DOI: https://doi.org/10.33008/IJCMR.2020.05 | Issue 3 | April 2020
Helen Gaynor
University of Melbourne
Abstract
An Internet connected, data and software driven, computerized environment dominates contemporary media production, distribution, exhibition and consumption (Murray, 2011). Given the non-linear and interactive affordances of this ‘new media’, what disciplines can linear filmmakers look to, to work in this space? This article interrogates the intersection of the representation of the real between documentary and museum exhibition. Museums share documentary’s claim to the representation of the real (Pearce, 1999; Kidd, 2014). But unlike linear documentary, museum representation takes place in a non-linear setting. I explore how museums represent the real in this spatial and nonlinear setting. I will also interrogate how contemporary museum exhibition design includes the affordances of the digital medium into the representation of the real, and what of this theory and practice may assist in the design of non-linear and interactive documentary.
Introduction
This article interrogates the intersection of documentary film and museum exhibition in the presentation and representation of the real in the non-linear digital media setting of the twenty-first century. Some practitioners and theorists working in the linear documentary genre have applied the affordances of what Janet Murray calls the digital medium, to their work (2011). This emerging form has been described by some as interactive documentary (Gaudenzi, 2013). I argue that museum design is a useful reference for documentary filmmakers in addressing the issues of the representation of the real in a non-linear setting. Historically, museums have presented and represented the real through curated collections. In the spatial setting of the traditional museum, curators may indicate a narrative but visitors may choose their own way through it in terms of both order and time. This museum exhibition practice and theory may be utilised by linear documentary practitioners moving into the representation of the real in the non-linear and interactive documentary. Contemporary museum exhibition design also includes the affordances of the digital medium in representations of the real (Kidd, 2014). In this article, this adaptation of the digital medium by both disciplines is interrogated through key theories and understandings of the software driven, computerized environment dominating contemporary media production, distribution, exhibition and consumption (Murray, 2011).
Presenting and representing the real: Intersections between museology and linear documentary
Documentary as a film genre has existed for over one hundred years. British filmmaker John Grierson is credited with being the first person to apply the word documentary to film production, when commenting on the Robert Flaherty documentary Moana in 1932. As founder of the British documentary movement, where much early work in documentary practice and theory was produced, he proposed that the intention of the documentary was to educate the public and the powers that be, the screen being a pulpit. This was achieved by the filmmaker revealing the hidden story of everyday life via the artistry of the film. In a 1932 interview with Sight and Sound he proposed that documentary:
‘… is capable of direct description, simple analysis and commands in conclusion, and may, by its tempo’d and imagistic powers, be made easily persuasive. It lends itself to rhetoric, for no form description can add nobility to a simple observation as readily as a camera set low, or a sequence cut to a time-beat’ (ibid.).
The rhetorical intention has commonality with the aims of museum design of the early twentieth century. Susan Pearce (1999) establishes the construct around museums in the twentieth century, and identifies its concern with the development of grand narratives imbued with universal significance. Sonia Livingstone (2013) points to the founding claim of the museum; the presentation of the real. The twentieth century museum was devised around the idea that reality could be captured and understood by collections of objects, things and material goods. These objects were evidence for the assertions made about the ‘real world’ (Pearce, 1999). The difference in actualization of truth claims between museum and documentary originally lay in the museums’ ability to present material objects, whereas documentary could only represent them. Thus, documentary’s claim, not to present the real, but rather to represent it (Winston, 1995). However, Roger Silverstone points out that museum design increasingly included the art of representation:
‘…simulations and the unreal are of course a fact of museum visitation also. Here, the Museum emerges as already an agent not of innocent and un-mediated display, but as an agent of an artful and sophisticated creative representation, in which the claims to be presenting the real are simply that; claims’ (1988: 233-4).
Whatever one makes of the claim on the real, museum exhibitions and documentary films, for a large part of the twentieth century, have shared a methodology and intent. They have collected artefacts, actual or filmic, that bear an indexical relationship to the real world, and arranged these in a way to form a narrative of the real world. To create their narrative, museums collected physical artefacts, and curators organised them, deciding what went next to what and how this related to that. The resulting exhibition delivered knowledge and understanding of ‘the real’ in a spatial material way. The methodology of the documentary filmmaker was similar. Audio visual content was collected around a narrative proposition, the content ordered it in such a way as to propose a ‘creative treatment of actuality’ (Grierson, 1966), utilising audio-visual technology. Both disciplines claimed to represent the real and aimed to reveal a deeper understanding of this real through the rhetorical organisation of their artefacts from the real world.
