1. Performing Arts as a field for conceptual modelling Heraklion, 8 th FRBR/CIDOC CRM Meeting, October 25-27, 2006 Patrick Le Bœuf, Bibliothèque nationale de France

2. Which performing arts? "Performing arts" = a generic phrase that covers both: (i.e.: sound recordings & animated images) and: (i.e.: live theatre, live ballet, live music, artistic “happenings”…; main feature: no carrier)

3. "Frozen" performing arts No different in essence from books, paintings, drawings…: they consist of a carrier + a content They do not call, in my opinion, for a specific modelling in CIDOC CRM, FRBR ER, FRBR OO …

4. "Live" performing arts The absence of an enduring physical carrier is a challenge: –No carrier => can there be any "content" at all? –How can memory institutions (libraries, museums, archives) "hold" and share information about live performing arts? –If the performance is both the medium and the message, does it imply that an occurrent (the performance process) can also be a perdurant (the content of the message) at the same time?

5. "I'm a practitioner, why should I care?" Some institutions do hold theatrical (operatic, choreographic, etc.) archives There is no internationally agreed standard or good practice about how to deal with such materials, just empirical local policies Institutions need a sound theoretical approach in order to improve their local policies and transform them into international standards

6. Two examples of practical achievements (1) USA: Dance Heritage Coalition's authority records for choreographic works –Syntax: Title of ballet + form qualifier ("choreographic work") + choreographer's surname used as a qualifier + other qualifiers as needed –Can be used as subject headings in bibliographic records –Serve to collocate descriptions for all the physical "traces" left by a ballet (notation, videorecording, props, costumes, press clippings…)

7. Two examples of practical achievements (2) France: BnF's Department for Performing Arts: "notices de spectacle" (records for stage productions): –Syntax: "ordinary" bibliographic records, except that they do not describe a "publication," but a performance: Title of show / Name of stage director (choreographer, etc.) ; Name of playwright (composer,n librettist, etc.) ; Names of main performers. – Place : Name of Theatre, Date. – (etc.) –Serve as a target for links from bibliographic records describing any material related to the stage production –Provide a contextualisation for the materials described in such bibliographic records

8. Some issues we're confronted with at the BnF What should the "notice de spectacle" describe at all? –just one performance? (a unique event) –a run of performances? (an "abstract event," in Allan Renear's terminology) –a set of concepts common to all performances of the same run? (a conceptual perdurant) What about tours and revivals? –Currently, we're creating as many records as there are tours and revivals –We're wondering whether that's wise, and whether it wouldn't be better to create just one record that would cover the initial run and all of its revivals (focussing thus de facto on a set of concepts) => "Looking for a sound conceptual model, desperately…"

9. Semioticians' viewpoints 1: status of the text of the play Keir Elam, The semiotics of theatre and drama (1980, 2 nd edition 2002): –1931: Otakar Zich refuses "to grant automatic dominance to the written text, which takes its place in the system of systems making up the total dramatic representation" (p. 5) –1977-78: Gianfranco Bettetini, Marco De Marinis and Franco Ruffini "virtually rule out the dramatic text altogether as a legitimate concern of theatrical semiotics proper" (p. 3) => The linguistic text is just one element of the whole, and should not be regarded as predominant

10. Semioticians' viewpoints 2: the performance is a text Keir Elam, The semiotics of theatre and drama (1980, 2 nd edition 2002): –1940: Jiři Veltruský affirms that "All that is on the stage is a sign" (p. 6) –1968: Tadeusz Kowzan insists again that "Everything is a sign in a theatrical presentation" (p. 17) –As a consequence, the audience "perceive the performance as a network of meanings, i.e. as a text" (p. 10) –Keir Elam terms that kind of text "performance text" in order to distinguish it from the linguistic text produced by the playwright

11. Semioticians' viewpoints 3: theatrical information is utmost complex Keir Elam, The semiotics of theatre and drama (1980, 2 nd edition 2002): –"Sources of theatrical information" (p. 31-33) = the dramatist the director, "whose decisions and instructions determine to a considerable extent the choice of transmitters, the form that their signals take and the encoding of the messages" (p. 33) the set designer the lighting designer the costume designer the composer the stage manager technicians actors, "in their capacity as decision-makers, initiative-takers and funds of ideas." –"The spectator will interpret this complex of messages ― speech, gesture, the scenic continuum, etc. ― as the integrated text" (p. 33)

12. Semioticians' viewpoints 4: a typology of information systems Keir Elam, The semiotics of theatre and drama (1980, 2 nd edition 2002): –1968: Tadeusz Kowzan "provides a preliminary and approximate typology of some thirteen systems" at work in a performance text (p. 45): Language Tone Facial mime Gesture Movement Make-up Hairstyle Costume Props Décor Lighting Music Sound effects –Others could be added, and the boundaries between some of the above are fuzzy

13. Semioticians' viewpoints 5: the basic trouble with "performance texts"… Keir Elam, The semiotics of theatre and drama (1980, 2 nd edition 2002): –"The dynamism of theatrical discourse ― the fact that it must, by definition, remain in progress ― makes its effective examination highly problematic. It cannot (unlike, say, film) be interrupted or frozen for purposes of scrutiny and, still more, it is necessarily unrepeatable, since the precise internal relations established in one performance will differ, however subtly, in the next." (p. 41)

14. Our concern Is not to design a "semiotic model" of theatrical discourse, although we can draw on semioticians' efforts in that direction, But to conceptualise the "performance text" –as a perdurant, within the framework of CIDOC CRM/FRBR OO, –and in articulation with related occurrents: individual performance run of individual performances "life cycle" of tours and revivals

15. How many "performance texts" for a given "stage production"? I would like to distinguish between "micro-differences" and "macro-differences" that affect the performance text –"Micro-differences" are involuntary, uncontrolled, aleatory, inevitably bound to the "unrepeatability" of each individual performance –They are "errors" against the overall pattern of the "archetypical," "ideal" performance designed by the stage director –They can be regarded as negligible, at least in library practice (perhaps also in a conceptual model) –"Macro-differences" reflect a voluntary act on behalf of the stage director –They can be regarded as determining distinct versions of the performance text

16. In FRBR OO terms… Individual performance Self-Contained Expression "Ideal" Self-Contained Expression, impossible to witness in any individual performance Run of performances Individual Work Complex Work conveys is an alteration of "should convey" realises realised in member of belongs to

17. In my humble opinion… A performance is more a process of perception than a process of creation/production You never read twice quite the same book: each individual reading event is unique and unrepeatable: why should it be different with performing arts? Similarly, you never look twice at quite the same painting: in the meantime, the varnish has grown dirtier, pigments were altered by oxidation… eventually, the painting was restored, and the image you look at is objectively different … Which does not prevent us from regarding the content of the book and the image carried by the painting from being instances of Persistent Item, not of Temporal Entity: why should it be different with the content of performances? My reading or writing = an occurrent // What I read or write = a perdurant My performing = an occurrent // What I perform = a perdurant

18. Unless… … Unless we adhere to the ontological view that nothing in the world is a Persistent Item, but the Universe consists exclusively of Temporal Entities…