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DC: What exactly have we done and how have we done it? As a given phase of any research project nears its conclusion, it pays to undertake a process of forensic self-reflection. This final chapter takes the form of a dialogue between Laurene and myself, who together represent a small but perhaps strategically positioned sample of the multidisciplinary diversity of this project – the Circus Oz Living Archive – that we’ve been working on for the past four years. The dialogue form, although relatively unconventional in scholarly writing (Plato notwithstanding), seems apt for the theme of performative making that runs through this project.

This chapter explores specifically the clues that can assist human annotators in the temporal segmentation of circus performance video into acts. An online video retrieval application has been developed and published on the Circus Oz Living Archive website. The Circus Oz performance videos frequently are recorded in a single shot; lengthy, affected by camera operation and by fluctuating light intensity; captured in low-light environments; have variable audio quality and originate from multiple video formats. Black frames detection is a technique for finding the start time and the end time of a sequence of black frames occurring in a video. Image content analysis is another way to find that an act has ended in a circus performance video. The colour histogram comparison approach is used for analysing image similarity in the Circus Oz videos. The process for comparing two audio clips can generally be divided into two steps: audio feature extraction and audio distance calculation.

Increasingly within the realm of research and creative practice, collaboration, as an entity and a methodology, is being positioned as a necessity in the search for innovation. Underpinning this is the belief and expectation that the diversity and multiple perspectives that are integral to a collaboration will enable innovation and the discovery of something 'new' or of greater relevance in application. Enacting interdisciplinary collaborations that integrate both academic and external organisations is a complex undertaking. Designing a research program and methods for shared understanding is essential if the benefits of the collaboration is to be realised. This essay reflects on one of the strategies being utilised by the Circus Oz Living Archive project team as we work towards the collaborative realisation of the project outcome. [editor summary]