In this final assignment, our group decided not to further develop on the previous project, rather to create an interactive work in the theme of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) which we are all interested in, a fictional short film by using the platform Eko associate with Instagram, that aiming to create the awareness of this disorder although it is rarely seen, by revealing the truth side of it, instead of making it as a villain figure (e.g. Split).
Where the reading Interactive documentary: setting the field had given us some hints on what interactivity could be defined in audiovisual works, starting with the four modes of interactivity: conversational, hypertext, participative, experimental. First of all, ‘Interactivity’ refers to the physical activities/communication took place between the viewer and the artwork in different ways when the viewer is positioned within them (such as we share a post on Facebook, move from one Korsakow SNU to another). Due to the interaction between the user and the artefact, their actions and decisions would lead to their own version of the artwork, where the artwork is providing them real-time experiences through they engaging with it and constructing their own personal adventure.
It is noteworthy that, according to the 1% rule, cited by Jakob Nielsen in 2006, only 1% of the Internet user had actively involved in online content creation, 9% contributed in it, where the rest 90% only participated as viewers, therefore, interactive media work could be a means for those 90% to have an in-depth engagement with online artefacts (even a short YouTube video), to understand more about the world we are living in and eventually shaping it, which help audiences to understand more about DID is also the main purpose of our project work.
Moving back to the modes of interactivity, since these days the boundaries between different kind of films are blurred and each film could belong to multiple genres, both the Conversational mode and Hypertext mode could be applied in our project: Conversational interactivity means projects that placed the viewer as ‘in conversation’ with the artwork, where the interaction is seamless and natural; the Hypertext mode could present the viewer an exploratory role by linking video components together in an interface, and provide them multiple perspectives on the same issue. Inside Eko, our group is going to create a viewer decide story which included various choice points that each provided different paths for viewers, thus, it belongs to the conversational mode as the actions of audiences responding could be regard as having a seamless conversation with the film; At the same time, those choice points could link all our video fragments together, as well as via Eko’s skip/rewind feature, spectators could freely explore all the fragments, so I believe it could also be categorised as the hypertext mode.