Recently released on the Arte site, Soundhunters is an interactive documentary exploring the connection between sound and culture. At the centre of the project is four interactive shorts about four renowned musicians immersed in the heart of four cities across the globe, looking for sounds and inspiration. Their encounters with urban minorities in Sao Paulo, Lagos, New York and Berlin lead to …
Save the date! i-Docs 2016 is set to be our biggest symposium yet
We’re thrilled to announce that i-Docs 2016 will take place on 2 – 4th March at the Watershed in Bristol, hosted by the Digital Cultures Research Centre, University of the West of England . Themes of this year’s three day event will be: Tools for Thought – interactive documentary platforms for production, teaching and research; The Uses of Immersion – …
Forward/Story: The pirates of future storytelling plot and explore their craft
Fellow Pervasive Media Studio resident and Splash & Ripple’s Creative in Chief Rosie Poebright has just returned from Forward/Story; a place in Costa Rica where the pirates of future storytelling gather to plot and explore their craft… She has kindly allowed us to repost a blog about her experiences there: I’ve been wondering how to write about what I know will become a …
We’re hiring! Research Fellow in Digital Cultures: Interactive Documentary
Research Fellow in Digital Cultures: Interactive Documentary (1 year fixed term and part-time 0.5 FTE) From webdocs to Virtual Reality, docugames to data storytelling and personalisation; digital culture has seen the emergence and proliferation of interactive and participatory documentary forms, and the transformation of twentieth century modes of documentary production, exhibition and reception. The i-Docs group within the Digital Cultures …
Sunnyside of the Doc: Assessing the impact of interactive projects
“We should not talk only about audience volume – we want to talk about varied measures of impact” – this statement framed the following discussion on impact for interactive works. A call to move beyond metrics and into a deeper assessment of impact measurement. Convened by Storycode’s Benjamin Hoguet during the Sunnyside of the Doc Sunnylab sessions last week, the varied …
Representing the unfilmable: Nonny de la Peña on VR & ‘immersive journalism’
From a realisation that the digital sense of presence is a powerful thing, to being dubbed the ‘Godmother of VR’, Nonny de la Peña took us through her experiments in ‘immersive journalism’ at a recent lunchtime talk in Bristol, followed by a Q&A with DCRC director Mandy Rose. — It was an account of a ‘rape in cyberspace‘ that first drew Nonny’s …
Writing Digital: MIX DIGITAL 3
After the success of the last two MIX DIGITAL conferences, Bath Spa University is hosting Writing Digital: MIX DIGITAL 3 in the newly completed Commons building at the Newton Park Campus, just outside of Bath, UK. Confirmed keynotes include Naomi Alderman talking about how and why a literary novelist came to be the imaginative power behind the hugely successful apps, Zombies! …
Storytelling in VR: a round-table with Oscar Raby, Pete Bennett & Anagram
Towards the end of last year, I convened a conversation between multimedia artist Oscar Raby and Pervasive Media Studio residents Pete Bennett, Amy Rose and May Abdalla. To give some context, Oscar was at the Studio showing his VR documentary Assent and we thought it would be interesting to change up the interview format and allow for more of a discussion about virtual …
interDocsBarcelona 2015 – The conference
The third edition of Inter Docs Barcelona was full of great surprises this year, counting with speakers from different nationalities, important figures of the industry and even interactive presentations. During the morning we could listen to international speakers while in the second part of the conference, held in the afternoon, a few Spanish professionals and artists showed their extensive experience …
Explore the Universe Within: Digital Lives in the Global Highrise
Today marks the launch of the final chapter of HIGHRISE, the National Film Board of Canada’s pioneering, multi-award-winning interactive documentary series. Universe Within: Digital Lives in the Global Highrise, takes us into the apartments, hearts, minds and computers of vertical citizens around the world to reveal the digital human condition in the 21st century. Trapped in our highrise units, can we find love, hate, …
i-Docs presents: Nonny De la Peña: Experiments in VR & ‘immersive journalism’
5th June 2015 1.00PM, Cinema 3, Watershed, Bristol Dubbed the “Godmother of VR” and named by FastCompany’s CoCreate as “…one of the 13 people who make the world more creative”, Nonny De la Peña is pioneering the use of virtual reality gaming techniques that offer fully immersive experiences of news stories. She has created a number of ‘immersive journalism’ pieces including …
!F Lab, episode 1: StoryBooster
When stories go interactive it is not only the story that gets fragmented, but the whole production process that needs to accept a new redistribution of roles and creative responsibilities. We now have to include some crucial new players: the designers, the creative technologists, the coders, of course, but also the users – which are now active members of this living new …
Virtual Reality – the empathy machine?
A few months ago a listserv i’m a part of had a very interesting discussion about virtual reality (VR) and empathy – in part a response to Chris Milk’s assertions that VR is an ’empathy machine’, but also a wider discussion about how VR is being used for non-fiction narratives. As VR gets bigger – with the release of consumer headsets on the horizon …
Challenging climate change: The power of games to fight real-world problems
In 2007 Ken Eklund created World Without Oil, the first major alternate reality game which used a socially relevant theme to drive the story. The game sketched out the overarching conditions of a realistic oil shock, then called upon players to imagine and document their lives under those conditions. Compelling player stories and ideas were incorporated into the official narrative …
interDocsBarcelona 2015
interDocsBarcelona is an initiative which started in 2013 to encourage interactive and transmedia documentary as a section of DocsBarcelona International Festival. Each year DocsBarcelona gathers more than 400 professionals from over 30 countries, amongst them commissioning editors, directors, producers, film funds, distributors and sales agents, festivals, markets and cultural institutions. After the two first years of this journey hosting a …