Connecting present moments and present eras with interactive documentary

Harris, Ella (2020) Connecting present moments and present eras with interactive documentary. Media Theory 4 (2), pp. 85-114. ISSN 2557-826X.

Abstract

Interactive documentary is a non-linear digital form of documentary that allows users numerous pathways through multimedia content. This was the original meaning behind the abbreviation i-docs (Aston and Gaudenzi, 2012) and the sense in which I use the term. While in recent years the ‘i’ has expanded to include immersion, my focus remains on interactivity and nonlinearity. The nonlinearity and multimodality of i-docs are being taken forward into experiments with i-docs as an academic method, including my own. In this paper I discuss my use of i-docs to study London’s pop-up culture, focusing on two kinds of ‘present’ that i-docs illuminated. First, I explore how working with i-docs elucidated present moments as they are imagined and experienced in pop-up culture: a phenomenon defined by its celebration of ephemerality and unpredictability. Secondly, I explore how the i-doc foregrounded pop-up culture’s role within the present era; revealing pop-up as implicated in politicized processes of urban change in the post 2008 crash climate. Overall, the paper demonstrates how i-docs can make us attentive to both present moments

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