DH Fellows: Matters Domestic, Theatrical, and Digital

Digital Humanities Fellows Kelli Shermeyer and Sean Tennant presented recent research in UVA’s Scholars’ Lab on May 1. Shermeyer, a former dramaturg, theater director, producer, and current doctoral student in the English department, began the proceedings with a presentation entitled, “Digital Skriker: New Directions for Archival Practices and Performance.” Sean Tennant, a doctoral student in the McIntire Department of Art, presented “Quantifying the Roman House,” in which Tenant used network analysis and quantitative methods to track ancient Roman cultural influences in northwest and northwestern Europe through shifts in domestic spatial arrangements.

In Shermeyer’s view, AR and VR technologies are put to best use when they are deployed in service of making storytelling more accessible, truthful, and resonant to audiences.  Her analysis of motion capture technologies coincides with her aim to enhance storytelling and forge new ways of generating surprise, delight, and wonder for theater-goers. Without suggesting that large budgets and corporate backing are necessary, Shermeyer seeks to contest the notion that “theater is dying,” a notion which plays an outsize role in driving increased usage of AR and VR technologies in theatrical productions. 

A dance course in UVA’s Drama Department prompted Shermeyer to think anew about the consequences of archiving motion capture, and the conversations that drive increased usage of augmented reality in the theater— especially community theaters without large budgets. In her presentation she reviewed recent plays that have utilized AR and VR technologies, including productions from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre Company and Andy Serkis’s production company, “The Imaginarium.” She then turned to her own work with motion capture technology in her treatment of Caryl Churchill’s “The Skriker” which features wordless scenes of human and fairy interaction in the background. Shermeyer experimented with three motion capture suits, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of each as she considered how they blur the boundaries between performance, film, archiving, and gaming. In the interest of making augmented reality manageable for community theaters, she evaluated factors such as range of motion, body type accommodation, and data-feed stability and conversion.

[Shermeyer's] analysis of motion capture technologies coincides with her aim to enhance storytelling and forge new ways of generating surprise, delight, and wonder for theater-goers.

Sean Tennant focused on two key questions in his research: 1) how to explain the leap from people living in round houses to Roman villas? and 2) how to glean patterns of ancient Roman cultural diffusion as it  applies to Northwestern European architecture during this time period? From a final data set that included 265 distinct archaeological sites in 357 unique contexts, Tennant quantified the architectural shift in Northwestern Europe from round houses to widespread adoption of Roman villas across the time period spanning the first century A.D. to the fourth century A.D. 

Tennant’s application of network analysis to architecture is relatively rare in the discipline of archaeology. Other methodologies he used like space syntax analysis are controversial among archaeologists who argue that it removes the human element from architectural analysis, but Tennant counters that ancient Roman textual sources offer intact, quantifiable data about the ways in which ancient Romans visualized and conceptualized their domestic spaces, enabling his DH approach to yield an important insight into the history of European homes.  Tennant said he expected a sharper distinction between patterns of spatial arrangement in Roman Britain and Northwestern Europe but found that Roman Britain began adopting Roman patterns of living before Romans had ever arrived there.