María Yáñez

Activism | Journalism | Social Media | HTML5 | Experience Design | Transmedia Narratives | Augmented Reality Games | Mobile Tech | Second Screens | Collaborative Authorship |

All of the above and more….i-docs.org

Any non-fictional story that uses digital technology to give the viewer an active role in the negotiation of ‘reality’ can be an interactive documentary (i-doc). An online datablog at the Guardian, a pervasive game in the streets of London, an educational 3D story on Second Life, or a film which links documentary footage to live data feeds…

i-Docs gives visibility to these emerging forms of factual storytelling and takes an international perspective on emerging trends:

· Journalism is becoming a new form of activism
· Mobile technologies are opening new markets to documentary makers
· HTML5 – new authoring tools are being launched to facilitate the production of web narratives
· Augmented reality games and layered locative experiences are crossing over into documentary storytelling

Following 2011′s sold-out inaugural event i-Docs 2012 is now expanded to run over two full days. This year’s very strong line-up includes keynote speakers reflecting cutting-edge and award winning work:

· Jigar Mehta (18 Days in Egypt)
· Brett Gaylor (rip! A Remix Manifesto, Popcorn Maker, Popcorn project, Mozilla Foundation
· Submarine Channel Award-winning creators of visually-led transmedia projects (Collapsus)
· Katerina Cizek (Highrise)
· Esteemed documentary scholar Brian Winston
· Interactive pioneer Max Whitby
· Subtlemob creator Duncan Speakman

An important feature of this year’s symposium will be sessions examining some of the key emerging tools for authoring and creating web documentary – Popcorn maker, 3WDoc and Klynt. See the whole line up, abstracts and more at i-docs.org

Full two-day tickets are available from http://bit.ly/idocstorefront at a cost of £150 – which includes lunch and refreshments. Single day passes are available for £90.
A limited number of places are available to Postgraduate researchers at a discounted rate.

i-Docs is convened by Judith Aston, Sandra Gaudenzi and Jonathan Dovey on behalf of the Digital Culture Research Centre, University of the West of England

Watershed Media Centre – March 22/23 – 09:00 – 17:00

Comecei a miña colaboración nos contidos Praza abrindo unha sección baseada en diapositivas, por chamalas así. En concreto doce, con cadanseu comentario. A primeira ducia foi de vodas, co gallo da da filla de Amancio Ortega esta fin de semana. E realmente a da herdeira foi, creo, a menos interesante dunha ducia compartida con Papuchi, Rajoy, Ana María Ríos, o xuís de Portosás, Inés de Castro e Marcela e Elisa, entre outras. Esta sen dúbida é a miña favorita.

Como veño de ler por aí, “se cadra é a única persoa no mundo que podería lexitimamente escribir na bio do seu Twitter “Escritora, autora, artista visual, dixital e de performance, directora de cine, actriz” (e por suposto, na súa bio real non pon nada semellante)”. Miranda July (Vermont, USA, 1974) é, efectivamente, todo iso, e unha das mulleres máis adoradas dos últimos anos pola escena indie, ou hipster, ou como lle vaian chamar nesta década.

Con vintepoucos anos comezou a facer performance teatral en clubs de música, compartindo escenario con bandas de rapazas como Sleater-Kinney ou Chicks on Speed. No 1998 estreou o seu primeiro traballo longo de performance, unha peza titulada Love Diamond, que ela cualificaba como “película ao vivo”, e que integraba vídeo, pintura e música en directo. Con estes elementos constitúe un circuíto de linguaxe entre a persoa e a máquina, e fai un xogo de identidades femininas tendo como protaonista unha rapaza (que podería ser o trasunto dela mesma) e a súa nai.

É unha mágoa non tela visto nin dispoñer dun vídeo enteiro, pero recomendo o comentario que desta obra fai Joan Campàs Montaner en Aura Digital.

No 2000 estreou The Swan Tool, unha nova colaboración co músico Zac Love na que tamén integra os distintos elementos multimedia na performance, e que volve contar a historia dunha muller, que neste caso non sabe se vivir ou morrer. Mentres o pensa cava unha tumba no xardín da súa casa para ver que tal é iso de enterrarse a ela mesma, e despois de enterrarse volve á súa vida e ao seu traballo nunha oficina coa espiña de non ter morto de todo, pero un pouco si. Velaquí un pequeno clip:

Ata aquí todo máis ou menos “normal” nunha artista de performance que compaxinaba o formato ao vivo coa videocreación e distintos experimentos cinematográficos. Despois aínda fixo unha serie de performances co título How I Learned To Draw, menos narrativas e nas que se buscaba máis a interacción co público. En todas aparecía ela acompañada de elementos visuais, como por exemplo o testemuño en vídeo de seus pais. Si, as tres propostas mencionadas ata agora teñen un cheiro a autoficción. Pero isto é só o comezo.