Filmmaker and theorist Brian Winston has pointed out the inherent contradiction in the notion of actuality and its creative treatment, questioning how ‘actuality’ can be left over after the application of the ‘creative treatment’ (Winston, 1995: 11). Winston proposes that in the late twentieth century, the idea of objectivity in documentary gave way to the notion and acceptance of subjective expression. Pearce identifies the effect of this type of post-modern critique of the notion of an objective, certain truth in the museum exhibition space:
‘Signifiers, objects and exhibitions, among others, can trigger off a large range of meanings in the minds and feelings of those who experience them, and since the inherited signification of the past – roughly, the consensus of meaning resulting from history – has been demoted, there is no way of judging validity between these variously experienced meanings’ (1999: 14).
The development of digital technologies in the late twentieth century added an additional pressure to the notion of the real. Winston, writing in 1995, addresses the impact of the emerging digital medium, on the already shaky claim of documentary to ‘represent the real’ (ibid.). With data and software as the new capture and replication technologies, he argues that this ‘digitilisation’ cannot guarantee the real in the same way as the plastic physicality of film and the impact of this diffusion of clams of the real will be profound (Winston, 1995: 259). Jenny Kidd also observes that the digital medium is changing expectations of representations of the real world in the museum setting:
‘Museums are also grappling with the integration of new media with a legacy position.…the ways we create, distribute, access and assess information are changing, with new ways of managing knowledge creation and information sharing. … This is especially challenging for museums as institutions grounded in discourses of authority and professionalism’ (2014: 5).
Kidd proposes that digital projects have a growing currency in museum exhibition and are now central to ‘proof’ of public worth, vital to an exhibition in a world of constrained spending after the global economic downturn in 2008. In a 2017 publication, Winston, Vanstone and Chi propose that whatever the impact of digitilisation on documentary, it is ‘evolutionary, no revolutionary’ (Winston et al, 2017: 81). The filmed, filmer and spectator are all still present as they have been since the inception of the genre. The same could be said for the museum exhibition. The way in which the spectator interacts with the artefact may have changed due to the affordances of the digital medium. But the desire to interact and take part in a type of discourse provoked by the exhibition still remains. What also remains in both disciplines is the indexical relationship of content and discourse with the real world.
Manovich’s metamedium and Murray’s digital media
I have established the commonality of intent between documentary practice and museum exhibition design in the representation of the real through a narrative. Historically the tools and artefacts that each discipline uses in this endeavour have differed. However, the application of digital technologies to production methods in both disciplines is collapsing divisions between them. To understand the implications of these technologies and the changes they pose, I look to the work of software designer and academic Lev Manovich. He asserts the primacy and centrality of software in the computational space, as it determines what can be done with digital technologies (Manovich, 2013). Manovich defines media software as programs that create and interact with media objects and environments. He proposes that searchability, findability, linkability, multimedia messaging and sharing, editing, view control, zoom and other ‘media-independent’ techniques are a given in any software driven environment. He identifies the key role of the computer in its ability to remediate existing media, as well as augmenting it and generating new working tools and types of media itself.
Notably, Manovich asserts that the digital technologies are not a defining element as ‘digital’ has no properties in and unto itself (2013). The computer is the machine, and digitisation is the method to get the material onto the machine. It is the software that allows the digital affordances of the computer to produce meaningful output. This point is of significance because it locates where, in the computational environment, creative expression and authorship lies – in the software. Manovich positions the adoption of software by the global cultural and communication industries, such as the film and television industry and museums, as having the same impact as the invention of print, photography and cinema (ibid.). Rather than software, Janet Murray proposes that it is computational affordances that lie at the centre of this new medium. She urges for the notion of a digital medium, that is:
‘created by exploiting the representational power of the computer. Focusing on computation allows us to see all of these disparate artefacts...as belonging to a single evolving medium...it allows us to focus on the four representational properties of digital environments (the procedural, participatory, spatial, and encyclopaedic affordances) that provide the core palette for designers across applications within the common digital medium’ (Murray, 2011: 8-9).
