Interactive Documentary Research Articles

Kurdish Insurgents and Postgeneration: „Big Village” as an Interactive Memory Work

The Kurdish people, lacking a sovereign state of their own, reside within the boundaries of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, where they are subjected to the rules and identities of these nations, often facing restrictions on their cultural expression. This situation has disabled their entry into the filmmaking, with documentaries becoming their preferred medium due to its cost-effectiveness and simpler technical demands. These documentaries typically delve into the Kurds’ painful historical experiences. Big Village (2020), directed by Beri Shalmashi and Lyangelo Vazquez, stands out as the first Kurdish interactive web documentary (i-doc). It intricately weaves personal and social narratives, focusing on several families and a Kurdish insurgent group from Eastern Kurdistan. The i-doc explores the stories of the former residents of Gewredê, a village that has since vanished. It uniquely blends old photos and video clips to craft its narrative. This study aims to analyse Big Village through the lens of the insurgents’ memories, the inherited memories of their children, and the use of archival materials, examining how an interactive documentary can effectively communicate historical traumas to modern viewers.

Walking to Unsettle Jerusalem

Abstract From 2014 to 2017 I guided half a dozen public walks in Jerusalem’s southern neighborhoods. The walks were conducted during the research and production of the interactive documentary Jerusalem, We Are Here, which digitally reinscribes Palestinians into the neighborhoods from which they were expelled by the 1948 war, or the nakba. The walks were performative and participatory and joined a long tradition of walking as art. They offered an alternative to mainstream Israeli guided tours that manufacture linear and simplistic narratives about the politically contested space of Jerusalem. This article examines the guided walks within critical discourse about the place of art, and specifically the art of walking, as a political practice that unsettles colonial frameworks, or as decolonial gestures. I examine the ways in which the physical walks—primarily for Israeli participants—intervened in a nationalist paradigm and offered Israelis a (rare) emotional and ideological space from which to consider the communities whose dispossession enables Israel to exist. I review the strategies I used to disrupt Israeli denial and encourage accountability within relevant theoretical paradigms, using anecdotes and my own records for analysis. No qualitative data were collected during or after the walking tours. My conclusion is that walking tours can effectively “unsettle” nationalist narratives, encourage settler reckoning, and enable a different kind of seeing or restorying, one of the preconditions for decolonization.

Remediated memory, digital witnessing and engagement: A qualitative analysis of the interactive documentary ‘The Space We Hold’

This paper sets out to study how creative documentary practices deconstruct traumatic memory, and then digitalise witnessing and engagement afforded by digital technology in the award-winning online interactive documentary The Space We Hold. Premised on culture memory studies and documentary studies, the social function of the documentary in reshaping narratives and forging public engagement has been discussed in this research. Interactive documentary becomes the unique visual artistic medium that allows the wider public to bear witness and emotionally experience the meaning of a traumatic past. This interactive project is reviewed as one site of memory to answer the main research question: ‘How does hypermediacy in an interactive documentary enable this non-linear storytelling structure to reframe the narrative and identity of a community that struggles for social justice?’. Along with presenting direct provocation through the innovative hypernarrative, this interactive documentary focuses on victims’ current lives, familial feelings and their contribution in pursuit of justice, showing depth in reflection and density in life. By exploring how The Space We Hold acts as a bear and agent to enhance audience engagement, I contend that the documentary is restyled as a space that allows individual memory to intertwine with collective memory through the combination of authorial expressivity and interactive participatory. In this pragmatic and reflexive approach to bear traumatic witness, we sense the constant battle between stigmatised communities and their reinterpreting narratives.

