Marina Hassapopoulou

Interactive Cinema explores cinematic practices that work to transform what is often seen as a primarily receptive activity into a participatory, multimedia experience. Surveying a multitude of unorthodox approaches throughout the history of motion pictures, Marina Hassapopoulou offers insight into a range of largely ephemeral and site-specific projects that consciously assimilate viewers into their production.

Analyzing examples of early cinema, Hollywood B movies, museum and gallery installations, virtual-reality experiments, and experimental web-based works, Hassapopoulou travels across numerous platforms, highlighting a diverse array of strategies that attempt to unsettle the allegedly passive spectatorship of traditional cinema. Through an exploration of these radically inventive approaches to the medium, many of which emerged out of sociopolitical crises and periods of historical transition, she works to expand notions of interactivity by considering it in both technological and phenomenological terms.

Deliberately revising and expanding Eurocentric scholarship to propose a much broader, transnational scope, the book emphasizes the ethical dimensions of interactive media and their links to larger considerations around community building, citizenship, and democracy. By combining cutting-edge theory with updated conventional film studies methodologies, Interactive Cinema presses at the conceptual limits of cinema and offers an essential road map to the rapidly evolving landscape of contemporary media.
Publisher link: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/interactive-cinema

The 1990s marked the beginning of a new Europe, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet
Union, the reunification of Germany, and the inclusion of more countries into the European
Union. The 1990s also marked a transitional phase for cinema, starting with the mainstreaming
of computer-based editing systems. The connection between the “crisis” in cinematic ontology
brought about by the introduction of digital technologies, and the fact that it closely coincided
with identity crises in Europe has not yet been critically explored. This connection is, however,
aptly depicted in the hybrid aesthetics of some turn-of-the-century national and co-produced
European films, such as L’auberge espagnole (Klapisch, 2002), A Touch of Spice (Boulmetis,
2003), Run Lola Run (Tykwer, 1998), and Killer.Berlin.doc (Ellerkamp and Heitmann, 1999).
These films experiment with interface aesthetics, database analogies, interactive mapping tools,
and CGI, as well as with older filmmaking techniques, without settling on a consistent cinematic
register; the resulting composite aesthetics destabilizes the idea of localism and proposes new
transnational spaces that partly emerge due to digital connectivity. The digital, which is
oftentimes perceived as ahistorical, universal, and immaterial, becomes infused with cultural and
site-specific meaning when used to reflect and visualize European changes. Despite their
cosmopolitan emphasis, these films conjure up hybrid analog-digital revisionist versions of the
past (and present) to reconfigure –rather than completely revoke– national identities. By
analyzing the hybrid aesthetics in these films through key concepts in digital media theory –such
as database narrative, interactivity, and spatial montage– as well as transnational theory and
memory studies, I argue that the experimental approach to digital techniques translates into a
culturally-specific critique of connectivity, globalization, and mobility at a time where European
borders, like cinema’s boundaries, were being expanded and renegotiated. This retrospective
analysis of Europe’s cinema-in-transition is particularly important at a time when European and
cinematic borders are once again being challenged and reconfigured.

Published in: Writing and the Digital Generation.

This book chapter that interrogates how commercial interests shape interactions among fans and their objects of fandom, using the TV show Heroes as the main case study. The chapter critiques the ways in which the NBC network curated web content and streamlined fan participation, and contextualizes commercially sanctioned fan interactions within larger frameworks of fan studies, audience reception studies, participatory culture, and digital rhetoric.

With the increasing proliferation of digital technologies into our daily routines, long-standing debates have resurfaced on the potential of prosthetic devices to extend our cognitive capacities and distribute intelligence across human and non-human agents. This article will propose ways in which we, as educators, can harness the distractions that new technologies can pose to teaching and research towards productive models of distributed attention and collective intelligence. By reflecting on the relationship between play and pedagogy through critical theory, as well as on the benefits of hyper-connected and collaborative learning, this article hopes to expand the branch of Digital Humanities that Holly Willis terms as the “cinematic humanities.” Remixing, recontextualization, and the non-linear/non-sequential reconfiguration of information can provide us with new modes of distributed attention and critical making in the digital age. This article focuses on low and no-budget process-oriented collaborative projects for Cinema, Media Studies, and Digital Humanities courses (adjustable to other subject matters) that incorporate remixing, social and locative media, and augmented reality into experimental modes of connected and collaborative learning. The first assignment is a live film scoring remix, where students collectively brainstormed on picking sound clips/samples to add new soundtracks to early silent films. Remixing practices can offer new insights into cinema's legacy and challenge ocularcentric notions of film spectatorship by, in this case, reversing the conventional hierarchy of image-sound into sound-image and reflecting on how our minds attempt to process the impulse of sensory synchronization in cinema. The second sample assignment proposes new ways of using easy-to-learn and accessible GIS (Geographic Information System) and AR (Augmented Reality) tools to create projects related to civic engagement and local/online activism. The drifts from pre-determined learning outcomes are meant to be active disruptions to any prescribed limitations that delimit what digital humanities should or should not be, and other issues that often undermine the potential contributions to digital humanities that derive from the intellectual and material labor that happens in the networked, expanded and distributed classroom. The remix aesthetic, the “unfinished” and makeshift nature of these projects is something that I find adds value to this kind of process-oriented pedagogy because it remains in touch with the pre-institutionalized experimental ethos that prompted the formation of the digital humanities and other disciplinary cross-pollinations.

