The Texture of Actuality: New Media Documentary

'If restricting one's technical and aesthetic means aids creative work, then multimedia faces all kinds of problems. The capacity to provide interactive access to many different types of media with a single delivery context means almost anything is possible, and can also mean that nothing much happens. Interactive documentary provides, for me, a clear example. It remains less an established genre than an intractably emerging sphere of creative possibilities. Everybody recognises the potential, but all we've seen so far are technically polished, but fairly dull, information projects, rivers of streaming linear media, and the odd appealing (if difficult to navigate) experimental work. There is little that seems to have realised the potential of the genre.'