Regularities of Constructing the Narrative of an Interactive Documentary Film as an Infotainment Phenomenon

ABSTRACT This article provides a content analysis of 10 interactive Russian-language and English-language projects to isolate documentaries from them and analyze the structure to derive the principles of constructing the narrative of an interactive film. Based on the study, the authors deduce three patterns of regularities of constructing the narrative of an interactive documentary film: a clear project structure with rationally chosen techniques that complement each other as part of the designer; the choice of a story, whose perception should not be linear and can be formed from independent elements; creation of convenient navigation, intuitive for users, as well as the creation of instructions for a complex project form. Interactive documentary films in this article are compared with video games, with which this direction of documentary science is similar to the user as a coauthor, as well as the use of technology. The article discusses the technology of shooting 360 degrees, which allows the user to “look around”. Considering the growing popularity of streaming channels, and web projects, interactive film has a future in documentary filmmaking. Creating an interactive film requires not only knowledge of technology and multimedia storytelling techniques, but also a solid foundation in perception psychology, and storytelling theory, as well as the ability to study and reinterpret the experiences of video game creators.

Interactive documentaries: definition of the concept in Russian and foreign studies

The article provides an overview of modern Russian and foreign studies considering the concept of "interactive documentary" (interactive documentary, i-docs, idoc) and related terms: "web documentary" (web documentary, web-doc, webdoc), "interactive documentary". Theoretical foundations are given, approaches to the definition of these concepts are briefly described. The study uses descriptive, informative, comparative and structural-functional methods to solve a scientific problem. The research material was the works of Russian, American, British, Spanish, Turkish and Chinese scientists from 2011-2023. The most common, frequently cited and used definitions were selected for the review. The author of the article draws attention to the terminological uncertainty in the field under study, identifies the problems associated with defining the boundaries of the concept of "interactive documentaries", highlights the most promising aspects in identifying the characteristics of this new phenomenon and outlines directions for further research. As a result of the research, the author comes to the conclusion that due to the multimodality, complexity, openness and dynamism of the form of interactive documentaries, it would be appropriate to designate this phenomenon as a meta-genre. The proposed research lays the prerequisites for further search for the most accurate definition of interactive documentaries, corresponding to the current level of media development, accumulated theoretical and creative experience.

Aesthetics of Witnessing [Bears] in Late Humanity

In response to climate change and collapse, this essay explores both the necessity of and impossibility to witness disasters that are unending and unrelenting. Such disaster is understood generally as the Anthropocene but, for the purpose of this project, includes a more particular inflection, Late Humanity. This inflection is an attempt to hone in on a confluence of critical discussions found in environmental, economic, cultural, and biological disciplines to better attend to dynamics wherein modes of existence are in flux. In response to this era, the essay proposes that witnesses are positioned as both observer and creator and, as such, turns to aesthetics as a way to understand those dual practices. Building on the aesthetic philosophy of Étienne Souriau, the essay considers witnessing as a multi-modal and multi-temporal practice through what Souriau calls instauration (the process of rendering the work-to-be-made). To demonstrate this practice, the project pursues a sleuth of bears (spotlighting the bears of astral mythology, disaster tourism, animal-cam live streams, interactive documentary, monstrous fiction, and, finally, a fantastical take on micro-organisms) to craft an aesthetic for witnessing amidst climate collapse that establishes realities through a process characterized as both conditional and conditioning.

