Interactive documentaries provide options of choice to influence the flow of the films and allow, generatively and rule-based, different progressions of a narrative. In our SNF-funded, three-year research project, we investigate the dominant understanding of reality narratives, the changing relationship of viewers to film, and the role that choices play in the mediality of interactive documentaries.
Project Description
Documentary film is characterized by the fact that it claims a special vicinity to reality. It therefore has a special status as a genre. Technical innovations in production, circulation and reception and the increasing popularity of interactive formats make it necessary to investigate and analyze the relationship between media representation and underlying reality. Interactive documentaries can show considerable variations in terms of presentation, production and circulation. In this project we want to develop criteria for the differentiation of various interactive documentaries. For this we do not only refer to the final results, but also focus on the importance of the software as well as the methods of production.
Theories of documentary film shall be updated with regard to interactive formats, their multi-perspectivity and the possibility of relinquishing authorial control. In this regard, it is also important to develop methodologies with which operational features and interfaces can be more closely taken into account in the analysis of the films. The project will also test the extent to which the software of generative, rule-based documentaries can also be used as a research tool for material indexing and analysis.
The special feature of the project lies in the connection between theorizing in the cultural studies, humanities and creative practice. Those fields are part of two paths of investigation, one dedicated to the documentary, the other to the interactive, and whose separation is explicitly not between theory and practice.
The theory of the documentary will be updated to include web-based forms of documentary work and a critical reflection of contemporary interactivity in the field of documentary filmmaking. The study of exemplary documentaries takes place on the one hand with the tools of media and film studies, whereby the analysis of interfaces and underlying programming with a reference to interface and software studies receives special attention. For the analysis of the production process, on the other hand, we resort to methods of production studies and creative practice. Methodologically, the practical realization of documentary work is accompanied and observed with the tools of media ethnography and visual anthropology.
With our project we contribute to the fundamental and ongoing transformations in contemporary media and film theory, reflecting the fact that audiovisual formats and formations are becoming more heterogeneous and questions of circulation and interactivity are gaining prominence. Through the transdisciplinary connection of practice and theory, producers of interactive documentaries become central actors in media research. The analysis of interactive documentaries thus becomes the subject of an interdisciplinary approach.
Below you can read the application submitted to the SNF (German only).