The notion of identification in visual media that require user participation is problematic. When images become clickable and navigable, then the viewer is no longer a viewer but a participant in the unfolding of the narrative. Theories of visual representation and cinematic spectatorship cannot fully account for modes of interactive spectatorship because the more the viewer is kinesthetically implicated into the formation and progression of moving images, the more the interactive action moves towards the literal realm. In this article, I explore emerging forms of interactive spectatorship through Stanton Audemars’s controversial Stockholm: An Exploration of True Love (2008), and connect those to a broader critical history of the sociological aspects of cinema. Stockholm: An Exploration of True Love challenges the boundaries of a voyeuristic subjectivity that is free of the tension associated with acting out desires elicited by the images on the screen, by inviting the viewer to bec...

This article explores the cultural politics and ethical questions at stake in Virtual Reality (VR) docugames (documentay games). Instead of focusing on historical authenticity, I argue that VR docugames epistemologically employ interactive mechanisms to create malleable histories that affectively challenge monolithic understandings of the past and interrogate the cultural ideology of memorialization. Focusing on immersive docugames and their relation to historicity, nationalism, and collective trauma offers additional insights into technologically influenced mnemonic processes, and complicates the much-hyped claims about VR’s empathy-inducing potential. The hybrid nature of docugames affords a unique interdisciplinary approach that enables the study of video games within a larger spectrum of networked practices of cultural memory and collective historiography beyond medium-specificity. The collapse of perceived distinctions between video games and other media paves the way towards a multisensory understanding of historicity and the global dynamics of cultural memory, as well as the fluctuating status of their subjects.

With the increasing proliferation of digital technologies into our daily routines, long-standing debates have resurfaced on the potential of prosthetic devices to extend our cognitive capacities and distribute intelligence across human and non-human agents. This article will propose ways in which we, as educators, can harness the distractions that new technologies can pose to teaching and research towards productive models of distributed attention and collective intelligence.

By reflecting on the relationship between play and pedagogy through critical theory, as well as on the benefits of hyper-connected and collaborative learning, this article hopes to expand the branch of Digital Humanities that Holly Willis terms as the “cinematic humanities.” Remixing, recontextualization, and the non-linear/non-sequential reconfiguration of information can provide us with new modes of distributed attention and critical making in the digital age.

This article focuses on low and no-budget process-oriented collaborative projects for Cinema, Media Studies, and Digital Humanities courses (adjustable to other subject matters) that incorporate remixing, social and locative media, and augmented reality into experimental modes of connected and collaborative learning. The first assignment is a live film scoring remix, where students collectively brainstormed on picking sound clips/samples to add new soundtracks to early silent films. Remixing practices can offer new insights into cinema's legacy and challenge ocularcentric notions of film spectatorship by, in this case, reversing the conventional hierarchy of image-sound into sound-image and reflecting on how our minds attempt to process the impulse of sensory synchronization in cinema. The second sample assignment proposes new ways of using easy-to-learn and accessible GIS (Geographic Information System) and AR (Augmented Reality) tools to create projects related to civic engagement and local/online activism.

The drifts from pre-determined learning outcomes are meant to be active disruptions to any prescribed limitations that delimit what digital humanities should or should not be, and other issues that often undermine the potential contributions to digital humanities that derive from the intellectual and material labor that happens in the networked, expanded and distributed classroom. The remix aesthetic, the “unfinished” and makeshift nature of these projects is something that I find adds value to this kind of process-oriented pedagogy because it remains in touch with the pre-institutionalized experimental ethos that prompted the formation of the digital humanities and other disciplinary cross-pollinations.

Curated post for Media Res special issue on Collaborative Storytelling.
http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2016/11/07/variable-authorship-social-film
Excerpt:
Social films are films that are pieced together from crowdsourced content submitted by social media users. In the film industry, the crowdsourcing model has already resulted in some critically acclaimed projects. Giving audiences the chance to contribute to the process of storytelling has the capacity of significantly subverting top-down hierarchical paradigms of production and consumption, and creating an impactful expressive platform for the disenfranchised. However, crowdsourcing rarely results in completely horizontalized and egalitarian modes of production.