Co-Creation in Community-based Storytelling

The emergence of immersive media and new technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed Reality (MR) has contributed to the shift in interactive documentary and community-based storytelling practices. Under the umbrella term known as Extended Reality (XR), the new technologies intervene with and provide the author with a space to negotiate authorship of interactive documentaries in a co-creation setting with the Salako community in Malaysia. Malaysia is a country in the Southeast Asia region. It occupies the Malay Peninsula and part of the Island of Borneo. There are over 120 different communities in Malaysia, and Sarawak, the largest state, has the most diverse communities. The Salako community migrated from West Kalimantan Province of the Indonesian Borneo to Pueh, Sarawak, in the 1870s due to political and geographical reasons. Today, the Salako community members are still involved in farming, and they perform various rituals to seek blessings to avoid harm to their crops. This study investigates the Salako community's storytelling practices in Pueh, Sarawak. It focuses on the co-creation of an interactive documentary storytelling of the paddy farming rituals among the community. Furthermore, it also aims to understand the dynamic relationship negotiated by the author and the community members. Therefore, the questions guiding the study can be framed as follows: How can practice-based research be used in negotiating collaboration with the Salako community? What insights can the author learn from the Salako community that contributes to the creative research practice? The study considers the concept of rhizome, introduced by French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, as an approach to decolonising storytelling structure in the co-creation of community-based storytelling with the Salako community. The conceptual and theoretical framework bring together recent studies on community-based storytelling and empirical evidence on interactive documentaries and co-creation with a focus on community storytelling practices. The author engages practice-based research as the creative research practice in this study. In the interactive documentary titled Listening to the Salako: Voices of the Paddy and Human, the author will share the creative research process involved in the initial phase of the study. Highlighting the observations and perspectives drawn from the interactive documentary storytelling project with the Salako community, the article offers insights into understanding the nexus of care, collaboration and craft. In addition, it also looks at how practice-based research is used in community engagement and the negotiation of authorship through a participatory design process with the Salako community in Malaysia. In this study, the author argues that while practice-based research is central to navigating the layers of complexity in community engagement, the element of care, collaboration and craft present additional dimensions that can further unpack and contribute to the understanding of creative research practice. The article ends with a discussion of the impact and implications of practice-based research in empowering both the author and the Salako community in negotiating collaboration in the co-creation of the interactive documentary, Listening to the Salako: Voices of the Paddy and Human.

Polyphonic Documentary

This research creation presentation aims to showcase and stimulate discussion on our last round of creative practice interactive interventions developed within the ongoing collaborative and co creative project called: “Polyphonic Documentary” (www.polyphonicdocumentary.com).
 Working as practice-based researchers and through creative practices, we argue that self-reflexivity is a key requirement for decolonizing the mind and the way in which we construct and tell stories (Aston, Odorico 2022). Our interest here is in considering how the interactive documentary form, through the use of interactive storytelling authoring tools, can facilitate this process. 
 Our project looks at the factual digital storytelling practice of interactive documentary through the lens of polyphony. We use the concept of polyphony as a research approach and method which encourages us to embrace complexity and plurality, and to respect different perspectives and points of view within a context of care.

“We had to care, we knew no one else would.”

Domestic violence and gender-based violence are being reported in increasing numbers throughout the world. The statistics, as well as the headlines, are brutal and heart-breaking but little is being done to address the issues in a rigorous and decisive way. This shows not only that our societies are still a long way from accomplishing gender equality, but that the increasing polarization in attitudes and information exchange, possibly contribute to the decrease in humanism and care. In Portugal for instance, most homeless women have previously been the victims of domestic violence. Which makes this vulnerable group even more excluded and marginalized. As part of a practice-based research for the PhD, I started a collaboration with a Lisbon based organization that advocates housing first strategies in dealing with the problem of homelessness in general, but the project is focused on women particularly. Throughout 2022 we have been building foundations for a women’s association run and organized by the women who are or have been homeless, and whose main goal is to approach and care for Lisbon’s homeless women based on peer support. A collaborative interactive documentary is an important part of this process. Its production is being used as both a tool for empowerment, and at the same time, as a part of an outreach strategy aimed at the wider Lisbon public and their cognizance about women’s homelessness, drawing attention to a series of specific problems that homeless women face. The baseline question is if and how the interactive documentary can contribute and serve for the voices of these women to enter the debate, to show various points of view and sensibilize the community for their issues, as well as to display the lack of policies and propose the bottom-up approaches and joint strategies, offer feasible solutions and build collective action to seriously address women’s homelessness. Theoretically and methodologically, the constructs of polyphony and co-creation are very important factors here. This approach helps in building trust among different actors, where the authorial role vanishes, and the narrative is controlled and shaped by several participants. Our hypothesis is that it could also help in producing affect and care, firstly among peers, which is already being observed, and then among the documentary’s audience. The promise for social change often gets intertwined with documentary filmmaking, and the discussions around impact and change did grow in the last couple of decades, in industry, in marketing, at festivals and around funding opportunities, and coming from different filmmakers, activists, NGOs and other stakeholders. It is often talked and written about, but rarely proved. This paper does not aim at establishing the proof of the direct link between impact and documentary, but it will, through one case study, explore the affordances of collaborative interactive documentary in raising awareness, building hope, fortifying personal relationships, and fostering affect and care.