Having argued for the use of the term, the digital medium, to describe this computational world, and identified its representational properties, Murray identifies the key design consideration as being agency that works for the user. The level of satisfaction based on the quality of agency is of primary importance. A satisfying experience, she sates, is the matching of the interactants’ expectations to the design of the of interaction, resulting in ‘…the pleasurable experience of agency’ (Murray, 2011: 12-13).
Manovich provides a final way of thinking about that Murray’s digital medium. Having established the notion of a meta medium (2013), Manovich proposes another model which encompasses everything from devices to apps and all in between:
‘When we start considering the larger ecosystem of the proliferating devices, network services, interface technologies, media projects, and over one million apps for mobile platforms available to consumers, the (medium) concept can no longer be stretched to describe them in a meaningful way…The key advantages of a “species model” over a “mediums model” are their large numbers (Earth contains many million species—at least for now); their genetic links (which implies significant overlap in features between related species); and the concept of evolution (which implies constant development over time and gradually increasing diversity)’ (2013: 235).
Thus, Manovich describes a design environment that is in constant change and flux. I would contend that this type of environment is not that alien to practitioners in the documentary and museum exhibition space. It fits well with the historically plastic nature of both the linear documentary and museum exhibition, in the use of whatever material appropriate to the discipline and mashing it up into new types of narrative delivery.
The application of the digital medium to the linear documentary
A linear documentary can be described as having a fixed beginning and end, to be viewed in a continuous and self-contained time frame on a single screen. It has been defined as a time-based artefact (Gaudenzi, 2013). No interaction with the material in the documentary is invited apart from a pre- or post-viewing discourse, although projects can be part of a larger activist strategy, with the documentary being the call to action.
As with many areas of twenty-first century life, the documentary form is being buffeted and inspired alike by the rapid changes in digital media technology. New forms have and are emerging. Kate Nash (2012, 2015) describes these forms as documentary re-mediated for the Internet age, utilising modes and tools of traditional documentary production with interactivity as a new affordance, and the Internet or mobile device as the user platform. The interactivity comes about with the users’ ability to self-direct their interaction with the platform.
Theory and practice around interactive documentary are relatively new fields. Nash posits that the shift to the participatory space of the Internet is transformative in terms of the documentary text and the maker-audience relationship. Unlike linear forms, the maker expects the audience or user to engage with this participatory text. The modes of engagement or user experience are shaped by the maker via the design of the interface. This aligns with Manovich’s proposition that in digital media, software is where authorship takes place.
Sarah Gaudenzi proposes that interactive documentary is any project that uses interactive media technology to document the real, with the emphasis on the ‘interactive-native nature of the artefact, and on the documentation intentionality of the author (2013: 31-32.) She positions linear documentary as representational, in line with my assertion earlier in this paper. She then defines interactive documentary as a relational object, where the work cannot exist as an independent entity and so cannot be analysed using traditional film and documentary theory. Gaudenzi goes on to analyse the position of the people formerly known as the audience, now known as the user in relation to the interactive documentary. Unlike the linear documentary which is a completed and closed artefact, Gaudenzi proposes that the actualization of an interactive documentary can only take place when there is a user who is interacting. The user, in fact becomes part of the system; the user and the interactive documentary bound together in an interdependent loop of action and interaction (Gaudenzi, 2013: 15).
Having established the primacy of the user, interaction and participation, Gaudenzi and Nash propose systems for defining the inherent characteristics of different types of interactive documentary. This desire to impose some order on the landscape draws on the linear documentary tradition, exemplified by Michael Renovs’ documentary tendencies and Bill Nichols modes. Renov proposes ‘impulsions which fuel documentary discourse’ (Renov, 1993: 22). Nichols proposes modes as a way of organizing recurrent features or procedures. (Nichols, 1991: 32).
