The i-Docs symposium is the first to be dedicated to interactive and immersive documentary and has been convened by Judith Aston and Sandra Gaudenzi alongside Jon Dovey in 2011 and with Mandy Rose since 2014.
There was immersion, there were interventions, there was innovation, and there was certainly impact. i-Docs 2018 proved a rich, intense, fruitful and inspiring event for presenters and attendees alike, running over three days from Wednesday 21st to Friday 23rd March.
i-Docs hosted keynotes from five high-profile presenters: Liz Miller of Concordia University discussed her i-doc The Shoreline, Claire Doherty of Arnolfini talked about creating temporary communities, Carmen Aguilar y Wedge of Hyphen-Labs discussed making innovative work for diverse audiences, Robin McNicholas presented on VR explorations with Marshmallow Laser Feast, and Alexandre Brachet took the audience on a journey through twenty years of Upian.
Immerse Yourself, held at Arnolfini, was a showcase of innovative and immersive works produced by some of the presenters at the symposium. We also partnered with Bristol VR Lab and We The Curious‘s Data Dome to present some of the works.
Videos of some of the symposium sessions will be added to this website over the coming weeks: stay tuned!
The i-Docs symposium 2016 covered three full days dedicated to the rapidly evolving field of interactive documentary. It took place at the Watershed in Bristol on March 2-4.
Themes were: Tools for Thought – interactive documentary platforms for production, teaching and research; The Uses of Immersion – from personalisation to VR and experiential storytelling; and Evolving Practices – where are i-docs going now?
Alisa Lebow – Creator of Filming Revolution kicked off the event on Wednesday with her keynote Following the Form(less): Exploring the Logic of the Non-narrative. This first day then closed with a ‘special’ Made in Bristol & VR Bazaar.
Over the next two days – as always – there was a combination of panels, show & tells, poster sessions, in conversations and workshops – as well as some surprise ‘i-docs treats’ on Thursday night.
Special guests for this edition included 2015 Tribeca Storyscapes winners May Abdalla and Amy Rose aka Anagram, Patricia Zimmermann – co-author of Thinking Through Digital Media, Chris Sizemore – Executive Editor at BBC, Vassiliki Khonsari – Executive Producer from iNK Stories – 1979 Revolution, Florian Thalhofer – Creator of Korsakow, Sebastian Melo & Ros Lerner – Producer & Co-Director of the Quipu Project, William Uricchio – Principal Investigator of MIT Open Documentary Lab, Jon Dovey – Director of REACT, Francesca Panetta – Special Projects Editor for the Guardian Interactive and Juliana Ruhfus from Al Jazeera – Director of Pirate Fishing.
The 2014 i-Docs symposium took place on March 20-21 and saw nearly 200 international delegates in Bristol for over two days of presentations, panels and live events.
Many delegates arrived on Wednesday afternoon for the REACT Hub Future Documentary Showcase – where prototypes developed within REACT’s recent Sandbox were unveiled. Four of these projects – Orion, Quipu, Boron Mon Amour / 94 Elements and Jack the Ripper 125 were all explored in more depth within the i-Docs programme.
During Thursday and Friday the Symposium explored three themes within parallel strands – Production Models, Engagement and Evaluation, and New Territories. Keynote speakers included new media artist Hank Willis Thomas (Question Bridge), documentary storyteller Elaine McMillion (Hollow), media historian Professor William Uricchio (MIT Open Documentary Lab) and Dr Kate Nash (University of Leeds) – Co-editor of New Documentary Ecologies; Emerging Platforms, Practices and Discourses.
Thursday evening also saw a sell-out performance of the award-winning “choose your own adventure” interactive theatre event – Choose Your Own Documentary. i-Docs also presented Door into the Dark – an immersive documentary work-in-progress by Anagram.
The 2012 i-Docs Symposium took place on March 22-23 when 150 delegates met in Bristol for a two-day event. Keynotes and invited speakers included Jigar Mehta (18 Days in Egypt), Brett Gaylor (rip! A Remix Manifesto), Professor Brian Winston (University of Lincoln), Sharon Daniel (University of California, Santa Cruz), Paulina Tervo (Awra Amba Project) and, via Skype, Kat Cizek (Highrise).
The first i-Docs symposium took place on March 25, 2011. This one-day gathering of 120 delegates showcased recent projects and provided space for discussion of the artistic, economic and political implications of new forms of factual representation. Speakers included Alexandre Brachet (Upian), Matt Adams (Blast Theory), Nick Cohen (BBC) and Florian Thalhofer (Korsakow). The evening saw City Symphonies – a screening of Jean Vigo’s A Propos de Nice (1930), followed by a live response from documentary film-makers Keith Marley (Liverpool John Moores University) and Geoffrey Cox (University of Huddersfield).
Alongside the Symposia the i-Docs team also convene, curate and deliver related events. These have include labs at Open City Docs and at Digital Bristol Week, conferences – WebDocs 2013, workshops and public talks.
