MIT_Docubase: Moments of Innovation

MIT Open Documentary Lab and IDFA have been exploring various approaches to new modes of documentary. The Moments of Innovation Online Exhibition presents moments in time when documentary and technology converge. Curated into different sections: immersion, participatory, location, interactive remix, data, shorts, sensory, algorithmic that present timelines of technology and documentary through these lenses.

"We are interested in history, in connecting the dots between our latest endeavours and those conceptual pioneers and technological prototypes that came before them. We consider innovation both in the creative application of new technologies and in the creative impulse that lead documentarians to invent new technologies.

We are interested in continuities and disruptions, in tracking down origins and inspirations. Although our theme is evolutionary, we do not assume that recent instances are better than earlier ones – they are different, and our goal is to recall those earlier instances, to learn from and to celebrate them." (https://momentsofinnovation.mit.edu/more/about)

 

In their collection on Location they state

Location in this sense makes a claim for something special, for some attribute of the setting to manifest itself in a particular way. In the case of this timeline, the claims regarding location are even stronger.

In some ways, we might think of location as a character –a unique material presence embedded in a particular time and playing a distinctive role. Some media projects take great pains to portray that ‘character’, going beyond merely ‘taking place’ to giving us additional information about a location that enables us to imagine its behaviors and interactions with other characters. Location becomes a key part of the story. Neither accidental nor ambient, it motivates our imagination and understanding.

As our examples show, the form that location takes in documentary – whether traces of image or sound, abstractions of data, or layers of information – is less important that the role that it plays.

https://momentsofinnovation.mit.edu/