Interactive Film & Media Journal最新文献

{"title":"Convergence of Theatre, Cinema, Amusement Park, and Video Game Design to Explore Parallel Interactive Narratives in Cinematic Virtual Reality","authors":"Delwyn Remedios, D. Mathew, Max Schleser","doi":"10.32920/ifmj.v3i2.1767","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.32920/ifmj.v3i2.1767","url":null,"abstract":"Table for Two is a short parallel interactive narrative in cinematic virtual reality. This virtual reality experience is a creative artefact that has adopted screen production enquiry as a practice-based research. This research aims to explore alternative narrative possibilities in virtual reality.  Virtual reality is one of the latest disruptions in cinema that has challenged filmmakers with new methods for 360-degree storytelling.  This challenge has led to several studies recommending grammar to guide the users’ gaze toward intended areas in the virtual environment. However, it is argued that this aspect limits the full potential of virtual reality.  This study on parallel interactive narratives in virtual reality addresses this limitation. Here, the user is addressed as a navigator of the experience. Table for Two offers navigation freedom to look anywhere they desire in the virtual reality environment. A number of studies on virtual reality narratives suggests that theatre, cinema, amusement park and video game design techniques are relevant for virtual reality productions. This research describes how the fusion of these research fields and art forms contributed to new methods for exploring cinematic virtual reality and interactive 360-degree video narratives. Several studies suggest that virtual reality experiences have similarities with theatre, and therefore knowledge relating to theatre experiences can benefit virtual reality production.  For this reason, the casting talent of Table for Two was selected from the local theatre group. It was observed that their experience with improvisations and performance for long takes significantly contributed to the virtual reality production. This paper refers to Linda Aronson’s description of parallel narratives in the context of cinema. Parallel narratives have been present in limited quantity through artistic experiments in early cinema. However, the rapid growth of interactivity in narratives has increased in parallel narrative forms in mainstream cinema. It is observed that parallel narratives are gradually emerging in virtual reality experiences. However, there is a lack of knowledge of the design and development processes. While there is a difference between cinematic and VR narrative,  Aronson’s parallel narrative forms in cinema, such as tandem, multiple protagonist, double journey, split screen and consecutive narratives, can be applied in cinematic virtual reality.\u0000Additionally, space design in amusement parks reveals the significance of infusing the narrative into the set. One key feature called embedded narratives has been incorporated into the set design of Table for Two. Furthermore, interactive narratives for video game design played an essential role in shaping the navigation experience in Table for Two. Along with the influence of these mediums, Table for Two encountered unique challenges with the performance from multiple 360-degree cameras, customized script writing methods, integ","PeriodicalId":366062,"journal":{"name":"Interactive Film & Media Journal","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121664006","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reflections","authors":"C. Simsek","doi":"10.32920/ifmj.v3i2.1739","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.32920/ifmj.v3i2.1739","url":null,"abstract":"This paper introduces my experimental game prototype titled Corridor which puts public transportation into conversation with survival struggle. As a performative role-playing game experience and experiment, Corridor is about a trip using public transportation, inspired by the Metrobus systems of Istanbul, Turkey. Metrobus in Istanbul is a rapid public transportation system that combines metro and bus implemented in a separate corridor on the highway (Berdiyorov 2020). Besides my own experiences in Metrobus, I utilize the interactions of a workshop that I co-operated at the Interactive Film and Media Conference (IFM22), titled “Listening to Passengers Listening to Stories: Interactive Storytelling” to contextualize Corridor. By building dialogical exchange of stories, participants of the workshop explored the experiences of public transportation users in relation to the survival of the body (Simsek and Andic 2022). Eventually, the conflicts that the participants shared in the workshop resonated with me to build intersections between survival struggles in the wilderness and a trip on public transportation.\u0000Survival is the oldest quest of living beings and is assumed as another term for being alive, and more importantly for being in the world. Survival of living beings is closely related to stability maintained in their bodies and for humans, this includes motivation and emotion (Evans 2015). At the same time, beyond simply a life and death matter, “survival invokes a complex bundle of existential struggles, political convictions, and cultural experiences” (Zeilinger 2018, 16). Reading survival from an ecological point of view, life on earth is collaborative survival (Tsing 2015).