Original text written by Carles Sora for CCCB LAB Blog (2014) and republished with permission. Over the past few years we’ve seen the emergence of online interactive documentaries, a documentary sub-genre that straddles documentary practice and interactive design. These webdocs are now attracting the interest of European authors, festivals, producers and television networks. In late May, the DocsBarcelona documentary festival organised a …
Recommended at Sheffield DocFest by keynote Rob Tercek, Netwars/Out of Ctrl is an interactive web series that explores the possibilities of cyberwarfare and our own, personal relationship with the web. I spoke to the project producer Michael Grotenhoff about his inspirations for the project, the process of production and how it’s been received so far… What prompted you to make Netwars …
Chaka Studio demonstrated their Quipu Project at Sheffield Doc Fest yesterday morning during the continued interactive talks. The session was a great opportunity to catch up with the projects progress since the React Hub Future Documentary Sandbox and gauge the reaction from the wider documentary community. The interactive documentary focuses on the case of forced sterilisation in Peru, which affected …
I connected to YouTube on a new device recently, so a device without the vast user history Google likes to collect. I noticed at the top of the screen were the top 5 ‘Most Popular Right Now’ videos for the UK. What struck me was that 4 out of 5 were video games. The only non video game offering was …
Guest post by Allison Otto, “Bisbee” Project Director I grew up in the American Southwest and for two, amazing years I lived in a 26-foot, 1958 vintage Airstream in Bisbee, Arizona. It’s a beautiful, remote little town nestled deep in the Mule Mountains, nine miles from the Mexican border. Like many rural communities in the US, though, Bisbee is struggling. …
Technology has always changed how we tell stories but something extraordinary is happening at the moment. The speed of technological progress, coupled with the web and social media, has led to a host of new storytelling possibilities. The new storytelling paradigm has been described as participatory, cross-platform, immersive, transmedia, and interactive. But what kinds of stories are possible now? This …
The Awra Amba Experience is an incredible project which I first encountered at i-Docs 2012, where Paulina Tervo (project producer/director/lead) presented the initial stages of the interactive documentary and introduced us to this inspiring community. Two years on and the project is nearing the end of a crowd-funding campaign that aims to get the interactive documentary finished and online. I …
At the end of March, i-Docs 2014 took place and although I documented the event through Storify, it’s been a struggle to pull together my key takeaways as Hot Docs, Webdox, i_doc Workshop and TFI Interactive seemed to continue so many of the themes and expand upon them in interesting ways. So this has now become a much longer, two-part …
Love Radio, a transmedia documentary with interactive elements, explores the process of reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda in a unique format; a radio soap. I spoke with Anoek Steketee and Eefje Blankevoort, the pair behind the project: What compelled you to make Love Radio? Travelling and working in Rwanda in 2008 we met the team that created Musekeweya, a popular radio soap that is …
Avatar Secrets, the interactive documentary for the iPad has scaled up its ambitions, installing a large scale interactive installation at Hot Docs for the duration of the festival. This is the first time that an interactive documentary has been included in the programme of North America’s largest documentary festival and it’s great to see Ramona Pringle’s work has been picked up. …
A slightly belated catch up from the second day of i-Docs 2014, scroll down to see what went on! A selection of the sessions have also been recorded and will be available online over the coming months, so keep your eyes peeled. [View the story “i-Docs 2014: Friday 21” on Storify]
As day one of i-Docs draws to a close and delegates head towards our special performance of Choose Your Own Documentary, you can catch up with the huge amount of talks, top moments and awesome projects that have been discussed by scrolling through our Storify below: [View the story “i-Docs 2014: Thursday 20” on Storify]
Guest post from Laura Aguiar, Cahal McLaughlin and Jamie McRoberts Queen’s University Belfast The Prisons Memory Archive (PMA) is an ongoing research project and its aim is to offer possibilities of engaging with the story of the ‘other’ in a society that is emerging from decades of political violence. One way of doing this, we believe, is through interactive documentary. …
Guest post from Kate Nash, one of our keynote speakers at i-Docs 2014. How can we begin to conceptualise the way in which documentary is being re-thought in light of contemporary media cultures and technologies? This is the central question that the contributors to New Documentary Ecologies: Emerging Platforms, Practices and Discourses explore. Taking ‘the ecological’ as a heuristic that …
Avatar Secrets – an interactive documentary for the iPad – explores the complexities of human connection in the wired world, examining the evolving nature of community, relationships, empathy and interdependence in the real world, and in the digital frontier. I caught up with Ramona ahead of her talk at i-Docs 2014 to find out more about Avatar Secrets and her step …
