Blast theory's rider spoke, its documentation and the making of its replay archive

This article addresses modes of documentation and archiving of live performance. It also constitutes a documentation of the practical and theoretical concerns encountered while documenting Blast Theory's Mixed Reality Performance Rider Spoke (2007) over a period of three years (2007-2010) through two different technologies developed by the Mixed Reality Laboratory at the University of Nottingham: the Digital Replay System (DRS), and a CloudPad. Conducted by an interdisciplinary team with expertise in Performance Studies, Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Information Management, this documentation comprises: a reflection on the imperative to archive which underpins significant aspects of the digital economy; an analysis of Blast Theory's work Rider Spoke; a discussion of a prototype archive developed using the DRS as part of the EPSRC-funded Creator project; a 'bespoke' documentation of Rider Spoke, including a description of how the team from the Mixed Reality Laboratory, the Centre for Intermedia at the University of Exeter and the Ludwig Boltzman Institute Media.Art.Research used off-the-shelf technologies innovatively to capture the participant experience when the work was shown at the ars electronica festival in Linz (2009); and a contextual analysis of our methodology and the first presentation of an original archiving tool, the CloudPad, developed by the RCUK-funded Horizon research project specifically for the documentation and annotation of Mixed Reality Performance.