\u0000In metropolitan life, transportation is essential to the everyday commute of people, and this is part of survival. Although transportation systems manifest important aspects of our culture, they also sometimes present issues of conflict through the violation of personal space, privacy, and other harmful and abusive behavior. To overcome survival struggles, it is necessary to take meaningful actions, in games or real life. In the gameplay of Corridor, the participants need to maintain an Energy and Morale level Meter by collecting item cards and playing encounter cards strategically. Encounter cards present challenges such as social interactions between riders, protests about the economic situations, and seasons that are affected by climate crisis influencing the participants’ survival level. The matrix of the points ranging between 0 and 4 comes from nature writer Henry David Thoreau's “necessities of life” which are limited accessibility of food, shelter, fuel (modified as health), and clothing (1980).\u0000With Corridor, I intervene in the discussions of environmental humanities and game studies with the creative application of survival in an urban context, public transportation. In the experience of Corridor, the players can find a space to reflect on urban survival from the","PeriodicalId":366062,"journal":{"name":"Interactive Film & Media Journal","volume":"238 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122575645","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Matrix of Documentary VR","authors":"Florian Mundhenke","doi":"10.32920/ifmj.v3i2.1740","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.32920/ifmj.v3i2.1740","url":null,"abstract":"Is there something like a Virtual Reality documentary or is VR already leaving the realm of filmic representation? Where is the difference between a VR film and a VR experience, how can the 360-degree film be classified in this spectrum? Can both real-life VR and computer-generated projects be labelled as documentaries? Is non-fictional VR also allowing a kind of collaboration or cooperation as known from web documentaries, or are the projects finished works that exhaust themselves in the unique reception? Are VR projects used for exchange between human individuals or only for interaction between humans and machines (and their program flow)? The paper would like to pursue these fundamental questions, as they have not yet been fully clarified and repeatedly lead to irritation when dealing with individual examples.\u0000The method of the talk is an evaluation and comparison of publications from the field of VR studies, integrating information science (Gutierrez 2016), media psychology (Jerald 2015, Slater et al. 2019), and film studies (Tricart 2018, Dooley 2021). In doing so, three areas should be addressed: First, the style and design of the projects (computer-generated, real, hybrid), second, how the user is addressed and incorporated (as viewer, as interactant, as collaborator) and third, the question of experience should be clarified in connection to the further development of documentary film theory, also taking into account the role of new technologies and the possibility of collaboration between users. To this end, various approaches are called for and combined into a cohesive design. In the second step, different projects as examples are used to test the design, most of which come from the collection of DOK Leipzig, the documentary film festival in Germany, having a section called Neuland dealing with digital forms. The aim is to explore the limits of the theoretical and analytical definition with the practice of producing and curating projects.\u0000As a result of this discussion, an open matrix of possibilities with different levels of categorization will be proposed. The aim is not to find a fixed all-encompassing definition but rather to create a framework in which very different projects at the intersection of “reflection about the real world” and “use of a head-mounted display” can be integrated. One hypothesis is that such a multi-level, eclectic approach is more successful than just finding a large-scale definition that must be adapted individually for every project. This analytical matrix should serve for the further examination of examples on the different levels of design, address, and the emerging development of exploring reality via digital media concerning design and possibilities of collaboration. I want to discuss with others about this proposal to clarify the question of whether it is possible to define similarities and differences to deal with the works both in artistic and scientific discourses.\u0000 ","PeriodicalId":366062,"journal":{"name":"Interactive Film & Media Journal","volume":"42 1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130707591","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Practices of Care and Sites of Resistance in Contemporary Multimedia Multisensory Art","authors":"Emily Collins","doi":"10.32920/ifmj.v3i2.1751","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.32920/ifmj.v3i2.1751","url":null,"abstract":" In the latest edition of Feminist Media Histories, the editors observe how the recent conceptual troubling of care has enabled possibilities for work in feminist media histories to reconsider both our contemporary moment of mediated care and earlier enactments of care by communities through media (Banner & Zeavin 2023). In imagining safe, inclusive, and interdependent spaces, artists working at the fulcrum of various media and social worlds have much to contribute, since maintaining a practice in neoliberal contexts means forging alternative ethics while nurturing