No 2005 Miranda July faise famosa, porque obtén o premio especial do xurado no festival de Sundance, e a Cámera D’Or no festival de Cannes, coa súa primeira longametraxe, Me and You and Everyone We Know. Trátase dunha comedia romántica na que July interpreta a Christine Jesperson, unha artista solitaria que gaña a vida conducindo un taxi que transporta anciáns. Aínda que aquí crea unha personaxe cun nome distinto ao dela, a arte desta tal Christine recorda moitísimo ao tipo de performance e videocreación que traballa a autora, ata o punto de que non distinguimos moi ben entre personaxe e creadora (nin falta que fai). E ademais constrúe un universo de personaxes e relacións persoais para tematizar precisamente iso, o difícil que é para moita xente relacionarse cos demais. Algunhas secuencias recordan as películas de Todd Solondz, pero o tono xeral é máis optimista e menos cruel. A película pode verse en Filmin por menos de dous euros.

Despois do éxito colleitado coa película, a Miranda July deulle tempo a escribir varios libros de relatos, facer proxectos colaborativos na web e preparar un ciclo performativo que empezou co espectáculo Things We Don’t Understand and Are Definitely Not Going To Talk About e que remata coa película que estrea agora (non sei se terá distribución en España), The Future. O filme, así como o traballo de performance anterior no que se basea, aborda dun xeito moi particular como a xeración de trintaneiros que botamos os últimos anos facendo a nosa vida practicamente en internet se enfronta a ter que madurar e tomar decisións que non tiña pensado tomar. Este é o trailer de The Future:

A web da película ofrece algúns experimentos interactivos nos que os espectadores podemos probar a ver o noso futuro, e ten un blog no que a propia July se comunica coa audiencia usando o vídeo, como chega a facer tamén no filme, e ata videochats usando Skype.

A falta de ver a peli, velaquí un descarte da mesma que é unha performance, e que non precisa moitas máis palabras, só o título: A Handy Tip for the Easily Distracted.

Non me atrevo a falar de transmedia para refererirme a este tipo de cruce entre redes e soportes para comprender o universo da película, aínda que pode que non fose tan aventurado, e en calquera caso agradéceselle á artista que non maree co palabro. Pero o que é indubidable é que July manéxase perfectamente en internet, e usa cada recurso que a rede lle ofrece de maneira moi natural, buscando sempre a complicidade e a interacción co público. E non usa tanto a web como un lugar para o narcisismo, senón para comunicarse e colaborar coa súa audiencia, cun sentimento de cercanía que se cadra só está ao alcance de artistas que, coma ela, procedan do show en directo e da performance.

E así chegamos -pasei por alto isto antes un pouco a propósito- a un dos seus experimentos que a min máis me chaman a atención: unha proposta artística, performativa e interactiva, con base na web, chamada Learning To Love You More, que durou entre o 2002 e o 2009, o cal en internet non é pouco tempo. Feita en común co artista Harrell Fletcher, os dous creadores propúñanlle ao público un total de 70 tarefas das que cada persoa que visitase o sitio podía escoller unha ou máis, facela seguindo as instruccións, e reportala cun texto, unha foto, un vídeo… As tarefas eran do tipo facer algo coas mans, entrevistar a un veterano de guerra, quitarlles unha foto aos teus pais bicándose, ou darlle un consello a ti mesma no pasado. En total participaron máis de 8000 persoas e as tarefas de cada quen quedaron gardadas e expostas colectivamente, tanto na web como en diferentes exposicións físicas ao largo dos Estados Unidos, e tamén nun libro.

A min paréceme unha obra moi bonita, tanto pola proposta como polo resultado, pola filosofía de performance colectiva entre xente que non se coñece pero para os que Miranda July supón o nodo de conexión. De novo, non en sentido narcisista -ou iso creo-, sendo a artista a que quere mirar para a performance do público e operar ela só como ideóloga ou demiurga dun universo no que se van producir unha serie de accións. Ou, poñéndonos místicos, como a sacerdotisa dunha caste de comuñón colectiva, dunha catarse emocional conxunta.

Para coñecer outras obras de Miranda July en distintos soportes non deixedes de visitar a súa web (se metedes o contrasinal secreto, claro) ou de seguir o seu blog. Tamén ten un libro de relatos traducido ao castelán co título Nadie es más de aquí que tú (Seix Barral, 2009), do que recomendo ler esta recensión que lle fixo Guillermo Altares en Babelia. Volvendo ao da autoficción (e o autobombo), déixovos cunha das últimas entradas do seu videoblog, no que anuncia a saída do seu último libro, It Chooses You, que chega ás libraría anglosaxonas nestes días.

