RECITE (Rethinking a City's Theatres, Digital Creativity and Innovation) is a University-funded cross-disciplinary network. It is part of the University's 'Digital World' theme, which is a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary theme covering the development, use and impact of Digital Technologies in a range of different disciplines and user environments, including health, society, the arts, and humanities.
The key purpose of RECITE is to undertake groundbreaking interdisciplinary research into the challenges of how a city's theatres, including both spaces and performances, could be digitally mapped, modelled and documented to such an extent that they can be reproduced and displayed on Web-based interactive virtual world technologies that are accessible and useful to a wide range of end-user applications. The UK is one of the world's leading countries for contemporary theatre and is endowed with one of the richest histories of theatre in the world. The mission of RECITE is to research appropriate methodologies and technologies such that the vast repositories of the theatre archives hosted around the country can be mined for the benefits of research, education and the creative industries.
The core membership of RECITE now consists of [1] The Supervisory Team: Dr Chengzhi Peng, Prof Flora Samuel (Architecture), Dr Steve Nicholson, Dr Frances Babbage, Dr Carmen Szabo (English), Dr Steve Maddock, Dr Daniela Romano (Computer Science); [2] Cross-cutting Director of Research and Innovation for the Digital World (Professor Fabio Ciravegna); [3] Staff from the Drama Studio and the Sheffield University Theatre Company; [4] The Sheffield Theatres Trust (represented by Dan Bates, CEO, and Dan Franklin, Head of Production); [5] Staff from the Digital Region Project (Robert Chorley and Richard Jepson); and [6] Staff from epiGenesys Ltd to provide additional support for software prototyping.
As part of the RECITE network, three University-funded PhD scholarships started in October/November 2010:
- Interactive Modelling of a City’s Theatre Spaces – Adam Park (PhD student), Chengzhi Peng and Daniela Romano
- Performing the City – Rosie Ward (PhD student), Steve Nicholson, Flora Samuel and Carmen Szabo
- Documenting character performance for pre- and post-production theatre activities – Cong Ye (PhD student), Steve Maddock and Frances Babbage
The RECITE student network has built the RECITE Collaborative on wikispaces as a shared repository for documenting both individual and collaborative strands of work in progress (Google Chrome is recommended for accessing the site).
For further details, please contact Dr Chengzhi Peng.