sensitivities, relationalities, and resourcefulness (Millner & Coombs 2021). Using a multi-media multi-sensory artwork at the 59th Venice Biennale as a case study, this paper examines the relationship between sound, listening, and social practice art as affective modes of care praxis, where their intersection is a critical method for creating new formations of resistance, possibility, and community. Emerging from Sonia Boyce’s Devotional Collection (1999-ongoing) – a living archive that evidences the cultural contribution of Black British female musicians to international culture – Feeling Her Way (2022) brings together a series of shifting and evolving audio and video channels featuring five Black female musicians as they improvise, collaborate, and play with their voices. Boyce is the first Black female artist to represent the United Kingdom in Venice and was awarded the top prize at last year’s event. Grounded in notions of social interaction, freedom of expression, and improvisation, this immersive artwork amplifies the collective dynamism of the musicians brought together by Boyce yet does not rely on unity or synchronicity. Instead, the spirited and diverse interpretations of various prompts along with the range of performer’s capabilities create dense, layered, and intricate fields of sound, forming a deliberately multisensory sonic-social collage rooted in the physical, material space of the recording site, Abbey Road Studios, remediated within the U.K. pavilion. On multiple screens, viewers watch these singers vocalize shrills, screams, murmurs, and humming, together with melodies and chants throughout several open rooms accompanied by gold embellishments and vibrant patchwork wallpaper. Through artistic practice, Boyce embodies an ethics of care based on responsibility, collaboration, attentiveness, and attunement to the musicians she works with, in the practice of collecting, archiving, and displaying precarious materials, and in what she invites the audience to participate in through listening, walking, and moving through the space. This paper argues that by centring the embodied voices and embeddedness of Black female musicians and allowing the audience to bear witness through the visualization of their interaction, Boyce participates in the complex process of rewriting, rereading, and re-sounding history. Boyce’s approach to the issues of neglected and disregarded histori","PeriodicalId":366062,"journal":{"name":"Interactive Film & Media Journal","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132013215","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“We had to care, we knew no one else would.”","authors":"Marta Fiolić","doi":"10.32920/ifmj.v3i2.1754","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.32920/ifmj.v3i2.1754","url":null,"abstract":"Domestic violence and gender-based violence are being reported in increasing numbers throughout the world. The statistics, as well as the headlines, are brutal and heart-breaking but little is being done to address the issues in a rigorous and decisive way. This shows not only that our societies are still a long way from accomplishing gender equality, but that the increasing polarization in attitudes and information exchange, possibly contribute to the decrease in humanism and care. In Portugal for instance, most homeless women have previously been the victims of domestic violence. Which makes this vulnerable group even more excluded and marginalized.\u0000As part of a practice-based research for the PhD, I started a collaboration with a Lisbon based organization that advocates housing first strategies in dealing with the problem of homelessness in general, but the project is focused on women particularly. Throughout 2022 we have been building foundations for a women’s association run and organized by the women who are or have been homeless, and whose main goal is to approach and care for Lisbon’s homeless women based on peer support.\u0000A collaborative interactive documentary is an important part of this process. Its production is being used as both a tool for empowerment, and at the same time, as a part of an outreach strategy aimed at the wider Lisbon public and their cognizance about women’s homelessness, drawing attention to a series of specific problems that homeless women face.\u0000The baseline question is if and how the interactive documentary can contribute and serve for the voices of these women to enter the debate, to show various points of view and sensibilize the community for their issues, as well as to display the lack of policies and propose the bottom-up approaches and joint strategies, offer feasible solutions and build collective action to seriously address women’s homelessness.\u0000Theoretically and methodologically, the constructs of polyphony and co-creation are very important factors here. This approach helps in building trust among different actors, where the authorial role vanishes, and the narrative is controlled and shaped by several participants. Our hypothesis is that it could also help in producing affect and care, firstly among peers, which is already being observed, and then among the documentary’s audience.