Documentation and Preservation in Musical Arts

Objectives

(a) To acquire specialized knowledge about the typologies of documents generated by post-1950 musical works, namely in Portugal.
(b) To know the main methods of documentation and preservation of multimodal musical works.
(c) To understand the issues related to the documentation of performance, as well as the methodologies and supporting technologies.
(d) To know international standards of metadata, descriptors and ontologies in the context of digital archives, focusing on musical and performing arts.
(e) To be aware of the ethical principles governing the treatment and reuse of archival materials, particularly in a digital environment.
(f) To know the software and platforms to support the development of databases and management of archives namely digital.

General characterization

Code

02113479

Credits

10.0

Responsible teacher

Ana Filipa Gonçalves de Magalhães

Hours

Weekly - 3

Total - 280

Teaching language

Portuguese

Prerequisites

N/A

Bibliography

Auslander, P. (2018). Reactivations: essays on performance and its documentation. Michigan: University of Michigan Press.

Corrado, E. M., & Moulaison, H. S. (2017). Digital preservation for libraries, archives, and museums. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.

Gilliland, A. J., Lau, A. J., McKemmish, S. (2017). Research in the archival multiverse. Monash University.

Kosciejew, M. (2017). Documenting and materialising art: conceptual approaches of documentation for the materialisation of art information. Artnodes, 0(19).

Lavender, A. (2021). Multimodal Acting and Performing. In: Elleström, L. (eds) Beyond Media Borders, Volume 1. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49679-1_3.

Madeira, C., Marçal, H., & Oliveira, F. M. (Eds.) (2019). Práticas de Arquivo em Artes Performativas. Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra.

Magalhães, F. (2021). Music, performance, and preservation: insights into documentation strategies for music theatre works. International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 18(3), 316–340. https://doi.org/10.1080/14794713.2021.1974726.

Magalhães, F. (2022). Constança Capdeville’s Personal Archive: Difficulties in Describing and Documenting Performative Practices. Archival Notes, 7: 41–63. https://onlinepublishing.cini.it/index.php/arno/article/view/200.

Magalhães, F. (2022). Material Sources, Lack of Notation and the Presence of Collaborators: The case of Double by Constança Capdeville. Organised Sound, 27(2):193–205. doi:10.1017/S1355771822000346.

Marçal, H., Nogueira, A., & Macedo, R. (2018). Materializar o intangível: a documentação da obra ‘Luís Vaz 73’ (1975), de Jorge Peixinho e Ernesto de Sousa. Conservar Património 27: 13-22. https://doi.org/10.14568/cp2016042.

Marcheschi, E., Marinai, E., & Patti, E. M. (2021). Documenti d’artista: processi, fonti, spazi, archiviazioni. Pisa: Pisa University Press.

Matos, L., Macedo, R. and Heydenreich, G. (Eds.) (2015). Performing Documentation in the Conservation of Contemporary Art. Lisbon: Instituto de História da Arte. https://institutodehistoriadaarte.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/RHA_W_4.pdf.

Nogueira, A., Macedo, R., & Pires, I. (2016). Where contemporary art and contemporary music preservation practices meet: The case of Salt Itinerary. Studies in Conservation, 61(sup2), 153–159. https://doi.org/10.1080/00393630.2016.1188251.

Pires, I., Magalhães, F. & Nogueira, A. (2018). Preservation and technological obsolescence: Portuguese contemporary musical heritage in perspective. Journal of New Music Research 47(4): 355-364. https://doi.org/10.1080/09298215.2018.1486433.

Rosa, M. L. (2017). Reconstruindo a produção, documentalização e conservação da informação organizacional pré-moderna. Perspetivas teóricas e proposta de percurso de investigação. Boletim do Arquivo da Universidade de Coimbra, 30: 547–586.

Sant, T. (2017). Documenting performance: the context and processes of digital curation and archiving. London, UK: Bloomsbury.

Varanda, P. (2022). Digital-born artworks and interactive experience: documentation and archiving. In C. Fernandes, E. Vitto & C. Ribeiro (Eds.), Dance Data, Cognition, and Multimodal Communication (pp. 89–99). United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis. DOI: 10.4324/9781003106401-8.

Varela, M. E., Lee, N. H. (2018). Language documentation: a reference point for theatre and performance archives? Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 14(1): 17- 17-33, DOI: 10.1080/14794713.2018.1453242.

Teaching method

Theoretical-practical classes: presentation of concepts and techniques related to preservation, documentation and archiving in the field of Musical Arts; practical use of support tools, particularly digital ones (database and descriptor systems, and digital applications for documentation); practical work applying concepts and techniques to small collections made available by the teacher or by the students, using platforms and software developed during the course.

Evaluation method

Written evaluation: 30%

Practical exercise in digital archiving or documentation: 20%

Project work in the area of documentation or digital archiving practices: 50%

Subject matter

1—Preservation problems in the context of technological obsolescence.

2—Methods and techniques for typifying and cataloguing materials, including digital ones, in the context of multimodal works.

3—Supplementary documentation of works for preservation and archiving purposes.

4—Fundamental principles of archival preservation (e.g. authenticity, integrity, value).

5—Ethical principles in the treatment of materials in an archival context (e.g. copyright, intellectual and editorial property).

6—Introduction to the main archival description standards (e.g., ISAD(G), ISAAR, ISDF, ISDIAH and RISM).

7—Philological approach to the documentation of artistic practices in the context of musical arts, from a theoretical and technical point of view.

8—Introduction to the main ontologies, metadata systems and descriptors in digital archiving, adapting them to the type of works under study (e.g., Dublin Core, RiC-CM and DOREMUS), and to specific cases of development of documentation systems and digital databases (e.g. InterPARES, CENDARI).

9—Practical application of concepts and procedures to specific cases.

Programs

Programs where the course is taught:

Master in Musical Arts