IDFA YEAR 5 Research Focus: Prototyping the Future
In any emergent media field, experimentation, prototyping and audience testing are key. IDFA DocLab is home to many such experiments and fertile testing ground. On the cutting edge of their fields and from a variety of disciplines, IDFA Doclab documentarians and artists’ experiments and user testing with new technologies and techniques can reveal the future of media and help us reimagine our world.
The MIT Open Documentary Lab will explore several projects at this year’s festival to see what can be gleaned about future media habits. We will identify new user experiences, techniques and tools that artists are piloting and survey audience reactions. What are some ways that artists are experimenting with immersive technologies and how do audiences respond? What feels intuitive and what feels awkward? What best captures the values and mission of documentary storytelling? What are some key insights that we can gain that will help us understand how media are evolving? What do prototypes at this year’s festival teach us about how we might experience media in the future? What are the creative potentials and what are the warning signs?
Our methodology will consist of artist interviews before and after the festival, audience testing at the festival and our own analysis of project prototypes.
See previous years here.