Output details

Ghost Town [Interactive documentary]

Ghost Town is an interactive multi-platform database documentary (i-doc). Its conceptual architecture aims to provide a generative framework for developing new perspectives on urban experience.

Drawing on archaeologist/artist Michael Shanks’ notion of “deep-mapping” and Jesse Shapins’ theory and practices around urban representation, the i-doc combines the extensive video archives created for my documentary film “Home Sweet Home” (over 200 hours), with other relevant data/archives, including content from the National Archives and the local Cuming Museum’s catalogue. It also includes open data about the area and user-generated content, to allow users to spatially explore the layers of memory, stories and media embedded within a single location.

Engaging with one of modernity's ruins, the Heygate Estate in London, the project proposes an immersive, interactive and participatory journey of discovery that brings in the participants at the heart of the process of urban and social transformation . It provides an opportunity for users to critically engage with its traces, to develop into active citizens capable of connecting, understanding and engaging with the complex modern urban space we inhabit, and ultimately empowering them to promote change and play an active role in society.

The i-doc engages with key questions about new forms of documentary storytelling and the shifting nature of authorial agency. In particular it focuses on three key points in digital storytelling: interactivity in narratives, multiple points-of-view, and the design of interfaces which function as narrative devices to communicate stories. Exploring the relationship between Narrative and Computational Structure, it experiments with different ways in which an interactive interface can deepen the narrative experience of, and customize the journey through, a story space. This initial chapter sets up the concept of story space and introduces the users to the idea of a story as navigated journey.