Messy Knowledge-Making with Korsakow

This paper explores interactive documentary production's power dynamics and knowledge-making practices through the ethnographic case study of Christoph, a white media scientist and trained film editor from a Western European country. Christoph's research project, conducted as part of an international and multidisciplinary team, dealt with discourses surrounding a specific restitution case in an African country. The study focuses on Christoph's use of the Korsakow software to create an interactive documentary, examining the complexities he encountered in the field and his efforts to represent them in a powercritical manner. Throughout the production process, Christoph attempted to address power relations by making himself visible in the documentary and ensuring that his authorial influence remained minimal during the film's assembly. He employed a two-fold strategy that included acquiring shaky footage without a tripod and utilizing materials that might be deemed unusable in traditional production environments. Christoph's use of Korsakow as a tool for assembling his interactive documentary served to represent the complexities he found in the field. Despite Christoph's powercritical aspirations, he acknowledged the potential bias inherent in the keywording process, stressing the importance of actively pursuing powercritique as a practice. Korsakow, as an interactive and nonlinear tool, offered an experimental environment in which Christoph could explore alternative ways of filmmaking and knowledge-making. This environment facilitated the development of open, complex, and messy practices, challenging conventional filmmaking norms. This case study raises questions about the knowledge-making practices found in interactive documentaries and how they can inform visual research methodologies. Further research may delve into the methodological implications of these findings and the potential for interactive documentary software to serve as a laboratory for experimental filmmaking practices. By examining Christoph's use of Korsakow and his efforts to navigate power dynamics in creating an interactive documentary, this paper contributes to the broader understanding of knowledge-making in non-linear and interactive film environments.

Editorial

The Interactive Film and Media Journal advances scholarly and creative discourse on the intersection of interactivity and various media forms. This issue features contributions from the IV International Interactive Film and Media Conference (2022), coordinated by a diverse group of academics. The conference theme, Interactive Epistemology, Listening, and Ecomedia, facilitated an exploration of knowledge-building, listening, and ecological consciousness within interactivity. Emphasizing the importance of listening as a mode of knowledge production, the issue promotes a holistic understanding of interactivity across different research areas. The contributions address the role of interactivity in media, such as books, films, games, and real-time streaming, along with virtual and augmented reality. They provoke thought on interactivity's embodied and affective aspects and explore interactive technologies' influence on power relations and ecological concerns. The papers in this issue converge on themes like empathy and responsibility, illuminating the power of interactive digital media to reshape the understanding of social issues. For instance, interactive narratives, VR and games employ participatory elements to bring nuanced portrayals of migration experiences to the forefront. This approach encourages critical reflection and social responsibility. This issue also explores the transformative potential of interactive documentaries in varied contexts, highlighting their effectiveness in altering perceptions of history, socio-political phenomena, and power dynamics. These documentaries foster inclusivity and dialectical reflection, urging viewers to engage in complex narratives embedded in various landscapes. Some papers explore the impact of digital and artistic mediums on shaping space, narrative, and community engagement. The issue showcases how machine learning and public art can address mimetic trauma and discrimination and how digital comics and web-based artworks can redefine concepts of spatial interactions and narrative structures. A particular emphasis is placed on immersive technologies like VR and immersive journalism in civic engagement, underlining the power of these mediums in addressing social and environmental concerns. Exploring art and interactive documentary, specifically in the context of historical violence and colonial legacies, adds a significant dimension to the issue. This second set of papers from the 2022 Interactive Film and Media Conference highlights the transformative power of interactivity in reshaping narratives, promoting critical reflection, and fostering social responsibility. It emphasizes the crucial role of interactive media in fostering a more inclusive, empathetic, and informed society.

