HUGUES SWEENEY Head of French Language Interactive Media Producer, NFB Canada (CA)

PARTICIPATING AS A CONFERENCE SPEAKER, A PIXEL MARKET PARTICIPANT & THINK TANK PARTICIPANT

The Conference | 13.45 – 14.05
Prototyping with our audience
Interactive stories and experiences are only good and relevant the way they are manipulated by the end user. They are conceived for someone (or a tons of people) to crawl inside, circulate, manipulate, hesitate, move things around, alter, react, lie down, maybe daydream… Prototyping the technology is not enough: we need to prototype the user experience with the user himself in order to get it right. Industrial design and architects have been good at this for decades. But what does it mean for documentary? If its process is a creative interpretation of the world, what happen to this very interpretation when the audience is part of the process? We will think about the idea of prototyping when the audience is part of the design process through conception, development and production phases with NFB’s Megaphone, A Journal of Insomnia and Primal.

After several years of twisting letters as well as ideas by studying philosophy, literature and Death Metal, Hugues Sweeney became interested in stories as much as the opportunities that technology offers to tell them. First in new media at Radio Canada, then head of Bande à Part and Espace Musique, he joined the National Film Board of Canada in 2009 as executive producer dedicated to interactive works. Continuing experimentation both in the grammar of interaction, in sound creation or in generative art, projects from the interactive studio of the NFB has received more than 80 awards and honors all around the globe including Webby, SXSW, Japan Media Arts and the Gémeaux. nfb.ca/interactive.