\u0000The promise for social change often gets intertwined with documentary filmmaking, and the discussions around impact and change did grow in the last couple of decades, in industry, in marketing, at festivals and around funding opportunities, and coming from different filmmakers, activists, NGOs and other stakeholders. It is often talked and written about, but rarely proved. This paper does not aim at establishing the proof of the direct link between impact and documentary, but it will, through one case study, explore the affordances of collaborative interactive documentary in raising awareness, building hope, fortifying persona","PeriodicalId":366062,"journal":{"name":"Interactive Film & Media Journal","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117177842","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Decolonizing Documentary Spaces","authors":"Michelle Smith, Pasha Partridge, Mélina Quittich-Niquay, Kester Dyer, Elizabeth Miller","doi":"10.32920/ifmj.v3i2.1779","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.32920/ifmj.v3i2.1779","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper we consider how grassroots community partnerships can transform academic spaces into creative and interactive sites of Indigenous agency and advocacy. Focusing on two projects based in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal), we bring these initiatives into a discussion that takes into account the larger context of documentary filmmaking in the territory often referred to as Québec. We address how each project uses care and collaboration towards a practice of visual sovereignty.\u0000We start with a discussion of the First Peoples’ Postsecondary Storytelling Exchange (FPPSE), an Indigenous led, multi-institutional, five-year initiative using decolonizing film and research methods to understand the needs and aspirations of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis post-secondary learners. This multi-year project involved 22 communities, 10 nations and generated over 100 video stories. The group used talking circles, filmmaking, and community engagement as methods to validate indigenous ways of learning and teaching. The facilitators created safe space through the sharing of food, the attentiveness to languages, the foregrounding of shared decision making, interactive methods and more. Following this, we discuss Circle Visions, a settler-initiated partnership project based at Concordia, which has collaborated with the non-profit Wapikoni Mobile since 2016 to facilitate care-full creative spaces on the university campus for emerging Indigenous artists. This initiative features an annual cross-platform media-making Summer Institute for Indigenous filmmakers with workshops focusing on animation, experimental video, podcasting, documentary, and 360-degree / VR filmmaking as a tool for decolonization.  We reflect on how we can activate decolonized documentary spaces within existing settler institutions and use care-full methods to unsettle hierarchies, promote well-being, and foster Indigenous productions. We then offer some context about the documentary traditions that we are building on within the place now known as Quebec.","PeriodicalId":366062,"journal":{"name":"Interactive Film & Media Journal","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128105228","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Caring for Communities through AI Language","authors":"Abby Cole","doi":"10.32920/ifmj.v3i2.1730","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.32920/ifmj.v3i2.1730","url":null,"abstract":"AI-mediated communication (AI-MC) assists and creates dialogue between people to suggest responses during digital conversations. Users see this when automated suggestions appear in text and email communications. This technology has the potential to be used on a mass scale and to eventually lead to complete conversation formation, possibly without any knowledge of one knowing they are engaging in dialogue with AI. Knowing that users adopt digital behaviors that contribute to efficiency, research must look at the influence of this tool in shaping social constructs. Understanding that gender bias exists in both the English language and in the development of AI leads to my inquiry in analyzing the role that AI-MC plays in constructing social norms with language usage. I argue that the use of gender biased language in AI predictive-text suggestions contributes to the social construction of gender in the creation, execution, and use of AI-MC. My research included searching for articles related to AI-MC, human computer relationships, and historical bias concerns with AI and language. Using the keywords gender, language, artificial intelligence, and AI-MC, I compiled research articles from the fields of human computer learning, critical media studies, and psychology to conduct a discourse analysis. Informed by feminist STS scholarship on marginalization, gender and language, and the theoretical framework of social construction theory, I performed an ideological critique of the scholarship to articulate how language constructs reality, specifically gender, and the underlying consequences and assumptions. Care is given to recognizing other underrepresented communities and cultural rhetoric in digital communication tools to add a layer of nuance in highlighting the impact this approach can have toward uncovering social constructs and contributing to solutions that embrace diversity. My argument also considers the impact this intervention could have during the formative years of youth given the influence of language and symbols in forming identities and social practices. I discuss solutions of using gender fair language and neutralized language, while encouraging caution around solutions that still lean toward the masculine. AI-MC needs to be created without gendered terminology as much as possible and with the automatic