Arnau Gifreu is a lecturer, researcher, and director in the audiovisual and multimedia field.
Arnau holds a PhD in communications and a master’s degree in digital arts from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona). He is also a research affiliate at Comparative Media Studies and the Open Documentary Lab (MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and part of the i-docs group (University of the West of England). He founded and served as coordinator of the interactive documentary and non-fiction observatories and production programs interDOC and INF (Interactive NonFiction).
The Interactive Documentary: my life, my passion, my playlist
Interactive digital media have had an impact on the logics of production, exhibition, and reception of traditional audiovisual documentaries. In this emerging context, interactive documentaries are a new audiovisual form with specific characteristics of their own. Interactive documentaries create a new logic for the representation of reality. The emphasis of this new logic lies in the relationship between the text and the user, when navigating and interacting, rather than how the author constructs a specific discourse on reality for traditional viewers. I’ve been carrying out research in the field of interactive documentaries and interactive nonfiction for the last seven years and have noticed a clear increase in the number and quality of projects produced from year to year. After the initial phases in the short history of the interactive documentary–birth, experimentation and consolidation–we are now facing the definitive phase: diversification and institutionalization. Now we will see whether this form will become established as something as appealing as the interactive fiction formats.