In the interactive documentary, Nash proposes the notion of structures based on the position of the user within the project. She asserts that there are three relevant aspects of interactivity – control over content, ability to contribute and the framing of the user contributions, and the ability to form relationships and present one’s case. Building on this, she posits that there can be a multidimensionality to participation, these being technological, relational, experiential, and discursive. Gaudenzi (2013) argues that it is this new interaction between the authors and the users that challenges the power relationships of linear documentary. She proposes four modes for interactive documentary, in which the organising principal is the type of interactivity and level of agency. Her modes are the conversational mode which applies to projects whereby the user explores an open-ended environment or situation, the hitchhiking (or hypertext) mode which gives agency to the user through hyperlinks from one area to another. The participatory mode allows the user to contribute to the database, thus participating in the on- gong creation of the work itself. The experiential mode implies embodied interaction with an environment. Gaudenzi brings these modes together in an overarching definition of the interactive documentary as being in fact, the living documentary (living replacing interactive as the descriptor). She explains in the following way: ‘A Living Documentary is … an assemblage composed by heterogeneous elements that are linked through modalities of interaction. It can have different levels of autopoiesis and can be more or less open to transformation’ (2013: 83-84). This idea aligns with Manovich’s theory of speciation as a more appropriate way to think about the computational world of Murray’s digital medium.
In summary, then, the interactive documentary differs from linear documentary in several ways. The representation of the real by an author in a time-based manner by is replaced by a relational, open ended experience. Murray’s four representational properties of digital environments (the procedural, participatory, spatial, and encyclopedic (2011: 8-9) speak to Nash’s notion of multi-dimensional participation. Nash proposes that the viewer is now the user, and the user has agency. Nash and Gaudenzi concur with Manovich and Murray that authorship is expressed in the interface and software design that underwrites what the participatory/interactive relationship and experience will be. They propose that the differing patterns or modes of textual organisation and user experience in interactive documentary can be identified and utilized in designing for the interactive documentary.
Museums, media making and the digital medium
Museum collection theorist Parry argues museums are in themselves a social medium that gives knowledge a spatial form, but are also full of media (see Kidd, 2014). He proposes that historically a museum’s ‘shapes and functions’ have been informed by contemporary communication technologies (ibid.). The communications technologies of the twenty-first century, defined by Murray’s notion of the digital medium, have been embraced by museums, through the use of websites, blogs, wikis, the digitisation of their collections, and in-house and on-line digital interactive activities, to name a few. Exhibition design has also incorporated the affordances of the digital medium. Kidd likens contemporary museum exhibition design to that of the transmedia producer, with an emphasis on participation. As with Parry, Kidd positions museums as media makers and situates the centrality of the exhibition:
‘ …scripting, editing, selecting, designing, commissioning and seeking out ‘blockbusters’ are now significant parts of museological practice. We might note how lighting is manipulated, audio-visual materials are created, oral histories are recorded and stories are told…Russo extends this idea, asserting that ‘the contemporary museum is a media space’ (2014: 6).
This emphasis on the blockbuster, using all the affordances of the digital medium, is in part being driven by increased competition in the market for cultural experience (Kidd, 2014: 8). Stogner proposes that a visitor number focus is the driver to create ‘experience’ that uses a ‘media-enhanced onsite experience’ or ‘media-driven offsite experience’ (see Kidd, 2014: 8-9). As Stogner points out, the interaction with the museum can now also take place off-site and anywhere there is a computational device and internet access. The affordances of the digital medium allows the museum visitor or audience to become a participator, collaborator, or curator. Kidd calls this the mediated museum, which ‘cannot be contained within walls or within dedicated websites … where the notion of a comprehensive, complete and ‘satisfying’ museum encounter begins to lose its appeal in favour of museum experiences that challenge, fragment and spill over into the everyday’ (2014: 24).
It would seem that museums are incorporating the affordances of the digital medium not only into its site-based temporal exhibitions, but into its notion as an entity. The on-site exhibition utilises the affordances of the digital medium, but the museum itself may in part also reside within digital medium. The interactive documentary form is also shifting the documentary forms’ original place of residence, the fixed screen of the cinema of television, within the digital medium. Thus, these two disciplines that have historically pursued the representation of the real in different temporal arenas, may find themselves sharing the same digital space.
Ways in which museological design may inform interactive documentary
I have established that museum exhibition design shares organising and communication principles with the documentary. It is the curatorial process in exhibition, and the editing process in documentary that produce narratives. I have introduced the notion of the digital medium being a part of contemporary museum design, that museums themselves are media makers. I have proposed that the computational digital medium may become a meeting place of the two distinct disciplines of museology and documentary.
Despite these similarities and convergences, there is one historic difference. Museums have by and large existed within a non-linear environment, the environment in which the interactive documentary is now situated. It is for this reason that I propose museum exhibition design in its temporal setting as in informing practice for interactive documentary design.
