I docs

This article stems from a panel we jointly convened at the i-Docs 2018 Symposium, where we presented a series of provocations with a view to generating a new theoretical framework for i-docs. These provocations were inspired by all aspects of Mikhail Bakthin's concept of polyphony, from both a theoretical and a practical point of view. This article presents these provocations and reflects further on them. A number of key issues are documented, expanded and commented upon, as a potential framework for further research, including multiplicity, the chronotope, dialogism and interaction. We propose that these lead to new ways of approaching complexity. With the aim of using juxtaposition, nonlinearity and layering to break down binaries, the article demonstrates how complexity can be embraced and, crucially, how the simplicity within it can be revealed. In other words, a key proposition here is that we should accept and celebrate complexity as the natural order of things, without needing to deny simplicity. By investigating several theoretical aspects of Bakthin's wider idea of polyphony, this article identifies some areas for potential development and offers input for further research, particularly in relation to the concepts of heteroglossia, carnival and aesthetics. This article is an expanded version of our " provocations " , a series of ideas and stimuli designed to provoke debate and set the scene for a collaborative panel session on " The Poetics and Politics of Polyphony ". We organised and hosted this session at the i-Docs 2018 Symposium held in Bristol, UK on 21–23 March 2018, based on our combined long-term and ongoing research into the subject (Aston and Odorico). 1 In the spirit of the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, our provocations were designed to start a dialogue between us, our guests and the audience, through which we endeavoured to create an equal and open platform for the generation and exchange of ideas. A number of key issues came out of this dialogue, which we document and comment upon here as framings for further research. The structure of this article is based on the order in which we presented our provocations, using our set of six slides from the symposium, followed by a list of keywords that emerged from the ensuing discussion. As we use this structure to talk through our ideas, this is not a typical linear essay, but a series of inputs for further analysis, with certain aspects focussed on in more detail. The article also includes a few additional slides, where we have expanded upon points we first made at the symposium. Overall, the aim of the article is to explore areas of synergy with Bakhtin's thinking on polyphony, and to begin to reflect on the theoretical and practical contribution of a dialogic approach to the field of i-docs.

New technologies have always been a great potential for artists, who are seeking “new forms” in art. Today, so called “new media” has a great potential for filmmakers, especially for “non-fiction storytellers,” i.e. documentary filmmakers.
With the development of new media, new documentary forms emerged on the Internet. These new forms are labeled such as webdocumentary (web-doc), interactive documentary, database-filmmaking, transmedia, non- linear documentary, etc. All of these new documentary forms are done by utilizing not only the computational and telecommunication capacities of the Internet through softwares and apps (applications), but the prevailing use of the Internet as one of the major medium of daily life as well. Today, more and more people are watching and following new forms of documentary on the Internet (especially young generations, who are born into new media).
New media documentary, with its distinct features, not only enforce documentary filmmakers to think, imagine, design, and develop documentary projects within new forms, but also enable them to make documentary in different ways. In short, it offers new forms of representation and production for documentary filmmakers.
In this paper, I will discuss the distinct features of new media documentary such as its openness to non-linearity in storytelling and interactivity in experience (watching and navigating in a web site); its capacity of a wider distribution; its potential for a more collaborative production. I will elaborate these features in a critical approach to understand what is really ‘new’ in new media documentary.

"Working digitally allows the ‘conventional’ documentary narrative form to shift from temporal to spatial, from horizontal to vertical, from sequential to concurrent. Digitality also provides interactivity. With interactivity comes a potentially spontaneous, engaged and active audience able to choose how they receive the content. Yet, documentaries need to convey critical pieces of their narrative for their story to be comprehensible to their audience. The critical question for documentary makers, then, is how to incorporate these new digital technologies, with their potential for innovative narrative structures, and still make a factual story understandable to their audience.

Identifying the Internet as the primary site that has opened up space for digital storytelling Lundby (2008, 3) says"
"(The Internet) offered new options to share the ‘classical’ small-scale stories created in story circles at various corners of the globe. The World Wide Web also gave rise to new forms, Blogging, in text only or with video, as well as the social networking sites on the web offer new opportunities to share short personal stories".

