Zoom – The Tangible Past, 2004

prototype for an interactive documentary film

In cooperation with the Sandberg Institute Amsterdam the Stimuleringsfonds Nederlandse Culturele Omroepproducties organized in Autumn 2003 the workshop Stifo@Sandberg. The workshop aimed to design from an existing documentary film an interactive concept for nonlinear media.

Predicating on footage from director Willem Wit’s documentary film Het stoffelijk geheugen (The Material Memory), Wits and graphic designer Niels Schrader developed an interactive installation, whose navigation principle relies on the tactile sense.

By touching a glass screen and scaling the floating interface controls, the user navigates through individual chapters. Via zooming in and out of the digital projection the context of particular sequences opens up: the more abstract the moving picture, the more concrete is the tone, the less clear the voice, the clearer becomes the visual display.

The results of the workshop Stifo@Sandberg were presented at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (The Netherlands) on January 29th, 2004.

Download the following document (Dutch) for a detailed description of the project.

concept in collaboration with: Willem Wits; programming: Pascal de Man

Mock-up of the interactive installation.