inclusion of gender-neutral terms when gendered terms are suggested (e.g., suggesting he, she, and they). Additionally, I recognize the tendency for society to construct norms around “acceptable” language, for example with methods such as tone policing. I call for advancements that consider the impact of these actions on marginalized groups by developing technologies that respect diverse rhetoric. Embracing various forms of expression leads to a more authentic representation of communities and thus society at large. Therefore, efforts to create AI-MC experiences that do not reinforce binary gender, nor only one model of acceptable discourse,","PeriodicalId":366062,"journal":{"name":"Interactive Film & Media Journal","volume":"78 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115742215","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"New Virtuality","authors":"J. Ng, O. Tomkins","doi":"10.32920/ifmj.v3i2.1771","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.32920/ifmj.v3i2.1771","url":null,"abstract":"Our multimedia website project, “The New Virtuality”, explores the implications of highly realistic images that interact and socialise with human users, often seemingly “live” in real‑time. Created with imaging technologies such as holographic projection or virtual reality (VR) and usually boosted by AI and machine learning, we argue that these images present unprecedented directions in understanding how reality, liveness and presence are discerned and believed. Radically breaking down differences between real and unreal, they point to an era of blurred boundaries, dematerialization and limbic spaces which converges visual media with twenty-first century politics of dis/misinformation, post-truth and deep fakery. In this project, we discuss this era as “the new virtuality.”\u0000These developments underpin the project’s research questions: how to understand this media that so freely and near-seamlessly mix virtual and actual realities? How to place this phenomenon in media’s long history of blurred environments, while still appreciating their distinctive newness and challenges? What are the impacts of the new virtuality on our apprehensions and constructions of realities? How might this mediated reality relate – as code, as language, as consciousness – to the wider contexts of information that colour contemporary times?\u0000In our methodology, we interwove theory, multimedia expression and fiction as multiple voices to articulate the project’s arguments across three frameworks of distinct approaches, media elements and genre features. The first framework is a historical context with which to understand the continuities and divergences of virtuality. The second is the connection of theory – particularly from film, screen and media studies – with textual readings drawn across multiple media, including paintings, cinema, performance, VR, apps and architecture. The third is the employment of fiction and multimedia. Inspired by the “scientific fiction” work of Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan (Lee and Chen, 2021), we intertwined a fictional story through the project for greater animation and accessibility – a creative warp to the academic weft. Multimedia via the essays’ image margins and a 33‑minute video essay function as audiovisual “mood boards” to provide elaboration, illustration, colour and setting for conveying the new virtuality’s poetics of fudged and adrift unsettling across this new reality.\u0000The result is a work of multiple voices and hybridity which identifies a new framework of reality through contemporary mixed media. This new virtuality is no longer about the questions of realism or illusion (e.g. Friedberg 2009; Grau 2003) from computer‑generated imagery (CGI) or even deepfakes. They are about new technical codes and information which give rise to revised conceptions of ontology, anthropology, epistemology, literacy, time and space. They are new systems of complex linkages between media, codes, expressions, consciousness, change and history. These i","PeriodicalId":366062,"journal":{"name":"Interactive Film & Media Journal","volume":"57 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124531805","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Crafting Care through Text and Subtitles","authors":"Hudson Moura","doi":"10.32920/ifmj.v3i2.1788","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.32920/ifmj.v3i2.1788","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates the underappreciated, yet integral role of text, subtitles, and intertitles in the realms of interactive films and multimedia storytelling, employing a unique lens of craft, collaboration, and care. Drawing from Gilles Deleuze's notion of the 'speech-act' and The Care Collective's interpretation of care, the study explores the use of written text as a tool that guides the narrative, widens accessibility, and promotes justice and equity in viewing experiences.\u0000The complexity of the subtitling process, going beyond mere translation, is highlighted. Delving into Deleuze's concept of 'scriptual', the paper outlines how reading subtitles adds a layer of abstract universality to films, demanding more than passive consumption from viewers. Analyzing the dynamics and impacts of subtitles in interactive films, it underscores their critical role in shaping viewer comprehension and perception.