Renee Farar’s interview with Matt Soar, just a few weeks ago discusses his artistic processes and his work with the Korsakow program.

The most interesting aspect of this interview was the discussion surrounding the limitations of publicly broadcasting interactive documentaries. Soar discusses two ways in which they can be broadcast, those being;

• Florian (the creator of the Korsakow program, using audience participation and laser pointers. However, this didnt work, because people didn’t use the system properly (Soar discusses people pointing them in Florians eye)
• Letting the Korsakow film go on autoplay, which Soar found incredibly frustrating because the film took a long time between clips

Soar discusses how this is the “Achilles heel” of interactive documentaries, as they are hard to hard to broadcast to an audience of more than one person. Once there is more than one person viewing the film in a single viewing, it becomes more confused and less dynamic, because the film’s creation of meaning is solely determined through how the audience chooses to view the film.

In the first week of tutorials for this subject, we were given the opportunity to view Korsakow films made by Integrated Media students in class. As we gathered around the computers in groups of two or three, it was hard to fully understand how this could be considered an engaging way to create films, as there was more than one person’s opinions to consider when choosing which clip to play next.

I think one of my main problems with the Korsakow program is that it can’t be broadcast to more than one person at a time. As a media student, you are quite often creating products for mass audiences, may it be films, or even articles. It’s hard to reduce your audience to one person and leaving their understanding and interpretation of your film dependent on their mood at that particular moment in time.

This is something I’m going to have to remember when creating products for this subject in the future.