Embodiment, AI and the Perception of the Real
A Report produced through MIT ODL x IDFA DocLab Research and Development Network, DocLab 2023 festival, published September 2024
To explore the full report, click here.
Executive summary
As creative media technologies continue to evolve, we are seeing expansion in the ways in which participants’ bodies are drawn into the produced experiences. Embodiment, on the one hand, is a persistent state of being human, and so any media experience is to some extent embodied. However, the affordances of immersive and interactive media technologies enable more explicit forms of embodiment, where movement and multi-sensory approaches can be incorporated into the progress of a work.
These technological developments that enable embodiment are being increasingly used by documentarians to experiment with representations of the real. The nonfiction project is expanding forwards, as makers and audiences not only examine reality but constitute it, at times through physical interaction. While there might be a tension between documenting the real and creating the real through an interactive experience, tensions can offer creative avenues for exploration.
At IDFA DocLab in November 2023, MIT researchers explored how the different forms of possible embodiment were being used by artists, and how they had impact on audience experience and understanding. We wanted to understand what strategies and tools artists are using, how these projects are being received by audiences, and whether the knowledge communicated or experience delivered is distinct from that shared by more traditional forms of flat screen media.
We also wanted to find out whether and how discomfort was being used in creative ways by the projects. Discomfort is a challenging notion in media – on the one hand we’re getting better at spotting and preparing for it, for instance we now know the importance of trigger warnings. On the other hand, many of us are retreating into filter bubbles so we are less likely to be presented with uncomfortable truths, or ideas that unsettle us. We can avoid discomfort of the conceptual variety with some ease. So are artists finding ways to reinsert some discomfort, to trouble us with unease?
Early immersive media experimentation often purported to offer a fully virtual reality, distinct from the physical world. Now, we see increasingly creative approaches that ask critical questions of our perception of reality and toy with slippages, many of which use embodied practices to do so. Also, given the explosion of tools using Artificial Intelligence in the last year or two, we aimed to examine how these were being used in the expanded documentary field, and how they might connect with this questioning of realities. Following is a list of the key takeaways from the research.
Key Takeaways
Waking up the body is a new grammar of expanded documentary
Many artists are taking time early within their projects to gradually familiarise audiences with an embodied approach.
A sense of embodiment presents several challenges to audiences – it challenges perception and focus, and is a useful strategy for eliciting creative discomfort. Discomfort can also provoke a consideration of technology.
Artists are moving beyond the aspiration to offer participants an experience of ‘walking in another’s shoes’, to recognise and highlight the slippages between realities offered by creative technologies.
Survey results demonstrate that audiences understand there can be multiple perceptual layers to stories and are comfortable travelling between them.
Projects continue to push beyond the ‘critique-or-embrace’ binary, finding nuance in big questions around AI. Makers are reflexively using the tools to interrogate the concepts, using audience bodies as a site of engagement, and also finding benefits to the technologies even amongst strong critique.
To explore the full report, click here.
Cite this report:
Scott-Stevenson, J. & Wolozin, S. (2024) Embodiment, AI and the perception of the real. MIT Open Documentary Lab.