Three Documentarians View the Future of the Digital Past
This discussion will explore preservation challenges and possibilities as experienced by three award-winning artist-documentarians: Will Sylvester (Question Bridge), Oscar Raby (Assent), and ODL’s Katerina Cizek (Highrise). Each project will bring distinct problems to the table: the challenges of multiple media platforms, of XR, and of changing web-based software environments. What kind of futures and challenges do creators see for their work? And how can we assure that these and other projects remain accessible in the forms that their makers intended? The panel forms a prelude to a workshop on preservation that will be held November 6th by IDFA’s DocLab, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, and MIT ODL.
Katerina Cizek is an Emmy and Peabody-winning documentary director, creator and organizer in the emergent tech and media space. She is the Artistic Director of the Co-Creation Studio at MIT ODL where she coauthored a field study entitled Collective Wisdom: Co-Creating Media within Communities, across Disciplines and with Algorithms.
Will Sylvester is at the intersection of art and technology. Having worked in e-commerce, commercial photography, radio broadcasting, and video editing, he creates compelling interactive visual storytelling works that engage with the public. Will is also the Principle at Create To Devastate, a business that provides artist services.
William Uricchio is a media historian who explores how cultures understand reality, how they represent it, and how those representations are deployed. He has a particular interest in emerging media. He is Professor of Comparative Media Studies at MIT and founder and Principal Investigator of MIT ODL and Principal Investigator of the Co-Creation Studio.