A peza audiovisual non ten palabras (pódense ler no blog mentres se reproduce o vídeo), pero creo que todo se resume nun tweet dela de hai uns días: “It is the first book I’ve made that is non-fiction — the “I” in this case is really me”.

A glance at popcorn.js and its possibilities for i-docs making, one week before the release of its 1.0 version at the Mozilla Festival in London.

The last article posted by Arnau Gifreu on the evolution and the future of the Internet invited me to start my collaboration with I-docs introducing the first proposals that are coming from different studios to create audiovisual narratives using HTML5. At least three projects (Popcorn.js, Zeega, and 3wdoc) were born in the last year offering different HTML5-based solutions, in some case specially designed for making webdocs. This leads me to think we are at the beginning of a decade full of experiments that will take the web communication onto the next level; maybe in the same way as Flash allowed in the early 00s, but I thing the change will be stronger, mixing the best of amazing visual narratives with the powerful sense of collaboration and real-time communication given by web 2.0 and semantic data. The beginning of an era always sounds pretty cool, like the feel of being in a very primitive stage of next-generation digital storytelling, doesn’t it?

What is already for sure is that in 2012 we’ll see a lot of works sprouting all around the world, some of them almost ready to be released. I’ll start today by talking about Popcorn.js, the Open JavaScript and HTML5 media framework created by Mozilla within its project Web Made Movies, an open video lab lead by Brett Gaylor (best known for being the director the documentary RIP: A Remix Manifesto), who will be one of the keynote speakers in the next I-docs Symposium in Bristol.

Popcorn.js was released in the summer of 2010. The aim was to bring coders and filmmakers together to explore a new technique to create video on the web (or web on the video, maybe: the HTML5 doesn’t split those concepts). And the best way to start was to provide an easy way to add extra data to videos: a classic web video screen is surrounded by a layout of data and related content that appear as the video plays. These data can be texts, images, other videos or links to any web content, and, of course, with the capacity of making real time searches in Google News, Wikipedia, Google Maps, Twitter, Flickr and whatever web or social network with a public API. This demo shows what we can do with the first versions of popcorn.js.

So, now we know what the possibilities of relating web content with the videos, let’s see what kind of content and with which narrative or informative pusposes this tool can be used.

One of the most obvious is the identification of sources and places to explore further to look for more information. Thus the video works as the starting point of an hypertext from where starting to browse and know more about a topic.

This makes a lot of sense in the remix works, that can use popcorn.js to reference the original source materials as the video plays, and linking directly to them, when they comes from the Internet. Jonathan McIntosh, an American remix artist who defines himself as a ‘pop culture hacker’, was one of the first who tried popcorn.js in one of his works, a piece entitled Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck in Right Wing Radio Duck. Here is the result, and here a post by the author explaining how he did it.

In this case it’s clearly not a documentary. But the remix technique, used for decades in the traditional documentary, and to totally encouraged by the web 2.0, is very used in the interactive database documentary. That’s why we see a lot of possibilities to enhance and expand information when to take linear documentaries to the web.

Upian, the French studio that created webdoc masterpieces such as Prison Valley or Gaza \ Sderot, started to experiment with popcorn.js in the beginning of this year, by complementing a couple of tv pieces produced by ARTE, Notre Poison Quotidien and Planète à Vendre. In both cases the primary work is a documentary that analyzes current issues like the the effects the chemicals used in factory farming have on our health, or the  changes in world agriculture since the alimentary crisis in 2008, respectively. Normally in this kind of documentaries the amount of information left behind is huge, and if they are able to arouse the viewer’s interest, curiosity will lead us to do our own research looking for more information. Popcorn.js helps us to get to that information presented within the documentary through the whole internet, in an easy way, and at the same time we follow the course of the video.

For instance, in Planète à vendre, at the same time we see in the documentary an interview with a journalist expert in prime materials, a box shows up below with a link to a search on the Financial Times website finding all the articles written by this journalist since 2007. Also we can see the last tweets with the hashtag #landgrab, and a counter with the number of square metres of land rented or sold in the meantime the video is playing.

From the informative point of view the utility of popcorn.js seems clear, as well as its potencial as a tool for education, either to expand knowledge or to guide self-learning giving acces to further information and motivating student’s curiosity.

But what happens with more creative or experimental aspects? What about poetics and meaning cronstruction? What about the fun part of this? Easy, people are beginning to try.

