At the Crossroads of the Documentary and the Web - Text 3
Beyond these considerations around the ways in which the structure of a webdoc is produced, a perceptible issue exists in the relations between the work and the viewer, an issue situated at precisely the level of the interface. This concept indicates what, halfway between two groups, makes it possible to regulate the actions between them. Generally speaking, when a webdoc has a complex interface, it requires considerable effort on the part of the online user to explore its content. Most often, this is the wish of the work’s author. Soul Patron (2010), an example par excellence of an artisanal production, confronts us with a traveller’s journey to Japan, where he endeavours to decode the empire of signs around him. He appears to have cut up his travel experience into unpredictable fragments which offer themselves up to both our discovery and his own while navigating the webdoc. The author also created the interface, the animation, the photographs and the brief video clips, in addition to creating our guide to the discovery of a particular figure in Japanese culture, the Mizuko Jizo (the protector of unborn children, a statue to whom is the object of a mortuary ceremony). Faced with the difficulty of the work’s path, the viewer observes an intentionally slow and contemplative rhythm. The interface’s complex options make the choices opaque and, in the end, force online users to find their way hesitatingly. One might hypothesize that this is a good attitude to adopt to counter the tendency towards forced clicking, the worthy heir to zapping. The opposite tendency is found in those webdocs in which the interface is nearly transparent: with one touch one starts a video, and not much else. In Alma (2012), for example, a long interview with a young woman who has escaped from the Guatemalan drug cartels lies at the heart of the work. The author of the webdoc succeeded in loosening her speech; what he asks in return is that we listen. He provides only the possibility of averting one’s gaze: by hovering over the image with the mouse, a few fixed and moving images punctuate Alma’s story, without disturbing her speech. With these two cases, we wish to underscore the fact that the issues related to interactivity are embodied in the notion of the interface. Whether opaque or transparent, the interface contributes to activating behaviour in online users which will determine their attitude and thus the aesthetic system of the work and its reception. Interactivity is thus also the locus specific to the webdoc by which the author can share his or her connection to the world.