The museum visitor and the interactive documentary user
The user of an interactive documentary has much in common with the museum visitor. They enter a province that they understand is making claims to the representation of the real. They can interact with whichever of the facets being offered they choose, and for however long they choose. They can engage with the proposed narrative, or simply snippets or chapters of this narrative, and in any order they choose. The challenges for the linear documentary maker moving into this design space are the new considerations that are part of this landscape. Now that there is no time-defined narrative, or single screen, how are users enticed to stay, interact, and participate?
I propose that this lack of compulsion is one of the key design challenges facing interactive documentary designers, and a major shift from linear delivery. An interactive documentary resembles the informality of the museum exhibition in that it proposes content and interaction but cannot compel the user to participate, explore, or stay. So how does museum exhibition design, situated in a three-dimensional environment, with physical objects as its component parts, inform the screen-based discipline of documentary, interactive or otherwise? David Dean describes the rules on engagement for the visitor to the museum: ‘There is no compulsion – no force allowed, needed, or wanted – in a museum visit … visitors can do as they wish within reason. They can learn at their own taste, in their own way, or not at all if they choose’ (2002: 1).
To enhance engagement in this setting, Dean proposes that the ‘patron’ needs to feel physically or intellectually comfortable in an informal environment to have a ‘beneficial learning experience’ in a museum (2002: 1). In order to design this intellectually comfortable environment, he proposes a schema for identifying types of visitors, as follows:
‘First, there are those people who move through a gallery quickly and display exit oriented behaviour. They are often casual visitors using their leisure time to participate in what they consider a worthwhile activity without becoming heavily involved … The second group, on the other hand, are all those who show a genuine interest … However, they ordinarily do not spend much time reading, especially texts that appear difficult or require too much effort to understand. These people prefer a casual, headline approach to information display. They respond strongly to situations that offer visual stimuli. … (Then there is) the … group (who) are a minority … They are willing, and usually able, to understand presented materials no matter how technical. They spend an abundance of time in the galleries … and require little enticement to come (Dean, 2002: 1).
Dean’s identification of types and their needs presents the interactive documentary designer with a method for categorising types of prospective users. This can be added to Gaudenzi and Nash’s modes and structures of participation and interaction. Kidd, similarly, describes the multi-functional world in which Dean’s types now visit an exhibition:
‘Where once, people moved in and out of their status as audiences, using media for specific purposes and then doing something else, being someone else, in our present age of continual immersion in media, we are now continually and unavoidably audiences at the same time as being consumers, relatives, workers, and – fascinating to many – citizens and publics’ (2014: 10).
Stogner also provides a description of the mind set and expectations of this twenty first century museum visitor that speaks directly the implications of the continuous media immersion asserted by Kidd: ‘I want to be entertained / I want it now / I want it everywhere / I want it my way (personalizing, customizing, individualizing) / I want to share with others / I want to create something’ (Kidd, 2014: 5).
To summarise, in an earlier section of this article, I outlined the structures and modes of interactive documentary proposed by Nash and Gaudenzi. They identify the position of the user within the interactive documentary, and what types of participation and agency they may have. However, they do not provide assistance for the linear filmmaker in relation to the new challenge of maintaining user attention when there is no compulsion to stay and find out what happened in the end. Museological theory proposes some methods that may be useful to the interactive documentary designer. The first is the necessity to identify and then design for users who have different styles of interaction. The second it to acknowledge the multifaceted roles that a user is engaged in while interacting with a project. The third and final is to acknowledge the ubiquity of the digital medium in the lives of the citizens of the twenty-first century. This implies expectations of an immediate, personalised, creative, participatory, entertaining interaction. How these properties may be designed for is addressed in the next section.
Designing for interactivity in the museum exhibition and the interactive documentary
Many interactive documentaries are bespoke, as are most museums and their exhibitions. However, there are commonalties of design and engagement considerations that can carry across from one museum and exhibition to another. Kidd proposes a way of thinking about designing for the user/audience. Utilising computer terminology, she proposes Read-Only and Read-Write as ways to describe museological design and the culture of the response it provokes. She describes the central qualities of Read-Only as one where the creativity is generated by the talented individual and consumed by the viewer/audience. The only interaction is in the act of consumption and was the dominant model for engagement with cultural content in the twentieth century (2014: 119). Clearly, Read-Only culture includes the conventions of linear documentary, which positions the filmmaker as the only author, the work as closed and places the audience in a response only position. Kidd goes on to provide her definition of what she calls the Read-Write culture:
‘Read/Write culture differs in that it allows for, and often encourages, practices of remixing where people add to the culture they read by creating and re-creating the culture around them… It is thus a more participatory culture, with users having more options to produce and influence cultural outputs … this media scape reinvents the museum as a mash up, a site of active consumption, micro-creation, co-creativity and remix’ (2014: 118-119).