Reconstructing Transnational History

Web-based interactive documentaries offer an innovative approach to reconstructing history, allowing users to explore historical content within a specific thematic context freely. This paper explores how transnational shared history, exemplified by World War I (WWI), is integrated into such documentaries, using the interactive documentary A Global Guide to the First World War (2014) as a case study. This documentary, a collaboration between the Guardian, historians, and the Imperial War Museum, employs interactive technologies and transnational historical narratives. It presents seven video chapters that allow audiences to explore WWI from a global perspective, going beyond the traditional single-narrative viewpoint. The interactive sections are based on a well-designed digital world map that provides users with diverse perspectives on the war, facilitating a broader emotional resonance. However, while ensuring authenticity, the documentary's use of authoritative narrative strategies tends to create a sense of alienation among viewers. It underscores the importance of incorporating personal narratives alongside official histories to foster deeper engagement and understanding. The paper argues for a more nuanced approach that balances the authoritative historical narratives with individual perspectives. This study demonstrates that the representation of transnational shared history and multiple perspectives is highly compatible with the interactive technology of web documentaries. The paper concludes that these digital platforms can effectively facilitate global understanding of shared historical events while encouraging critical and dialectical historical reflection.

Inner Congo

This research-creation project, part of the DE\GLOBALIZE artistic research cycle, investigates the complexities of Congo violence, care, and colonialism. Drawing on Michel Serres' metaphor of the great estuaries, the study explores the topology of interactive documentaries, blending theory, emotion, and personal experiences. Accessible through the interactive web documentation at http://deglobalize.com, the platform offers a media-archaeological archive for speculative ethnography, enabling the forensic processing of single documents in line with actor-network theory.
 Focusing on the ambivalence of violence and care, the field trip to the Congo in March 2022 involved collaboration with local artists and was based on a postcolonial reflection from 1996. The outcome, a 30-minute autoethnographic essay titled Inner Congo, reflects on inner violence and its connection to colonialism, transcending the dichotomy between art and science. The study examines political, technological, and psycho-geographic borders, engaging with local communities to interrogate the displaced consumption of resources, ghost acreages, and self-lies.
 Informed by the works of Achille Mbembe and Franz Fanon, the research confronts the foreign, the dark, and the displaced ghosts within the participants. DE\GLOBALIZE is problematized as an example of epistemic violence for the ethnographic memory of (Western) knowledge. The study emphasizes the importance of caring for the sensitivity of the researchers' skin, the g/hosts, and mother earth.
 The encounters in the Congo reveal the palpable legacy of violence and the continued exploitation in post-colonialism. The Art Academy and the Mission Station serve as both havens for wounded souls and witnesses of a bloody European heritage. In Isiro, the researchers confront their own greed when meeting Trésor, a mine owner with 6,000 workers digging for gold. Violence constantly finds new ground, with totalitarian folds increasing in our psyches.
 Inspired by Sven Lindqvist's Gräv där du står (1978), the research emphasizes the need to face our brutality and demons through symbols and calculations that protect yet disenchant us simultaneously. Inner Congo offers a poignant and immersive exploration of the complexities of violence in the Congo, unearthing hidden narratives and inspiring critical reflection.

Oak Tree, Gum Tree

In Oak Tree, gum tree, a collaborative video work by award-winning filmmakers Catherine Gough-Brady and Christine Rogers, explores the way that audio-visual material can “embrace the complexity of the world” and “incorporate, within their structures and production processes, multiple voices that “utter” together in the creation of content” (Aston and Odorico, 2018, p. 63). Aston and Odorico use this polyphonic approach as a way of exploring relationships between documentary works and audience. Gough-Brady and Rogers are interested in seeing how this approach can be applied between filmmakers and images themselves. Can images be ascribed what Bennett calls ‘vibrancy’ (2010) and have agency in how they are cut together? How much of this becomes an expression of the filmmaker through the images? This work was selected for exhibition at the International Visual Sociology Association conference in 2022. Works cited Aston, J and Odorico, S. (2018). The Poetics and Politics of Polyphony: Towards a Research Method for Interactive Documentary, Aphaville issue 15, Summer