Link: http://www.idmaajournal.org/2016/05/interactive-pedagogy-social-media-repurposing-in-cinema-studies/

There is more to the digital than the computational and, therefore, more to the Digital Humanities (DH) than the much discussed “computational turn.” With this in mind, I would like to use my analysis of a collaborative, multimedia class project as a way of thinking beyond the computational for Humanities research, while still maintaining the experimental ethos that characterizes DH-related projects. The featured project analyzes the potential contributions of social networking tools to the documentation of personal moments in film history, and proposes an alternative, networked mode of film historiography. In this hybrid learning assignment, students are tasked with creatively using social media such as Twitter, Facebook, FaceTime, Vine, iMessage, Instagram, Snapchat, and live blogging to document and reflect on their experience of watching a specific film. The assignment has a problem-solving component characteristic of multimodal learning: students are challenged to use networked media they interact with on a regular basis as makeshift archival tools to produce their unique perspective on a film screening and, collectively, contribute to audience reception studies in a digital context.

"Analysis Beyond Analytics: Exploring the Transformative Crossover Between Cinema & Media Studies and the Digital Humanities," guest blog post, NYU Digital Humanities, NYU Center for the Humanities, April 2016. Link:  http://nyuhumanities.org/analysis-beyond-analytics/

Published in Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, Issue 9 (2015)

The notion of identification in visual media that require user participation is problematic. When images become clickable and navigable, then the viewer is no longer a viewer but a participant in the unfolding of the narrative. Theories of visual representation and cinematic spectatorship cannot fully account for modes of interactive spectatorship because the more the viewer is kinesthetically implicated into the formation and progression of moving images, the more the interactive action moves towards the literal realm. In this article, I explore emerging forms of interactive spectatorship through Stanton Audemars’s controversial Stockholm: An Exploration of True Love (2008), and connect those to a broader critical history of the sociological aspects of cinema. Stockholm: An Exploration of True Love challenges the boundaries of a voyeuristic subjectivity that is free of the tension associated with acting out desires elicited by the images on the screen, by inviting the viewer to become complicit in the virtual performance of sadomasochistic acts. An exploration of the processes of conditioning and reorienting spectatorship in interactive films can offer profound insights into the pedagogical potential of interactivity, especially through examples that push the boundaries of both interactivity and cinematic representation.

Published in NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies.

The increasing use of software and database aesthetics in film and video production has created hybrid modes of spectatorship by altering the dynamic between media production and reception. The reduction in the degree and compass of authorial control invites us to reconsider existing models of cinematic spectatorship and narration within new contexts of mobility, performance, and collaboration. Furthermore, it requires us to update and expand our approaches to film and media studies in order to more effectively account for changes in the conditions of film viewing in the digital age.

In this article, I develop the concept of interactive spectatorship and the sub-category of procedural spectatorship (process-based/ interrupted viewing) to more fittingly describe the viewers of non-traditional cinemas and, more broadly, the modes of subjectivity that emerge from our interactions with digital media.

Published in: Screening the Past.
While concepts of interactivity are generally bound to mythologies characterized by rhetoric of empowerment and/or user manipulation, I focus on historically, socially, and politically specific sub-discourses associated with interactivity. These particularities enable us to approach interactivity as more than a technologically oriented phenomenon, and – significantly – to understand it outside of the developmental path that leads to (and often ends with) digital media. I expand the concept of discontinuous and variable media(ted) history through rigorous cross-contextual analysis of both undiscovered and pioneering interactive films such as the Czechoslovakian film Kinoautomat.

Description and analysis of a remix blogging assignment I created for a Digital Composition course (Writing Through Media). The assignment asks students to construct their identity using found media, and to reflect on the process of appropriation and multimodal composition.

Published in the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy.

http://jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/authentic-hybridity-remix-and-appropriation-as-multimodal-composition/

Published in: Writing and the Digital Generation.

This book chapter that interrogates how commercial interests shape interactions among fans and their objects of fandom, using the TV show Heroes as the main case study. The chapter critiques the ways in which the NBC network curated web content and directed fan participation, and contextualizes commercially sanctioned fan interactions within larger frameworks of fan studies, audience reception studies, participatory culture, and digital rhetoric.

A large-scale critical history of representations of Greeks in the U.S. media that aims to provide a comprehensive overview of mediated stereotypes over the last 60 years. This article also reflects on issues of immigration, diaspora, cultural heritage, and ethnicity in the mediated construction of Hellenic identity.

