32 Interactive Media Representation

Introduction

In a paper first published in Visual Anthropology (Coover, 2001) and later revised in the CD-Rom Cultures in Webs: Working in Hypermedia with the Documentary Image (Coover, 2003), I discussed how semantic theories of metaphor, cinematic theories of montage and cognitive theories of what Goodman (1978) called ‘worldmaking,’ might be reconceived as strategies of ethnographic media production. Drawing examples from the films of Gardner and Östör (Forest of Bliss, 1986), Trinh (Naked spaces: living is round, 1985), and others, I looked at how approaches combining these strategies might advance ethnographic praxis.

This chapter expands these themes from the perspective of multimedia presentational practices. I will discuss ways in which digital tools might further the integration of diverse disciplinary and modal strategies in cultural research and representation, and I argue that new media tools transform how users engage with materials. The essay draws upon issues that arose when I was making multimodal interactive works, among them Cultures in Webs (2003), Outside/Inside (2007a) (see Figure 32.1), and Voyage Into The Unknown (2008). The chapter gives special attention to ways that techniques of layering and compositing contribute to how works are made, and, in drawing parallels with Certeau's description of walking in his essay, ‘Walking in the City’ (1984), I will consider how digital panoramas and other scrolling environments raise possibilities for user agency.

Rhetoric and Poetics

From note-takers to cooks, amateur photographers to telephone conversationalists, we are all medium-makers. Whether one is simply forwarding e-mails with attachments or designing complex systems, almost everyone who uses a computer is a multimedia-maker. Digital technologies shape how one imagines, constructs, and exchanges ideas. Our electronic communications are shaped by pre-existing conventions (of writing, pictorial representation, etc.), technological constraints (of the processor, [Page 618]memory, software, data transfer, etc.), interface, and use.

Figures 32.1–32.18 Outside/Inside is an interactive scrolling panorama that was commissioned for the Museum of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, and exhibited 2007–2008. © Roderick Coover 2007.

Digital theorist Lev Manovich has been a proponent of the argument that digital tools are giving rise to a new language, albeit a hybrid one—a way of communicating that includes both prior methods of expression and new ones (Manovich, 2001). In writing about the impact of design software like Adobe After Effects® on how images are edited and how they are used, Manovich writes,

Layering and compositing are among the processes shaping this visual language. Layered tropes, juxtaposed paths, modally varied arguments, and active choice-making are all devices of the digital rhetoric and poetics of the language(s) of digital media which are being incorporated by the makers of media works and are being interpreted by users, who may in turn, even directly within a work, become makers themselves. The impact on documentary production is significant.

First, hybrid spaces that combine text and video in shared environments challenge single-channel cinematic conventions of linearity and montage. The debate about these seemingly dialectical aspects of cinema— a debate characterized but never resolved by many of the great texts of film theory such as Eisenstein (1947) and Bazin (1967)—dissolves when, in digital works, long takes coexist with montage sequences. The practical result for the creators of motion media works is that much of what used to end on up on the cutting-room floor or as [Page 619]little used master video tapes on the edit room bookshelves is now available. In interactive works, users may have the opportunity to access source materials and judge the maker's choice-making. This also allows one ethnographer's process to be compared with another's, and another's and another's.

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