Turning oral history into an interactive information network

Ursula Pellaton (*1946) is a walking encyclopedia of Swiss dance history. Her enthusiasm for dance began in 1963 with a performance of “Giselle” in Zurich. That was the beginning of her many years of involvement with dance, which has accompanied her ever since as a journalist and historian, among other things.

She shared a lot of her knowledge in 16 hours of video recordings that were the basis for a biography in traditional book form. However, both video and book are limited by their linear narratives that differ from our experience of history as a living network of people, places, events, and works of art. Based on a longer excerpt from the recordings and its transcript, we would like to turn this oral history document into a comprehensive online experience by creating a navigable interface and augmenting the video with supplementary information and material.

• one out of the four videos: https://vimeo.com/511028088/999bda8404
• transcript: https://github.com/JelkeJL/Pellaton/blob/main/data%20preparation/20192705_Pellaton_Ausdruckstanz_unkorrigiert.txt
• https://www.wikidata.org
• https://www.performing-arts.ch

Repo: https://github.com/JelkeJL/Pellaton

• Simona
• Jelke
• Roberta
• Annika
• Katrin
• birk