Shakespeare Video Annotation

Dates

October 1999 — January 2004

Principal Investigator

Professor Peter Donaldson (Literature)

Goal

To develop flexible annotation and collaboration tools to support the close reading of film and text in conjunction, and comparisons of literary classics to their adaptations in contemporary media.

Overview

The MIT Shakespeare Electronic Archive has developed a next-generation text and video annotation system that allows students to compare multiple versions of Shakespeare plays in performance, annotate text or performance, and create on-line commentaries and discussions that can be shared remotely. The project builds on previous work at Microsoft on video annotation and on digital collections of texts, images and filmed performances of Shakespeare created by Donaldson's group in collaboration with the Folger Shakespeare library and other partners.

The Shakespeare Video Annotation System (SVAS) is an important step in making cross-media digital collections more useful in teaching and learning for the humanities. Work in the SVAS environment allows students to be as precise in their reference to moving image materials as to text, because video citations can be defined precisely and rapidly; it allows students to specify and illustrate wide-range of interpretive strategies in performance that are otherwise difficult to describe or communicate. SVAS supports the close reading of film and text in conjunction, and thus helps us to connect the study of the classics of the literary tradition to their adaptations in contemporary media as well as advancing the development of flexible annotation and collaboration tools that can be used in wide range of educational and other applications.

More Project Details from the Principal Investigator

The educational vision behind this proposal is the extension of good humanities pedagogy — especially close "reading," group interpretation, and the marshalling of precisely cited evidence in support of interpretations that honor the complexity of the cultural materials — to new media and to distributed environments. Our text is no longer always the printed book, our classroom can be one that includes participants in remote locations with diverse perspectives. The key to such broadening of the traditional protocols of literary and film education is the ability to share not only perspectives and analyses, but to do so in close proximity to the materials themselves. In the MIT Shakespeare Project we have pursued the goal of the multimedia archive as an active classroom and collaborative environment through a number of projects — laserdisc/hypercard systems, streaming-video based discussion and annotation as in our current iCampus project. In this work, we have learned that educational technology is more than a convenience, allowing students to cite evidence in new media. Rather, the ability to specify materials that can instantly play, to share and discuss these flexibly and rapidly, means that students can formulate insights about both verbal and non-verbal aspects of the creation of meaning in performance. The current project will greatly extend the ease and the geographical range of this media intensive approach to humanities education.

The Shakespeare Video Annotation System interface includes a scrolling text, two video windows with controls for locating material and defining segments, and a bulletin-board style annotation space which can be used individually to prepare multimedia notes, commentaries and annotations, or collaboratively for group work, class discussion, or one-on-one tutorials.

The Shakespeare Video Annotation System is an important step in making cross-media digital collections more useful in teaching and learning for the humanities. Initially used in the MIT Shakespeare class 21L009 , SVAS has now been used to support a distance seminar for the Shakespeare Association of America (April, 2001) and in Fall 2001 and Spring 2002 classes in Shakespeare and in Literature and Film at MIT.

"The iCampus Shakespeare Video Annotation project takes us a step further in making digital collections useful for education. Students and scholars in locations as remote from one another as Honolulu and Cambridge, Mass. can discuss the same texts and films, attaching their comments directly to specific scenes and sequences.... You can spend 10 minutes with this web site and learn that some productions and actors interpret the scene ('Alas poor Yorick' from Hamlet) as a cosmic question — Hamlet's meditation on death — and some focus on the social aspect — Hamlet looking at memories of death with this friends." — Peter Donaldson

Project Output

Presentations

Workshop at Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC. November 15, 1999. Discussion of SVAS goals and design with Werner Gundesheimer, Director of the Folger Library, Janet Field-Pickering (Head of Education), Richard Kuhta (Librarian), Janet Griffith (Public Programs), Julie Ainsworth (Head of Photography), George Farr (Head of the Division of Preservation and Access of the National Endowment for the Humanities), Helen Aguera (Preservation and Access), Barbara Ashbrook (Education Division, NEH) and other Folger and NEH staff.

Conference on Digital Collections, Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, University of Maryland, College Park, March 3, 2000. Audience of Computer Science, Humanities and Library scholars concerned with digital collections and their use. Discussion of SVAS plans in context of Shakespeare Electronic Archive.

National Council of Teachers of English. Teaching Shakespeare (Biennial International Conference), Washington DC, March 4, 2000. Co-presenter with Janet Field-Pickering. New directions in multimedia Shakespeare teaching. Showed Hamlet on the Ramparts site, prototype of Romeo and Juliet site, discussed contribution SVAS could make to enhancing use of on-line resources and in supporting high school-university collaboration. Audience of 80 high school teachers and university faculty.

Workshop to plan Folger-MIT-High School collaboration, centered on web site design and expected use of SVAS to support distance collaborative pedagogy and joint design of web sites. MIT April 13-15, 2000. Participants: Peter S. Donaldson, Belinda Yung, Sarah Lyons (MIT); Janet Field-Pickering, Jeannie Goodwin (Folger); Mary Ellen Dakin (teacher, revere High School), Paul Dakin (Assistant Superintendent, Revere Public Schools), Richard Vanderwall (Price Laboratory School at University of Northern Iowa). Meeting resulted in application to NEH for two-year project in which SVAS would be a component of ongoing MIT-Folger-high school collaboration.

Kathryn Tagliaferro Shakespeare Lecture, University of Akron, April 27, 2000. Included discussion of SVAS in lecture on new approaches to Shakespeare teaching and research. Public lecture.

Lecture at California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obisbo, California. Discussed SVAS and Shakespeare Electronic Archive.

Hudson Strode Memorial Shakespeare Lecture, University of Alabama, October 2, 2000. Included discussion of SVAS in lecture on new approaches to Shakespeare teaching and research.

Cambridge-MIT Institute Workshop meetings at Cambridge (February, June, August) and MIT (May). Demonstrated system in the context of plans for collaboration between MIT Literature and Cambridge English. Over twenty members of the Cambridge English Faculty as well as representatives from other programs and centers attended.

Shakespeare Association of America, Miami, April, 2001. Distance seminar followed by seminar session open to membership at annual meeting.

Microsoft Faculty Summit, Seattle (July). Demonstrated project in break-out session to an audience of about 75 and at "demo fest."

SCAENA: International Conference on Shakespeare in Performance, St John's College, Cambridge. Plenary presentation to international group of Shakespeare scholars. Audience: 150.

Three-day workshop with Royal Shakespeare Company leadership at MIT (September).

Parents' Weekend at MIT. Demonstrated project to 100 parents. (September)

"Julie Taymor's 'Titus Andronicus:' Virtual, Cinematic and Tragic Spaces" Modern Language Association Annual Convention, New Orleans, December 27, 2001. Shakespeare session multimedia lecture, prepared using SVAS.

British Council International Networking Event: Workshop on Shakespeare in Performance. The Shakespeare Insititute, Stratford-upon-Avon, UK, January 30- February 1, 2002. Participants were university faculty from 18 countries. SVAS was the subject of one of the demo/discussion sessions for the group.

British Shakespeare Association (Founding Meeting, Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon). Feb. 2, 2002. Plenary Address on Shakespeare, Britain and the Digital Age. Materials prepared using SVAS.

EVA International Seminar, Harvard Library, October 2, 2002. Talk on Shakespeare project.

Foreign Language Consortium, University of Pennsylvania, Oct. 13, 2002. Keynote presentation on Shakespeare Project.

Links

XMAS