Engender(ing) immigrant space: A praxis through collaborative storytelling and interactive documentary

Immigrant space – a place of convergence of multiple movements – engenders through rhythms of the everyday and an art of inhabitation of its people. It comprises stories of resilience that must be amplified and celebrated, especially when they are at a threat of erasure on account of systemic and structural violence, and/or a lack of concerted effort to document them. Little Pakistan is one such immigrant space inhabited by Pakistani Americans in Brooklyn, New York City. In this article, I propose a framework titled ‘Engender(ing)’ for a rediscovery of meanings vested in immigrant space, explaining its emergence and expansion across forms, delimitations and associations. The framework is then applied through a confluence of collaborative storytelling and interactive documentary. The outcome, Little Pakistan – Future Histories, is an interactive documentary project presented as a case study, with people – artist, community, publics – assuming the role of ‘innovators of meanings’ to rediscover Little Pakistan as an ‘ensemble of meanings’. I infer that this framework and its praxis offer promise for future collaborative new media documentary practice and research in the context of other immigrant enclaves, neighborhoods and similarly structured spaces.

Współdziałanie i partycypacja w interaktywnych projektach dokumentalnych – na przecięciu teorii i praktyki

In this article I discuss online interactive documentary projects in terms of their participatory possibilities. The interpretative key is provided by the concepts of numerous theorists and practitioners in this area of expression, such as Kate Nash, Sandra Gaudenzi, Jon Dovey and Mirko Tobias Schäfer. I divide the text into three main sections on relevant aspects of the issue: the production process, social practices and ethical issues. The text closes with a postulatory section, focusing on the construction of a 'framing' to safeguard the rights of all those involved in a given participatory project.

User Experience and Aspect of Reality In Interactive Documentaries

Ayrı bir tür olarak ortaya çıkışından beri özünü gerçeklik arayışından alan belgesel, dijitalleşmeyle birlikte yeni alanlarda varlığını sürdürmeye devam etmiştir. Konusunu ve içeriğini gerçek olaylara dayandırarak, kurgusal filmlere göre hakikate daha yakın durma iddiasındaki belgesel filmler, çoğunlukla toplumsal ve çevresel konularda politik bir duruş sergileyen bir tavra sahip olmuştur. Yeni medya teknolojilerinin varlığı ile birlikte yeni bir belgesel formu olan etkileşimli belgeseller ortaya çıkmış, bu belgesellerin ortaya çıkışı izleyicinin konumunu değiştirmiştir. Katılımcı, çoğulcu, çok sesli belgesel filmler seyirciyle buluşma şansı yakalamıştır. Yapılan bu çalışmada etkileşimli belgesellerin tanımı ve sınıflandırılmaları akabinde, kullanıcı deneyimi tasarımı perspektifinden yola çıkılarak, izleyiciden kullanıcıya dönüşüm ve filmin gerçekliğinin inşasında kullanıcının rolü ve deneyimi tartışılmıştır. MIT Open Documentary Lab’in çatısı altında bulunan, konusunu toplumsal meselelerden alan, teknoloji seçimi, arayüz ve etkileşim tasarımı açılarından farklı yaklaşımları olan yedi adet belgesel bu çerçevede analiz edilmiş, izleyicinin kullanıcı konumuna evrilme süreci ile etkileşimi etkileyen faktörlerin belgeselin gerçeklik olgusunu nasıl etkilediği tartışılmıştır.