\u0000The exploration of five interactive projects – 4Stelle Hotel (2014), Life on Hold (2015), \"The Displaced\" (2015), Sea Prayer (2018), and Another Dream (2019) – offers concrete illustrations of how subtitles and intertitles contribute to creating sensory, caring, and emotional experiences, facilitating viewer engagement and understanding. By enhancing navigation and narrativity, this paper argues that subtitles and text can nurture a culture of care, aligning with the principles of The Care Manifesto.\u0000The conclusion brings focus on the affect and sensation in relation to written text and subtitles. Recognizing viewer agency in interpreting narrative, it emphasizes the potential of text and subtitles to catalyze dialogue, shared experiences, and a sense of care and connection among viewers. The paper further underscores the role of subtitles and intertitles as conduits, amplifying audiences' sensory and emotional experiences and fostering a deeper understanding of characters, cultural nuances, and broader social, cultural, and political realities. The potential of these interactive experiences to stimulate political engagement is also discussed, marking a new benchmark in the cinematic experience.\u0000Subtitles have a transformative impact on the audience's agency. They not only serve as linguistic translation tools but also as conduits that imbue the narrative and characters with immediacy, individuality, and complexity. This assists the audience in navigating the intricacies of the story, unlocking hidden layers of meaning, and understanding cultural nuances. This enhanced comprehension grants viewers agency in directing their choices and interpretations, fostering a more profound connection with the story and its characters.\u0000In summary, this study underscores the significance of integrating text and subtitles in interactive film projects, accentuating their capacity to foster inclusivity, collaboration, and care within the narrative. It presents a compelling case for filmmakers and media professionals to design text and subtitle systems that enric","PeriodicalId":366062,"journal":{"name":"Interactive Film & Media Journal","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122396958","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Collaboration & Co-Creative Media Making in Precarious Times","authors":"Anna Wiehl","doi":"10.32920/ifmj.v3i2.1729","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.32920/ifmj.v3i2.1729","url":null,"abstract":"This contribution fathoms the potential of collaborative, co-creative media practices in precarious times – in times of climate emergency and a terrifying loss of biodiversity, accompanied by socio-psychological and socio-cultural crises. It is set in times in which, despite the urgency to react, we are still often facing a lack of comprehension for the complex global dimension of these crises, accompanied with a paralysing apathy, passive-depressive resignation and sometimes even a refusal to face collective and individual accountability as well as respond in actual doing to the urgent call to action.\u0000Taking Félix Guattari's ecosophical thought of three interdependent ecologies (1989, 1996) and their prolongation in currently emerging environmental humanities with recent discourses in documentary and digital theory as a framework, the objective of this contribution is to discuss approaches in emerging media making and to deduce strategies how to 'make things matter'. Within this bigger context, the theoretical argument is based on key concepts in co-creation as well as aspects in the creative use of mobile, interactive, networked devices to 'craft' media assemblages in which often, processes are more important than artefacts and which make participants/user-creators aware of being themselves entangled in multifaceted biological, psychological, physical, social and cultural contexts. The nucleus hereby resides in the intertwining of emplaced interaction in hyperglocal contexts, the idea of focussed perception and perspective taking, and foremost the potential for networked|networking (Wiehl 2019).\u0000The hypothesis runs that due to their specific affordances, especially co-creative media practices can contribute to a shift from mere matters of fact in climate communication to matters of concern (Latour 2004) and – ultimately hopefully – matters of care (La Puig de Bellacasa 2017). The idea is to mobilize (co-)creative participants not only to witness climate change and document the most often invisible shifts in their surroundings, but rather to invite them to engage in local and at the same global interventions and thus to rediscover collective responsibilities and communal agency in this situation.\u0000Through the lens of these features, different strategies of how to mobilize user-participants will be discussed, focussing on different venues to encourage an empathetic idea of local as well global consciousness, care and emotional engagement – an approach which goes beyond top-down communication of (scientific) facts but which encourages creative communal action-taking. As paradigmatic projects, we will examine The Disaster Resilience Journal (2014) and ISeeChange (2019) – both of them being multilayered configurations building on various activities around 'doing documentary'. It will be discussed how interdependent entanglements of agents in these two projects aim at catalysing meaningful place-based environmental engagement, including community-base","PeriodicalId":366062,"journal":{"name":"Interactive Film & Media Journal","volume":"61 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126543696","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}