But does this proposition of the Read-Write mashed up museum provide any guidance to the interactive documentary designer? My answer is yes, it must. The importance of this notion is articulated by Lev Manovich, who identifies remix as the dominating form of the early the twenty first century: ‘If post-modernism defined 1980s, remix definitely dominates 2000s, and it will probably continue to rule the next decade as well’ (Manovich, 2007: 1).
In summary, designers of both disciplines need to be cognizant of the shift from a Read-Only to a Read-Write expectation by visitors. Given Manovich’s proposition of the centrality of the remix culture, this should be considered when designing for interactivity and participation. The user must be placed at the centre of the design and given some form of agency. The authorship and creativity reside in the design of the user experience.
Conclusion
The claim to the representation of the real provides the original commonality between the disciplines of documentary filmmaking and museum exhibition design. I have likened the curatorial process of the museum exhibition to the editing of a documentary and have identified the twentieth-century belief in a grand narrative as part of a Read-only culture in which both disciplines have resided. Postmodernism has altered this perspective so that museum design is now more reflexive as audiences are less willing to accept the museum as authority, and subjectivity is now an acceptable norm in the documentary genre.
The effect of participatory and interactive digital media on visitors and users is an emerging commonality between these two disciplines. They now share similar design considerations: how to engage an audience that is many things at one time, how to talk to the devices that are in everyone’s hands, how to present a narrative but also invite participation and Read-Write, how to represent the real, in a time of participation, remix and remediation.
I have proposed throughout this article that the design of successful museum exhibitions can provide inspiration and guidance for the design of the interactive documentary. This is because museum design is predominantly non-linear. The non-linearity of museum exhibition is articulated in the fact that visitors by and large cannot be compelled to follow a specific route. They may interact with what they want, where they want, for however long they please. By its very nature, museum exhibition is a non-linear representation of the real, unlike the linear documentary viewed on a fixed screen that promises a conclusion in a known amount of time.
Museum designers now have new technologies to consider, that affect both visitors and designers. The tools or properties of the digital medium are computerization, digitisation and software. Key characteristics of the digital medium are interactivity and participation, and authorship lies with the software and interface design that determines how the user will interact, and with what outcome. The medium itself is ever expanding and ever changing, as physical elements become digitised, and new procedures are constantly evolving. The unknowable end-point of the media’s evolution has been likened to that of evolution of Earth’s species and compared to a living organism.
Interactive documentary theorists and practitioners are also grappling with the affordances of the digital medium. The user is now so central to the design of the interactive documentary that it comes into existence only when there is user interaction. This may also apply to the design of some museum exhibitions that utilise a high degree of interactive media content. The different ways in which this interaction between user and media can take place have been identified by Nash and Gaudenzi. It is in eliciting engagement with the user that interactive documentary designers may look to museological design for clues. Of primary importance is the usability (comfort) of design, in the form of clear purpose or function. Also important is the acknowledgement of the centrality of the digitised citizen and their need for agency in the form of interaction and participation, if they are not to leave the metaphoric room.
But ultimately it is not the answers but the exchange of ideas, the sharing of experience, the collapse of boundaries between museum and documentary where the possibilities of the disciplines informing each other lie. As their historic/legacy theories and practices become less useful in designing for the digital medium, I propose that documentary filmmakers moving into the interactive design space may consider studying museum exhibitions as part of their professional practice. In observing the types of visitors, they need to ask how the visitor ‘type’ has been designed for? How has Murray’s four representational properties of digital environments – the procedural, participatory, spatial, and encyclopeadic – been applied? What constitutes satisfying agency and how has that been achieved for each category of visitor? If, as Manovich and Gaudenzi suggest, the digital medium is akin to a living and ever-evolving species, the constant change that this implies requires that designers working within it must look beyond what they know. This article suggests one small step in interdisciplinary collaboration in those dealing with the digital medium and the representation of the real.
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