Reconfiguring Archives in Interactive Documentaries

Besides presenting a creative account of reality as a digital format, the interactive documentary plays with the interconnectedness of intermediality by assembling various audio and visual sensory modalities, including moving images, photography, illustration, animation, text, and sound (Whitelaw 2002; Aston and Gaudenzi 2012; Nash 2021). Following this train of thought, using archival footage may open creative possibilities, as it entails repurposing historical, institutional, or personal audiovisual materials into new narratives. Several authors (Russel 1999; Bruzzi 2006; Haggith 2012; Baron 2014) have significantly contributed to the critical reflection on the use of archives within traditional documentary forms, considering the historical, creative, and ethical layers of such content manipulation. On the other hand, archives in interactive documentaries still require more critical analysis, as archival footage drifts from its indexical nature (Haggith 2012) through decontextualization or repurposing, affecting the textuality of the interactive narrative. This paper aims to merge these two territories and analyze how archival footage contributes to an epistemological account of reality in interactive documentaries. Drawing upon De Jong’s (2012) taxonomy to classify how archives are used in traditional documentaries, we analyze how two interactive documentaries - Welcome to Pine Point (Simmons and Shoebridge 2011) and A Short History of the Highrise (Cizek 2013) - reuse and repurpose analogue archives, while interplay these archival materials with other multimedia formats. Departing from the traditional formats of documentary film, De Jong identifies the following uses of archive footage: i) the archive as an illustration (a visual reference and indexical clue); ii) as a historical backdrop (a historical framework and context for the narrative); iii) a metaphorical tool (to produce subjective layers of meaning or create critical or ironic tones); iv) a narrative resource (to create a new dramatic narrative); v) and the archive as legal evidence (an indexical link to past events, referring to legal circumstances). De Jong’s taxonomy provides a methodological framework for the development of this study, which also aims to analyze the documentaries through the concept of “archive-image” (Didi-Huberman 2008); i. e., how archives are used in interactive documentaries and the meaning deriving from how such footage is placed within the navigation structure of the interface, contributing to the multimodal narrative. We argue that interactive documentary provides a territory of engagement and continuous momentum to revive the past by using the archive as historical validation and a shared collective memory space while reimagining new readings and engendering multiple archival imaginaries.

Interactive Documentary

This article responds to the 4th Interactive Film and Media International Conference (IFM 2022) themes of eco-media, epistemologies and listening by focusing on the role that interactive documentary can play in addressing the existential and pressing issue of climate change. It re-visits the article Interactive Documentary: setting the field which I co-authored with Sandra Gaudenzi in 2012 in light of this now central concern and asks how the affordances of interactive documentary can be used to help re-frame our engagement with the human and the non-human. It places metamodern and polyphonic thinking at the centre of this discussion, as two key concepts that I consider to be particularly helpful when thinking about the contribution that interactive documentary can make to wider debates about eco-media. The paper argues that metamodernism and polyphony can contribute to the development of transformative approaches to interactive documentary and indeed to interactive narrative more generally. This is important as it offers us a set of cognitive tools through which to think about how to navigate the complexities and uncertainties of our collective futures which climate change is undoubtedly bringing. The paper engages with the theoretical arguments first and then applies these to a discussion of my work as a co-convenor of the Polyphonic Documentary project before bringing these thoughts together as tentative conclusions and unresolved issues.

Corona Haikus

When I moved from linear documentary production to the newly emerging field of interactive storytelling in early 2000, I was excited by the potentialities of the Web, especially the possibility of co-creation in factual storytelling. Looking back, I can clearly see that what attracted me was the exploration of how factual narratives could make use of two unique affordances of digital media: user agency and interactivity. More than twenty years later, I am still experimenting with ways to use interactivity to facilitate co-creation of reality and move away from the representational tendency of linear documentaries (Gaudenzi 2013). In this paper, I will use the Corona Haikus project (2020) to question the current understanding of user agency in participatory interactive narratives. I have chosen such project because I have personally been involved in it as a co-author, but also as a participant, and therefore I have both co-designed its user’s agency, and experienced it as a user. I will argue that agency in interactive documentary (i-doc) should be considered as a space of user empowerment that does not always have to affect the interactive narrative itself, because it can also be placed outside of the narrated story. The Corona Haikus example will be used to demonstrate that, in participatory narratives, deep individual and societal impact can be designed by mixing different types of mini-agencies and by orchestrating them as a journey of empowerment that is gradual and evolutive. Reflexive and evolutive agencies will be defined and presented as new ways to approach impact design in interactive narratives.