Queering Cinephilia: Towards a New Greek Cinema - a Critical Commons annotated clip commentary to mark the 10th anniversary of the Greek film, Straight Story. http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/marinahass/clips/straight-story-queer-remix

This talk (part of a forthcoming article) focuses on a collaborative multimedia class project that analyzes the potential contributions of social networking tools to the documentation of personal moments in film history. The project -- a collaboration between myself and some of my students -- proposes an alternative, networked mode of film historiography. The approach suggests an expanded understanding of Digital Humanities (DH) methods for Film Studies research – a methodology that uses digital media to propose new modes of inquiry without relying on computational methods, and reminding students that there are many more tools and methods for DH research than data mining, GIS mapping, and data-driven visualizations.

The study of interactive cinema(s) –ranging from prototypes such as Kinoautomat (1966-7) to digital formats like Late Fragment (2007) – points to some crucial gaps in contemporary film theory. The body plays a central role in interactive cinema, while the mind is often neglected, as the emphasis is typically placed on the viewer’s physically active role in the composition of the work. This emphasis on the spectator’s somatic implication into the film often results in a body that is not the spectator’s “own,” but a mechanically-functioning entity. However, even if these works often fail to fulfil the objective of offering a customizable and “active/reactive” film experience, they nonetheless refuse to fall into established models of film theory and, even, satisfactory categorization.

This paper proposes an interdisciplinary approach to interactive cinema, which not only encompasses psychic, social, and biological structures, but also incorporates the materiality of experience into an expanded understanding of subjectivity. Interactive cinema is used here as a case study that fosters productive inquiry on the limitations of film reception theory.

This study calls for an approach that properly acknowledges the heterogeneity of individual responses to cinema, without falling into the often inevitable trap of imposing universalized notions of “body,” “mind,” and “culture” onto an abstract conception of  the “subject.” From this study, a broader question about spectatorship emerges: how can we account for individual responses to cinema through theory, without neglecting aspects such as that of bodily difference (beyond that of biological/ cultural notions of gender)?

Excerpt from presentation given at: Reimagining the Archive: Remapping and Remixing Traditional Models in the Digital Era, UCLA.

A central – yet, surprisingly, not often expressed – problem regarding the study of interactive cinema is that of how to write about site-specific interactive works (including interactive screenings) when opportunities to experience them are usually very limited. Even though these works can remotely be accessed through websites, photographs, and video-recordings, the element of “interactivity” is hard to convey through archiving. My presentation will reflect on the difficulties of gaining access to such works, and what is lost and gained when accessing them indirectly through the frameworks of other media (e.g. via websites) and from a remote context. Do they lose their “interactive” essence once archived? And how can we, as educators, assign pedagogical value to archives of interactive works so that we can teach about things we (and our students) have not directly experienced?

If we look at interactive cinema screenings as events, then are they, like the Happenings, not meant to be reproduced or archived? Many film and media studies scholars mourn the loss of immediacy in mediated access. And yet, how much insight do we actually gain, in our conditions of interaction, into a “text” and its surrounding discourses (e.g., circulation, reception, etc.) by accessing it in its putatively “original” form?

A more productive way of looking at the often only partial reproductions of interactive cinema installations is as archives of events/moments. The documentation of interactive events ensures greater exposure for cutting edge experiments in the field of interactive cinema. Perhaps if events such as the screenings of Radúz Činčera’s Kinoautomat and the experience(s) of navigating Kroitor’s Labyrinth had received more exposure (and more detailed photographic and narrative documentation), they could have been more known to the public.

Nevertheless, due to the inaccessibility of –or limited access to– these works, fewer people can experience and relate to them directly, and therefore fewer people can write about them. Thus, the archive of those interactive experiences runs the risk of becoming “just” an archive of personal experiences – of others’ experiences, not “our” own.

Consequently, the majority of us, as critics and educators, have to rely on indirect information about these works that often cannot be independently verified. This complicates the task of creating a comprehensive archive, and raises questions of inclusion, authority, organization, and cultural value.

Curation and organization, with support from Marsha Kinder (USC), NYU Cinema Studies & NYU MIAP.

University of South California Projects Showcase: A special retrospective on Marsha Kinder’s collaborative USC Labyrinth Project(s) & other pioneering interactive works. A special showcase organized for the Transformations I: Cinema & Media Studies Research Meets Digital Humanities Tools, New York University, April 16, 2016.

A Critical Commons video annotation of Alex Rivera's independent sci-fi film, Sleep Dealer (2008) to extend Alison Landsberg's notion of prosthetic memory into interactive and networked forms of virtual media, and to explore the idea of the extended mind.
Link: http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/marinahass/clips/prosthetic-memory/view

Workshop organizer & host. NYCDH week 2016. Workshop description:

A workshop focusing on demonstrations and applications of easy-to-use platforms for film/audiovisual media analysis, such as video annotation software, and interactive image annotation tools. In addition to brief how-to tutorials, this workshop will also give examples of how to productively incorporate those tools into multimedia assignments for Film and Media Studies courses. A selection of student projects from past courses I taught will be included, including collaborative DH class projects, and participants can also share their own examples during the workshop.