the Motion Bank team at office@motionbank.org, and if you want to know more about the ITI ♥ MOTION BANK project, you can reach out to c.henniger@iti-germany.de 

The "Kulturerbe Tanz" program is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. It is carried by the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland.

Glossary

• 
  Annotation—In the context of this text, annotation is used in a broad sense and is defined as the act of adding short explanations or notes associated with a particular point of the material. It is important to distinguish annotation from notation, which refers to a written system used to record choreography.
  


• Time-based media art - describes works of art that are dependent on time, duration, or function including video, film and audio artworks


• Use case trials - can be defined as testing different usage scenarios for a piece of software.

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