I am looking for serious feedback on this project. If it interests you and you are really keen to explore the documentary, please leave your e-mail address in the comments or send me an e-mail at [email protected] and I will send you the video link.

From Groys in The Aesthetics of Installation Art chapt.

Symposium in May next year at UCSC on online documentary practices. Very interesting indeed...

Towards the Essayistic List in Interactive Documentary Narratives, according to Manovich (2001), should not “exist in new media,” as there is “nothing in the logic of the medium itself that would foster its generation” (p. 228). Non-narratives, as described by Corrigan and White (2012), “eschew or de-emphasize stories and narratives, instead employing other forms like lists, repetition, or contrasts as their organisational structure” (p. 263). What I am investigating through my PhD is possible models for creating interactive documentaries attuned to the affordances of new media environments. My first investigation of possible models for creating interactive documentaries is through a speculative interactive documentary which explores the essay film and lists as possible non-narrative models. The essay film was chosen as it de-emphasises narrative in favour of structures filtered through the ideas and thoughts of the questioning essayist. Similarly lists, taken from Bogost (2012) as “provocations, as litanies of surprising contrasted curiosities” (p. 38), eschew narrative because they divide rather than connect the items they include. Organised through the logics of the list, this first interactive documentary project, remixes Chris Marker’s essay film Sunless (1983). Sunless provides a productive case study due to its position as an exemplary essay film, and through its use of lists, such as Sei Shonogan’s list of “things that quicken the heart,” as an organising tool. The intent of the project is to consider the essay film and lists as non-narrative forms, towards a framework to theorise and make interactive documentaries. This presentation will consider whether the project succeeds at using lists to structure essayistic footage to investigate whether list-based essay films could inform practice within the context of interactive documentary. This may provide an understanding of the relationship between essay films and lists as a possible methodology to theorise interactive documentary practice in the context of new media studies. Bibliography: Bogost, I. (2012). Alien Phenomenology. Or What It’s Like to be a Thing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Corrigan, T., & White, P. (2012). The Film Experience: An Introduction (3rd ed.). Boston: Bedford/St. Martins. Manovich, L. (2001). The Language of New Media. United States of America: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Marker, C. (1983). Sunless. Documentary, Argos Films.

A library of interactive documentaries, curated by MITs Open Documentary Lab.

...and according to Benjamin you can embed this video into Popcorn Maker and make iDocs :-).