Seth Keen

Interactive documentary event, i-Docs 2012, Digital Cultures Research Centre (http://dcrc.org.uk) Looks at tagging, locative and HTML5 video. Names to add to my word cloud ‘web-docs, cross-media docs, cross-platform docs, locative docs, docu-games, installations, digital performative docs…’.From the about on the website:

This is a space for people that want to know more about interactive documentaries (that we have called “i-docs”). You will find academic and blog references (link to resources), an archive of existing i-docs (link to archive) and a forum open to discussions about all the possible forms of i-docs you can think of (link to discussions). A team of experts (link to team) have decided to join forces to open the discussion on what is interesting and/or new in this emergent field, and on the ethical, aesthetic, political and financial consequences of the i-doc genre. We welcome your participation! Feel free to mail your papers and ideas to the co-editors of our discussion section (link), or simply comment on their posts.

From the emailed callout:

This year’s symposium will be organized around four topical questions that emerged from i-Docs 2011.

1. User participation in i-docs: how can the act of participating change the meaning of an i-doc?

• Where is the participation happening: within the i-doc or around it?
• When and why do people want to participate? Is participation an inherently good thing?
• What are the ethics of participation: where to stop and where to push?
• How do strategies of participation affect the creation of meaning within an i-doc?

2. Layered experience, augmented reality games and pervasive media: are locative i-docs changing our notion of physical experience and space?

• Is pervasive technology an effective way to layer the experience of reality?
• How does our perception of space change in locative and augmented reality i-docs?
• What are the consequences and ethics of tagging content to a place?
• How do user experience and design issues effect the planning of a “real world” experience?

3. Activism and ethics: how can i-docs be used to develop new strategies for activism?

• Is combining information with role-play opening activism to a younger audience?
• Is implicating the user in moral dilemmas an ethical /effective strategy?
• Where does an i-doc end and social media activism begin?
• How does activism fit with emerging business models for i-docs?

4. Open source and the semantic web: how are tagging video, HTML5 and the semantic web opening up new routes for i-docs?

• What new relationships are being created between documentary recordings and live data feeds?
• Where does the role of the author lie in an open source i-doc? Are producers becoming curators?
• What is the production cycle of an open source i-doc? Is it a finite or continuously evolving entity?
• Are users browsers or co-creators of meaning? How can deep engagement be encouraged?

Watching and listening to student presentations today I thought about how JY uses a sketch app on an iPad to visualise presentations. It would be useful to mindmap and visualise complex presentations like these ones as a type of design exercise, with questions included that could then be made available to students. This tool/app come technique allows you to do this very quickly.

‘Interactive Documentary’ course taken by Ruth Sergel at Interactive Telecommunications Program ITP part of TISCH School of Arts and NYU.

Interactive documentaries provide radical new possibilities for both community creation and active audience engagement. This class explore the history of the documentary form through photography, oral history, film/video, performance and current hybrid projects. Interactive Documentary is a production class. Weekly experiments in creating documentaries are supported by lectures, viewing of non-traditional works and learning the necessary audio/video & projection tools. Assignments focus on developing works whose creation mirrors the themes we are seeking to explore. In the past documentaries were created with an expectation of the audience operating as passive consumers. Interactive documentaries enable us to dream new possibilities with audiences actively participating in the work.

Also, this course has crossover as well ‘Interactive Screens and Cinematic Objects’ by Marina Zurkow, including a focus on multilinear narrative.

What does it mean to create cinematic works? What are the limits of the term “cinema,” and what are its possibilities? Will it be story-based, formalist, or symbolic? How does interactivity impact narrative perception, rhythm and arc? Is an interface user-driven or machine-driven? Multi-linear or singular? Screen or object based? Do we want to work for our stories? Is it possible to make profound or emotional narrative work in a multi-linear or interactive environment? The creation and evaluation of work in this class pivots on the notion of narrative perception: a viewer’s desire to actively make story out of represented moments, from Chaplin’s silent movies to US Army recruitment ads to Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. The emphasis of this class is on art practices, focusing on sculptural and screen-based installation forms rather than commercial applications. More conceptual than technical, more narrative than formal, students work on the creation of time-based projects through short and medium-length assignments. Students work in a range of media, from paper maps to multiple screens. In addition, students are expected to engage in critical dialogue through individual research and presentation of precedents, from new media art projects, readings, and experimental or mainstream film.

What is happening at UNSW with the use of social media tools in lectures and labs. Included in this report is comments on network literacy.

New South Blogs

I went to a screening of the documentary ‘Rip: A Remix Manifesto‘ last night which included a public panel discussion afterwards.

From the cinema website:

Web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers. The film is about the scope of copyright laws and the extent to which those copyright laws are now restricting creative endeavour and enterprise. The film follows icon “Girl Talk”, a mash-up musician topping the charts with his sample-based songs. But is Girl Talk a paragon of people power or the Pied Piper of piracy?

The panel was moderated by the Shaun Miller an entertainment lawyer in the Media Department at Marshalls & Dent Lawyers. The speakers where the Musician Josh Abrahams and copyright lawyer Colin Golvan SC who has published a book titled Copyright Law and Practice. Shaun has lectured on copyright in a course I teach at RMIT.

More later on the discussion…

Links:
Watch the film online.
Remix the film