Excerpts on interactive documentary definition:

In a broad historical examination of the definition of ‘digital interactive documentary’, Gaudenzi (2013) draws attention to the evolving nature of this form of documentary within a field that is also continually changing. Gaudenzi states:

If documentary is a fuzzy concept, digital interactive documentary is a concept yet to be clearly defined. What is implicit in its terminology is that an interactive documentary needs to use a digital support, and be interactive. A linear documentary that has been shot with digital technology, and that is distributed on the Web, is a digital documentary but not an interactive one.(2013, p.26)

According to Gaudenzi (2013) the lack of clarity around what defines an interactive documentary is due to many of the early works being made by new media artists who created theoretical perspectives that often did not make connections with the documentary field. In addition to this some theorists initially saw interactive documentary as an extension of linear documentary, therefore developing an expectation that they would be similar in terms of how they were analysed. Looking for a different viewpoint on interactive documentaries Gaudenzi claims that they ‘…do speak about, and with a language of, our new digital networked world’ (2013, p.27). This is certainly a view that I follow…which focuses on online interactive documentaries. Despite interactive documentary being undefined, what is made clear in Gaudenzi’s evaluation is that the audience must be able to tangibly make something happen to an interactive documentary. In my research, the aim from the beginning was to move beyond the publication of a linear documentary online to a form of interactive digital media, which involved the audience in ‘lean forward’ participation.

In connection with the hypertext genre, Gaudenzi (2013), like Ryan (2004), draws attention to the ‘hypertext mode’. Gaudenzi (2013, p.38–49) uses a ‘modes of interaction’ framework to demonstrate how technology and interactivity are utilised by the producer in different forms of interactive documentary. Gaudenzi (2013), traces the first interactive documentaries to the late 1970s, and locates them in the ‘conversational mode’. For example, Gaudenzi cites the Aspen Movie Map (MIT Lab, 1980), which worked with videodiscs. The conversational mode is differentiated from the hypertext mode by the aim to create a fluid, responsive type of interaction between the user and the apparatus being used. This form of interaction is referred to as a type of ‘conversation’ in terms of the spontaneity and feedback that is achieved between the user and the apparatus. In contrast, according to Gaudenzi (2013), the ‘hypertext mode’, which emerged on personal computers in the Apple Multimedia Lab in the late 1980s, interaction was modelled around the algorithmic potential of computers. Even though the computational potential of computers is used in both these modes, in the hypertext mode the affordances of a computer are used to establish beforehand a number of set connections between granules using links. Gaudenzi‘s example of Moss Landings (1989) is represented as a precursor of the hypertext mode, in which a database is used to store a set number of videos, and links are used to move from one to another. A direct correlation can be made here with the type of interactive documentaries produced in this inquiry.

As part of contextualising interactive documentary it is useful to summarise Gaudenzi’ s other two modes of interactive documentary. Firstly, I summarise the ‘participatory mode’ that extends the concept of the hypertext mode, by making a database extendable (Gaudenzi 2013). A connection can be made with Ryan’s (2004) ‘ontological’ type of interactive participation as was mentioned in the discussion on interactivity. Gaudenzi (2013) refers to research in the mid 1990s, again at the MIT lab, as an example of this participatory mode. Gaudenzi cites Davenport and Murtaugh’s (1995) design and development of the ConText browser as an early example of research into a tool that could be used to author and publish the participatory mode of interactive documentary. According to Gaudenzi, Davenport and Murtaugh aimed to design an open system that enabled users to both explore the content in the database and add to it. In this mode of interactive documentary:

The author decides on the tools and rules and lays down the first layer of bricks, but there is room for collaboration and expansion. The function of the user is both explorative and configurative. She first browses and then can choose to add content. The author becomes a database designer (Gaudenzi 2013, p.56).

Gaudenzi (2013) outlines the potential for this participatory mode to be expanded in relation to later developments occurring around social media in the Web 2.0 phase of the Internet.

The ‘experiential mode’ is the fourth and final type of interaction that is examined by Gaudenzi (2013) in the development of interactive documentaries. This mode refers to developments occurring in ‘locative media’ through the use of mobile technologies. In this mode the user experience is affected by the physicality of the location, which due to the organic nature of these environment is seen as having a fluid, changeable orientation compared to the fixed, algorithmic hypertext mode that is worked out within defined and set conditions.

Excerpts taken from:

Keen, Seth. “Netvideo Nonvideo Newvideo Designing a Multilinear Nonnarrative Form for Interactive Documentary.” Doctorate. RMIT University Print. p. 11-14

Other references (in Harvard style):

Davenport, G & Murtaugh, M 1995, ‘ConText: towards the evolving documentary’,
ACM Multimedia 95, Electronic Proceedings, no. November, viewed August 2011.

Davenport, G & Murtaugh, M 1995, ‘ConText: towards the evolving documentary’ Proceedings of third ACM conference, ACM Press, pp.381–389, viewed 13 August 2011, .

Davenport, G, Smith, TA & Pincever, N 1991, ‘Cinematic primitives for multimedia’, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, vol. 11, no. 4, pp.67–74, viewed 13 August 2011, .

Ryan, M–L 2002, ‘Beyond myth and metaphor: narrative in digital media’, Poetics
Today, vol. 23, no. 4, pp.581–609.

Ryan, M–L 2004, ‘Will new media produce new narratives?’, in M–L Ryan ed.,
Narrative across media: the languages of storytelling, University of Nebraska Press,
Lincoln, pp.337–59.