AHDS Performing Arts presented at this event to publicise the preservation service that we provide and to make connections with the various people engaged with digital technologies and preservation at Leeds.

A range of speakers presented engaging papers on the challenges they face in using new technologies in their respective fields. Kia Ng's talk was particularly useful to AHDS Performing Arts as it demonstrated the ways in which researchers are using technology creatively to allow computer systems to be an integral player in a performance. His Music via Motion (MvM) system allows users to have real-time control of musical sound using their physical movement. The other talks raised issues that echo AHDS concerns. The EVIE project for example has set out to establish an integrated VRE infrastructure to allow researchers to conduct research tasks online and to provide cross-discipline searching, retrieval and preservation of research output. In offering these services the project hopes to establish a VRE that will capture the wide range of data content produced, including emails, audiovisual files, wikis, blogs, data and text. AHDS are working in a similar vein to widen its collections policy so more representative project documentation can be preserved and disseminated in the future. Attending events like this is essential as they provide an excellent opportunity to find out about developments in our own research communities as well as that in other fields, thereby highlighting potential collaborations.

A full report of this event is available from the DCC Website.

The conference brought together a range of international practitioners to provoke critical dialogue surrounding the complex and politically charged relationship between performance and its documents. Each speaker addressed their concerns regarding documentation and its inability to fully represent a performance. The majority of delegates seemed to be of the mindset that documentation was a separate artistic entity and that although it may well draw on an actual event, it could not fully reflect it. Tagny Duff cleverly called into question our assumptions of what constitutes an authentic and reliable document by portraying herself in the conference documentation and for the most part of her presentation as Robin Feeny, a fictitious artist-curator currently doing a retrospective on Tagny Duff, before revealing her true identity. She also questioned the effects of time and lag, considering how documents shape and shift meaning, and recommending that curators consider their own performativity in processes such as migration and emulation. All of the presentation had a strong performance element which emphasised the concerns at hand. The symposium was part of an AHRC research project entitled Dialogic Evidence: Documentation of Ephemeral Events. For more information on this project see www.livearchives.org

This was an excellent event, particularly useful for presenting both wide and specific contexts for the practice-as-research debate. Professor Noel Witts (Leeds Metropolitan University) summarised the history of creative research in the UK and identified various issues: the problem of 'validation' of ephemeral methods and outcomes; the problems of justifying creative outcomes and practices through written reflection; the changing attitudes towards PaR (which is now accepted for the RAE); and the problems engendered by having separate definitions for practice and research.

Rebekka Kill spoke on the nature of 'research' and how creative practice fits the models defined. She noted that concepts of research vary historically, contextually, and geographically and that research can be thought of as INTO, THROUGH, or FOR any particular topic, and that often research through creative practice has its validity measured against criteria and vocabulary that is not subject-specific or appropriate.

Teresa Bradshaw and Oliver Bray presented specific performative works as research and their attitudes towards documentation of the works and the ephemeral events themselves.

Professor Michael Alcorn described the work of the SARC and engaged in discussions of how AHDS Performing Arts might be able to help advise researchers there.