CANBERRA, February 2011 – Australia’s leading audiovisual digitisation agency, DAMsmart, has been appointed by AusStage to design and build an innovative mobile migration unit to digitise Australia's most valuable performing arts heritage.
AusStage, together with some of its member organisations, has embarked on an exciting preservation project called the Visual Searching project through the creation of a publicly-accessible audiovisual archive of the history of Australian performing arts. Jenny Fewster, Project Manager at AusStage said, “This is a really ambitious and important project for AusStage. We will begin to create a virtual archive of performance footage in Australia, benefiting both the future development of the arts as well as the greater community. We engaged DAMsmart as they have a proven track record, not only with expertise in AV archiving technology, but they also have specialist JPEG2000 knowledge. We have appointed DAMsmart to design and build two mobile digitisation units that will allow us to digitise the collections on location.”
In response to this challenge, DAMsmart created a range of ground-breaking mobile digitisation units that can be transported directly to the library to digitise the tapes safely and cost-effectively on site. In a first for Australia, each mobile unit has been designed and built around a single stream SAMMAsolo. In addition to digitisation, the mobile units will also provide facilities for cleaning and refreshing aging tapes in the collections, which contain formats such as VHS and U-matic, to ensure the digitisation process is optimised. DAMsmart will also provide specialised training for the AusStage video archive operators as well as ongoing support throughout the project.
“DAMsmart are champions of open-standards technology. We provide services for both preservation and commercial purposes, and in an age where technology rapidly changes, we don’t want to burden our customers with the requirements of large proprietary infrastructure. Instead, we want to provide a solution that delivers our customers with the flexibility needed to manage archives now and for the future” Says Ron Anderson, Managing Director of DAMsmart. “Finding a partner that provides us with the software tools to ensure our solutions remain non-proprietary was paramount, which made XenData the ideal partner.”
“We recommend that AusStage use a mobile digitisation unit, giving them the flexibility to move from location to location rather than having to relocate the media to one spot.” said Joe Kelly, Media and Preservation Manager at DAMsmart. “We have designed the units to be self-contained in road cases most commonly used for concerts. They’re built to withstand the stresses of shipping, while at the same time being easy to use and operate.” he continued. The units were custom designed and fitted by DAMsmart’s digitisation engineers in Canberra before being shipped to Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) ready to digitise the first collection.
The first tape collection to be digitised by one of DAMsmart’s mobile units is the famous Circus Oz. Circus Oz is keen to showcase its extraordinary history in an online experience that reflects the audience interaction that is so important in its live performances.
Ron Anderson, Managing Director at DAMsmart, said “This is a first for Australia and we are proud to be working with AusStage on such a significant cultural project. We are at the forefront of progressive digitisation projects and are going to continue to find new and innovative ways to support organisation in their endeavours to access and preserve their audiovisual collections.”
About AusStage:
AusStage provides an accessible research facility for investigating live performance in Australia. It was built by a consortium of universities and industry partners with funding from the Australian Research Council through its Linkage, Equipment, Infrastructure and Facilities scheme. Australia stages some of the most ambitious, innovative and socially significant live events. Live interaction at communal events is essential to the cultural life of the nation. Innovative live performances project images of Australian culture to audiences here and overseas. AusStage records information on live performance in Australia, as a wealth-producing creative industry, a generator of social capital and an indicator of the nation's cultural vitality. AusStage is working with researchers in universities, performing arts organisations and government agencies to track patterns of live performance over time and to identify opportunities for audience development and strategic investment.
The Visual Searching project will work with a number of collections including the Macquarie University and the History of the Sidetrack Performance Group, the BlakStage project based at Monash University, The Stage on Screen Project housed at the University of New England, the NIDA archival collection, the Melbourne Workers Theatre Project at Deakin University and the performance documentation of Rex Cramporn at the University of Sydney.
www.ausstage.edu.au