Examples of these online story spaces will be explored in this paper, along with early televisional forms, computer specific forms, gallery specific forms and performative forms. This selection of work illustrates the experimentation with digital form that Manovich in The Language of New Media (2001) terms ‘database narrative’ and Hayles (2005, 1-35) calls ‘possibility space’. Both terms help to define the territory in which the form of documentary is shape-shifting as a result of the revolution in digital technology."

Today, new media and digital technologies bring out great potential for filmmakers, especially for ‘non-fiction storytellers,’ i.e. documentary filmmakers. With the development of new media and digital technologies, new documentary forms emerged on the Internet. These new forms are labeled such as web documentary (web-doc), interactive documentary (i-doc), database-filmmaking, non-linear documentary, etc. Therefore, today, more and more people may engage with ‘new media documentary.’ New media, with its distinct features, not only enable documentary filmmakers to think, imagine, design, and develop documentary projects within new forms, but also force them to make documentary in different ways. In short, it offers new forms of representation and new modes of documentary film production. New media documentary also transforms the cultural form of watching a film. The audience engages with new media documentary by viewing, navigating, and searching within the surface/space of the film, rather than just watching. In this chapter, I will elaborate two distinct features of new media documentary. First, I will discuss its openness to non-linearity in storytelling through ‘database’ structures. Thus, I will expose how new media documentary filmmakers think, imagine, design and develop their projects in ‘database logic.’ Secondly, I will explore interactivity in experiencing new media documentary within ‘database culture.’ Audience interacts with new media documentary by navigating, searching, and sometimes even participating rather than just viewing. Hence, as a ‘homo-ludens,’ audience becomes a player in new media documentary. All these, again, become possible with database structures. But, this time, database gains significance more in cultural sense.
Key Words: New media documentary, web documentary (web-doc), interactive documentary (i-doc), database filmmaking, non-linear documentary, database logic, database culture, interactivity, homo ludens.

Abstract: Alongside with the spread of new technologies in the last decades social scientists have engaged with exploration of new ways of collecting, analysing, storing and sharing data and with new ways of spreading  knowledge. The present paper aims to present the emerging field of digital ethnography and explain how new technologies promise to modify our ways in which we address and relate to ethnographic craft. The author  discusses the conceptual background of digital ethnography, offers a brief overview of several digital ethnography research projects and presents the principals and practices of the digital interactive documentaries (i-docs). The paper advocates that new technologies can increase the credibility and authenticity of ethnographic descriptions. Especially interactive documentaries are considered as very promising tool that can be effectively used to strengthen attentiveness of ethnography to social actors and social relations and to deepen ethnographic practice. Overall the paper invites for further integration of ethnography with new technologies and principles of interactive documentaries.
///
Abstrakt CZ: V reakci na prudký rozvoj nových technologií řada sociálních vědců experimentuje s novými možnostmi sběru, analýzy a uchovávání dat a s novými způsoby šíření vědeckého poznání. Tato studie si klade za cíl představit oblast tzv. digitální etnografie a vysvětlit, v jakém smyslu nové technologie mohou proměnit způsoby, jakými provozujeme etnografické řemeslo. Studie tak postupně představuje konceptuální rámec digitální etnografie, nabízí přehled několika vybraných projektů z oblasti digitální etnografie a představuje tzv. digitální interaktivní dokument (i-docs). Ačkoli ve studii nejsou zamlčována rizika a úskalí související s pronikáním nových technologií do sociálních věd, cílem studie je zejména ukázat, jak a proč mohou určité postupy rozvíjející se kolem interaktivního dokumentarismu zvyšovat důvěryhodnost a autenticitu etnografického vyprávění, posílit dialogický charakter etnografické zkušenosti a učinit tak etnografické poznání přínosným pro všechny, kterých se jakýmkoli způsobem dotýká.

