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Personal Computers and Dance Ethnology Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Extract

Most of the published research in dance ethnology was conducted prior to the wide availability of personal computers.1 Research projects were usually realized within a framework of field work—data gathering by observing, participating in dance events, interviewing resource people, describing and/or recording dance movement; and analyzing data and movement behaviors. The results of such research was then put into manuscript form, which was generally typed by the researcher using a typewriter. Making use of a computer—as a tool to assist in storing research information, to sort and analyze field data, to produce illustrations and maps, or to notate dance movements—is all a relatively new approach for dance ethnologists.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 by the International Council for Traditional Music

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References

Notes

1. Personal computers are also referred to as micro-computers. These are fully operational computers that are stand-alone, that is, not reliant upon other equipment. Furthermore, I am referring to micro-computers that are portable or at least semi-portable.Google Scholar

2. This project was produced during weekends and night hours on a large room-sized computer located in a business office.Google Scholar

3. Five tables of information (dance names, bibliographies, teachers of dances, where and when dances were taught, and geographical sources of dances) were published 1979 in South Slavic dances in California: a compendium for the years 1924-1977, San Carlos: Ragusan Press.Google Scholar

4. My references principally pertain to the Apple Macintosh system, rather than to the MS-DOS system of the IBM and IBM-compatible personal computers. However, the IBM family does have a product known as Microsoft Windows which is similar to the Macintosh system.Google Scholar

5. To date there are three notation programs developed on the Apple Macintosh: LCsLN by Elsie Dunin at UCLA; Laban Writer by Lucy Venable and Scott Sutherland at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio; McBenesh by Rhonda Ryman at University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. On IBM equipment, a Labanotation program named Calaban was created by Andy Adamson at University of Birmingham in England.Google Scholar

6. There are a number of articles on computers and music.Google Scholar

7. For a description of the dance index to the Video encyclopedia of the 20th century, see report by Miriam Phillips, “Report on the dance index created for the Video Encyclopedia of the 20th Century” in the 1989 issue of the UCLA dance ethnology journal 13: 5662.Google Scholar

8. This number is based upon a listing of 3357 BITNET nodes, noted in a 1991 article: “An overview of BITNET,” perspective 15 (1): 20-21, published by the Office of Academic Computing at the University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar

9. Although the Webster's 1983 Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary does include some basic terms, the 1986 Webster unabridged dictionary does not include the terms “hardware,” “software,” “program,” nor “byte” as they relate to computers.Google Scholar

10. A very useable computer dictionary Que's computer user's dictionary by Bryan Pfaffenberger was published in 1990 by Que Corporation in Carmel, Indiana.Google Scholar

11. Features listed here are all available with the Microsoft Word (version 4) software.Google Scholar

12. For example, the Microsoft Word software for word processing provided the user with seeing the actual type size, and all typed features: “what-you-see-is-what-you-get.”Google Scholar