Upian itself, in its most recent approach to popcorn.js, has gone a little bit further with Happy World, a documentary about how people in Burma lives “according to the rhythm of the most absurd decisions made by their governors”. The project was made in collaboration with Cinquiéme Etage, a production company, with three media partners: LeMonde.fr, Courrier International and Owni. Let me translate what Dan Benzakein from Web Television Observer wrote about the “extended experience” achieved by Happy World.

In order to extend the film’s experience, Cinquième Etage and Upian have developed a constellation of interactive objets and  forged editorial partnerships to multiply the approaches, the angles, the formats. The webdoc is supported by its media partners:  contents in exchange of visibility. LeMonde.fr, Courrier International et Owni were involved in content elaboration and journalistic contribution. Point of exclusivity, each partner is promoting the film to its audience. A web-specific collaborative way, by generating a rich and diverse experience:

- The excellent Censurator, a module that dresses a Twitter page by Burmese standards
- A series of articles related to the chapters on Courrier International, LeMonde.fr, OWNI and many other sources.
- An interactive map of the Burmese opposition in the world, at OWNI, by Marie Normand, former journalist correspondent in Bangkok for many French media (RFI, Liberation)
- An infographic of Naypyidaw, ghost capital of the county, by Concetta Sangrigoli, architect and urban planner
- Valium TV, an hour of Burmese television
- Extracts of soothing soothing Burmese press
- Comments and interviews with a Burmese opposition leader in Paris

The challenge of popcorn.js here is to display this “constellation of interactive objects” synced with the main object (the documentary video). Sometimes this related content is only a graphic complement such as a banner with the titles of each chapter, and other times it is a link to further content. All this further content and extra information is compilled in another page, where you can follow it linearly. It’s the “bonus” page, which not only displays in linear order all the extra content but invites the viewer to send their own links or information. That’s only a different way to present an information that could perfectly be displayed in a website as a blog post, or as an Storify piece. And I personally think it works better. Enclosing this content to the video with the popcorn.js tool makes full sense in order to link it to a precise moment of the narration. But, from the point of view of the person who wants to see the video, maybe it’s too much disruptive. Mostly because if you click in a link on the side while the video is playing, the page is loaded and the video stops, so you can’t return easily to the point where you left the documentary. Opening the link in a new tab is the only way to discover the extra information without stop viewing the documentary. Classic, but tricky.

Again, if we trust the criterium by which the video on the Internet must be short, because our attention is shorter, using popcorn.js can be a good way to shorten our documentaries, leaving behind a lot of content that can be displayed at the same time occupyin a spatial dimensional, not only temporal.

To mix and explore the different dymensions of a space is the aim of Katerina Cizek in the next stage of her Highrise project, as she presents in the trailer of One Millionth Tower. We’re really looking forward to see how she uses popcorn to work with 3d spaces and augments the audiovisual and immersive experience formulated in Highrise.

Another of the big projects to be launched soon, #18daysinegypt, also announces a use of popcorn.js in a very spatial web, acording to this demo:

Until these two expected releases comes out we can only imagine how popcorn.js can enhance the narratives in a different way than the informative, but I’m sure it will. And perhaps it’s too early to know how far can creators take the tool in a totally creative and meaningful way. Creators need to know the tool, to experience it and play without fear of losing control over their work. Also, they will need autoring tools for doing that without having coding skills. At least two are being developed: one is Butter and the other is Popcorn Maker, and both are still in an alpha version. Anyway, with these tools filmmakers will have to get used to see the whole internet as the palette and the canvas, beyond the timeline of their FinalCuts.

This was the purpose of the Living Docs Hack Day hosted by Mozilla few days ago in San Francisco, a two-days hacklab to show filmmakers the possibilities of popcorn.js by creationg some demos with the help of coders. One of these creators was Jigar Mehta from #18daysinegypt, who appears in this video among other filmmakers and developers who joined this Hack Day.

As read in this article written by  Angela Watercutter in Wired.com, there are a few more projects interested in incorporating a popcorn.js experience to their production, like The interrupters or 30 mosques. Plese go the article to find the links to each demo, most of them in a very experimental stage. And I know a lot more are coming.

For now we know the 1.0 version of popcorn.js is to be released next week at the Mozilla Festival in London. It’s going to be exciting to see how a new fresh wave of filmmakers, journalists, designers and coders engage with this open source tool, and an open source way of making media, bringing together video and the next generation web. So far we have seen the prehistory of HTML5 interactive documentary, and the first shy attempts to enhance nonfiction storytelling using popcorn.js (we’ll talk about other HTML5 tools in further posts). From now on, we have a long way ahead to try, experiment, create and play. It does sound pretty cool.