Webdocs are facilitating the appearance of documentary projects in which the interaction and participation of all the partners implied-authors, community and audience-generate a shared space of documentation which in turn become part of a collective memory. In these projects, the authors articulate the dialog with and among such communities with digital and transmedia communication strategies, in which social networks play a central role. In this paper the results about the participation and transmedia strategies on i-docs are presented. Research is based on a triangulation of methods using study of literature, analysis of 3 case studies and interviews with the i-docs authors and producers. We argue that these projects present the following key characteristics: ability to adapt to each specific context, a main goal is to transcend the digital space and positively affect the participant communities, but also the difficulties to find a role and space within the larger media context.

The idea for this special issue of Alphaville originated at the i-Docs 2018 Symposium, held in March 2018 in Bristol, UK, where we jointly convened a discussion on the potential engagement of the interactive documentary (i-doc) form with Mikhail Bakthin's expanded concept of polyphony. As part of this, we presented a series of provocations with a view to generating a new theoretical framework for i-docs. 1 These provocations were inspired by all aspects of Bakthin's polyphony, from both a theoretical and a practical point of view. Much like Giulio Camillo's " Memory Theatre " (Yates xi), which brings order into the complexity of the universe (of the media, in our case), we argue that i-docs can be considered as a method that facilitates intervention in our societies, cultures and knowledge. Hence, this contemporary digital form can be also described and defined as a complexity of methods that find their space of action, dialogue and completion within the concept of polyphony. This issue's general focus, indeed, is on i-docs as often complex projects that embrace, within their structures and production processes, multiple voices that interact together in the creation of content. This brings us to what Bakhtin has written about the polyphonic and multivocal novel, which, he claims, " is constructed not as the whole of a single consciousness, absorbing other consciousnesses as objects into itself, but as a whole formed by the interaction of several consciousnesses, none of which entirely becomes an object for the other " (18). We believe that Bakhtin's theory, which gives account of this plurality, is well suited to i-docs and, although his work has been mentioned before in the literature (Daniel; Aston, " Direct " ; Aston and Matthews; Zimmermann and De Michiel), it still has a lot to offer to the field, especially due to its multifaceted nature. This special issue, accordingly, aims to analyse, reflect and raise questions on approaches to polyphony and complexity within i-docs. It also aims to begin to critically theorise this within the wider context of how media research methods can influence knowledge generation across different disciplines. We are interested in the use of i-docs as an interventionist form in any area of research, whether it is part of a participatory process, a tool for data analysis or activism, a reflexive exploration of new and creative methodologies or a dialogical machine. Furthermore, we are interested in how the creation of a theoretical tool within a Bakthinian framework of analysis

Media artist Sharon Daniel has been involved with the i-Docs community since its inception—having presented her online documentaries and works in progress at all five i-Docs symposia that have taken place since 2011. We consider her to be a central and inspirational figure within this community, for whom the concepts of polyphony and heteroglossia are key to her ongoing practice. Here we build on her own previous references to these terms, in order to explore with her in more depth how polyphony and heteroglossia play out through her work. We also ask how and why she sees this approach to " cultural democracy " as an ever-more-urgent form of activism and intervention. ASTON: Could you start by describing how you position yourself as a media artist? What is it about the i-Docs community that appeals to you as a forum through which to present and discuss your work? DANIEL: When I heard about the first i-Docs conference I was thrilled. My work didn't really fit into the digital arts world (because my focus is on social justice, not technological innovation as such). It also didn't fit into the documentary film world (because my work does not emerge out of cinema and it is not storytelling). So, after creating interactive interfaces to online audiovisual archives (that I had come to think of as interactive documentaries) in a kind of disciplinary isolation over a period of about ten years, I was eager to find a community of other makers and theorists committed to new forms of (and new ethics in) documentary practice. I-Docs has helped to create that kind of intellectual community.

A curriculum that is about how to 'be' a digital, network only video practitioner, where video is no longer looking backwards to its industrial restrictions of limited access and linear, single broadcast. What I teach, how and why. (Basically online interactive nonfiction course with think description of curriculum, pedagogy, assessments and so on.)

Mobile technologies reproduce cultural arrangements and can be imbued with cultural value—often artists and designers are concerned with interactions in communities of players in public space. These sorts of mobile i-documentary projects have the potential to offer an evocative local narrative: a portrait of the past and current life of the community.