Week 1 Reading:
Aston, Judith, and Sandra Gaudenzi. “Interactive Documentary: Setting the Field.” Studies in Documentary Film 6.2 (2012): 125–139

This weeks reading was an article that looked deeper into the development, progression and evolution of I-Docs. I learnt about 2 practice-based researchers, Aston and Gaudenzi who are influential in the area of interactive documentary, not only working with this style of documentary, but they happen to be the people behind the I-docs project. Aston believes that I-docs “offer more scope for in-depth engagement with a set of complex ideas through the presentation of multiple entry points and simultaneous storylines” (p.133).
The reading also focuses and investigates the rapid increase the use of interactive documentary is having on the world and why it is becoming more and more popular.
With the case study, the reader is almost taken through, step-by-step, the study of this type of filmmaking and how exactly it relates to the overall significance of the documentary genre. By explaining what I-docs are, where they come from and what they are able to give to society, I have learnt a lot about this “linear and didactic approach” to storytelling.
I-doc genres use different technologies to form a relationship between “the reality, the user and the artefact”(p.126).
Gaudenzi offers 4 different interactive modes by which we can try to understand “interactivity” as a whole; the conversational, the hypertext, the experiential and the participative (p.126), with all these modes creating a different “construction of reality”.
Conversational: an attempt to digitally create an experience. An example of this is in video games where worlds are often recreated, and allow the viewer/user to have an “apparent seamless interaction”.
Hypertext: the user is able to select from pre-existing options, gives the user a explorative role.
Participative: This type of I-doc relies on the participation of the user to create a database. I would fit korsakow into this mode, as users are actively involved in the production and progression of the I-doc. Virtual and physical worlds are often difficult to distinguish.
Experiential: users are brought into a physical space where the experience challenges their senses and their perception of the world.