14 Oct MIT Open Documentary Lab at Double Exposure Festival 2021
Cambridge, Mass. (October 14, 2021) — This year, several members of the Open Documentary Lab (ODL) community will be featured in the Double Exposure Symposium (Oct. 13-15, 2021), which will welcome filmmakers and journalists, both established and emerging, for three days of intensive discussion and training, in a collegial atmosphere.
The panel Augmented Reality and the New Frontiers of Journalism was presented in partnership with ODL. Kat Cizek, Artistic Director of the Co-Creation Studio at ODL, will take part in the panel Deepfakery and Satire. Abby Sun, a researcher at ODL and Editor at Immerse, will moderate the panel Making the Metaverse: Part 1, Case Studies. Sarah Wolozin, Director of ODL, will moderate the followup panel titled Making the Metaverse: Part 2, Reimagining the Present. ODL Affiliate and Immerse Publisher Jessica Clark will take part in two panels, Constructing the New/s: Year One, and Futurist Writers Room: The Future of Reality. ODL Fellow Joshua Glick will take part in the panel Filming the Near Impossible.
Register for the festival here, and learn more about the panels below!
AUGMENTED REALITY AND THE NEW FRONTIERS OF JOURNALISM
1:15 PM – 2:45 PM EDT on Wednesday, Oct 13, 2021
Speakers: Eileen Guo, Jenna Pirog, Karthik Patanjali, Ziv Schneider, Ray Soto
Technology is creating new forms of experiencing stories with the power to change how we see and understand news. Through experiments in augmented reality, people can view a place or a story superimposed with layers of historical context, immerse themselves in an environment or situation, or graft a faraway scene onto their own living rooms. Is this the future of journalism or a byway, and what are the implications of these new frontiers?
This panel is presented in partnership with MIT Open Documentary Lab.
10:00 AM – 11:30 AM EDT on Thursday, October 14, 2021
Speakers: Katerina Cizek, Henry Ajder, Sam Gregory, Stephanie Lepp
A sneak peak of an upcoming report called Just Joking: Deepfakes, Satire, Gaslighting and the Politics of Synthetic Media. In their ongoing collaboration, Human Rights organization WITNESS and Co-Creation Studio at MIT Open Documentary Lab are releasing a new report in Fall 2021, an analysis of over 70 recent deepfake cases from around the world, framed with critical questions and discussion. For Double Exposure, Sam Gregory (WITNESS) and Katerina Cizek (CoCr) assemble a diverse cast of panelists to show, discuss and debate some of these recent deepfakes (some funny/some not, some satirical/some not) and to surface key questions in the turbulent social media waters of deliberate and accidental mis-contextualization, misinformation and disinformation. What’s deceit or attack? Who decides what’s funny, what’s fair, and who is accountable?
MAKING THE METAVERSE: PART 1, CASE STUDIES
11:15 AM – 12:45 PM EDT on Thursday, Oct 14, 2021
Speakers: Violeta Ayala, Robert Hernandez, Abby Sun
Who is investing into the metaverse, and who will it benefit? Three pioneering makers present case studies that illuminate how artists interested in journalistic practices can engage with or make work for a metaverse future. These projects include ones that are deploying new technologies or are situated in virtual worlds, as well as traditional documentary film investigations into the ways the metaverse is already being made and contested around us. The first part of the “Making the Metaverse” panels will ground us before part two, which features a conversation between writers, academics, and thinkers who will help us make sense of the morass of lingo and techno-determinist expectations. Presented as part of the fifth anniversary issue of Immerse, the leading publication that champions and critically engages with new immersive nonfiction storytelling.
This panel is presented in partnership with MIT Open Documentary Lab and Immerse.
MAKING THE METAVERSE: PART 2, REIMAGINING THE PRESENT
1:15 PM – 2:45 PM EDT on Thursday, Oct 14, 2021
Speakers: Kathryn Karaoglu Hamilton, Jesse Damiani, Andrew Wang, Sarah Wolozin
Following three in-depth case studies, this panel of writers and journalists who specialize in reporting, digesting, and thinking on developments seamlessly linking together and complicating the connections between our physical and digital world will expand our lens beyond the specific. This free- and high-spirited conversation will tackle the bigger-picture stakes of using the term “metaverse” for projects that come from journalistic practices. Presented as part of the fifth anniversary issue of Immerse, the leading publication that champions and critically engages with new immersive nonfiction storytelling.
This panel is presented in partnership with MIT Open Documentary Lab and Immerse.
CONSTRUCTING THE NEW/S: YEAR ONE
9:30 AM – 10:45 AM EDT on Friday, Oct 15, 2021
Speakers: Jessica Clark, Farai Chideya
Moved to action by widespread reckonings in newsrooms over race and gender equity, the Ford Foundation released a report in 2020 titled Reconstructing American News. Commissioned by journalism program officer Farai Chideya and authored by Jessica Clark’s team at Dot Connector Studio, the report detailed the pressing need for investment in diverse journalism innovators, and the ways in which such leaders had stepped up in a time of unprecedented strife to rethink reporting on the pandemic and racial justice.
Now, a year later, Chideya and Clark are bringing the report’s recommendations to life. Last fall, Chideya launched a podcast, Our Body Politic, unapologetically centered on reporting on not just how women of color experience the major political events of today, but how they are shaping and influencing those very issues. With support from Ford, Clark launched the New/s initiative at the Guild of Future Architects—a three-year exploration of what it takes to support mission-focused news innovators who are women, BIPOC and/or LGBTQI+. The two will discuss their parallel approaches, and take questions from attendees about how both funding and journalism are evolving to better represent people’s lived realities and address complex social issues.
1:00 PM – 2:30 PM EDT on Friday, Oct 15, 2021
Speakers: Joshua Glick, Matthew Heineman, Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Seth Freed Wessler, Antonio Méndez Esparza, Dana Green
The completion of any documentary is always something of a miracle: securing funding, accessing participants willing to open their lives to the camera over months, sometimes years, bringing it to audiences. But a small number of films take these challenges to new heights, rendering people, spaces and institutions that are largely invisible — for legal or practical reasons — and making them visible through the camera’s eye. The filmmakers on this panel take us into such places as the inner sanctum of a family court in Tallahassee, Florida and a private Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Ocilla, Georgia. How did these filmmakers and visual journalists access these near impossible spaces, and what were the logistical, ethical and legal considerations they had to undertake once filming became possible.
FUTURIST WRITERS ROOM: THE FUTURE OF REALITY
2:45 PM – 4:15 PM EDT on Friday, Oct 15, 2021
Speakers: Jessica Clark, Karim Ahmad, Robert Earl Sinclair, Alicia Bell
Journalism and documentary are both technologies of capturing and interrogating the real. But how might the ways in which we represent reality have changed 20 years ago to head off the current crisis of misinformation? And how might news creators and audiences experience a more nuanced and pluralistic version of reality in 2040?
Jessica Clark of the Guild of Future Architect’s New/s Initiative will host a participatory session inviting attendees to imagine alternate pasts and speculative futures for the intersecting practices of documentary and news.
Come prepared to stretch your minds and rethink your assumptions in this fast-paced workshop. Need some inspiration before jumping in? Take a look at the Making a New Reality toolkit, co-authored by Clark and the guild’s Kamal Sinclair.
This panel builds upon the earlier session, Constructing the New/s.