Choreometrics in the Future

How can we envision a future for the potential digitization of the film elements collected by the Lomax team?

Potential technologies for implementation

• New York Public Library’s comparative digital video tool
• Kinovea: a movement analysis tool for sports, dance, and movement.
• Colorlab: A local company that strives towards film preservation in the digital age.
• Kinograph: “Cultural memory should not be dependent on money or technology.”
• Electroencephalography: for neurological analysis and comparison.
• Motion Capture

Applications of movement analysis

• Re-analysis and adding layers of micro- and macro-(contextual) analysis.
• Tagging and meta-tagging the digitized clips for searchability and legibility.
• Comparing older and more recent versions of the dances using analysis of patterns and specific components of body use, modes of relationship among dancers, expressive qualities, and use of space.
• Once the above has been completed:
  • Cultural patterns can yield intelligence for conflict resolution and peace building.
  • Brain-machine interface technology can include culturally expressive movement via motion capture and neurologically-driven prostheses.
  • Culture members can trace lineage and identity through identified patterns.
  • Culture members can re-member the dances, with embodiment, not merely written description.

Potential short-term & long-term outcomes

• Digitization: preserving cultural heritage.
• Accessibility: distributing knowledge.
• Searchability: tagging and meta-tagging, enabling comparative analysis.
• Crowdsourcing: scholarship from partner universities including ethnographers, dance ethnographers, movement analysts, dance and performance studies scholars, people from the dance tradition’s community.
• Repatriation: democratizing the material, enabling the return of footage to originators.
• Software development: including motion capture of performances and potential for EEG (see electroencephalography above).
• Adoption: discovering which orphan film elements can be declared for fair use after attempting to find their authors.
• Education: imagining what students could learn about human history through this digitized collection could potentially change the rhythm of the earth today.