{"id":57163,"date":"2023-08-14T20:53:58","date_gmt":"2023-08-14T20:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/villa-albertine.org\/news\/interview-with-sarah-wolozin\/"},"modified":"2023-10-17T22:12:07","modified_gmt":"2023-10-17T22:12:07","slug":"interview-with-sarah-wolozin","status":"publish","type":"app_news","link":"https:\/\/villa-albertine.org\/va\/news\/interview-with-sarah-wolozin\/","title":{"rendered":"Sarah Wolozin: \u201cWith any true experimentation, there is failure\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

About Sarah Wolozin:<\/strong>\u00a0Sarah Wolozin is the Founding Director of the MIT Open Documentary Lab<\/a>. She is also the founder and editorial director of Docubase<\/a>, co-founder and a member of the editorial collective of Immerse<\/a>, and co-founder of the Co-Creation Studio. Wolozin has long had an interest in exploring, researching and incubating new story forms and processes for social change. She has sat on numerous committees and juries including Tribeca Storyscapes, Tribeca New Media Fund, Sundance New Frontier Story Lab, the IFP Media Center, Puma Impact Award, and World Press Photo. She has presented at Sundance, MOMA, SXSW, International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam, Storycode, MIT, DocMontevideo and many other venues.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In what way do (and did) American universities actively participate in making innovative forms of new media emerge?\u202f\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Universities provide an important space for innovation because they are set up for research, experimentation, and new ideas to emerge. People have the time, resources and freedom to experiment. There is an expectation that faculty, researchers and students will develop new ideas and theories.\u00a0 With any true experimentation, there is failure. When trying something that has never been done before, there is no roadmap and learning from the failure becomes an important part of the process. If you are not failing, you are not pushing the boundaries. A space where you can iterate is key. Innovative forms of new media can emerge when there is not the pressure of producing a product that must sell or be ready for prime time.<\/p>\n

Do universities dedicate spaces to VR? And did the teachers at MIT already integrate VR into their curriculums?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Universities are increasingly dedicating space to create immersive media with VR. Besides MIT, other universities that come to mind are Emerson College, Berklee College, Arizona State University, and University of Southern California among others. There are also universities who have been experimenting with VR for many years for other uses such as medical and educational. Our lab, the MIT Open Documentary Lab, offered the first VR production course at MIT in 2017.\u00a0 It was called HackingVR <\/a>and taught by Sandra Rodriguez. Oculus created a program to seed VR curricula in universities back in 2017 and we were selected as a pilot together with nine other universities.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Working on new media, especially in labs, can be highly specialized. How do you and your team work on making your research accessible to the general public and more inclusive for creators?\u202f\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s very important to us to make our research accessible to the general public and specifically for creators. We have created several resources that \u201ctranslate\u201d our research for a general public.\u00a0 One is Immerse, a medium publication, whose purpose is to provide a forum for practitioners to reflect on their work and to be a bridge between academia and industry. Articles are written in a journalistic style rather than an academic style.\u00a0 We also created Docubase which distills essential data and information about digital documentaries that anyone can use and access. It\u2019s very important to me that we share knowledge and learn from practitioners, students and scholars as well as the general public. We write our reports in an accessible way and post them on our website. I am not trained as an academic and have always made it a priority to make MIT knowledge accessible to all.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Images from \u201cA Father\u2019s Lullaby,\u201d an immersive, interactive work by Rashin Fahandej, a current fellow in MIT\u2019s Open Documentary Lab. \u00a9 Rashin Fahandej \/ MIT Open Documentary Lab<\/p>\n\t\t<\/figcaption>\n\t<\/figure>\n\n\n

How do you attract such a diverse range of people, going from technologists, artists to scholars?\u202f\u202f\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

We attract people from many disciplines who want to push the boundaries of documentary storytelling<\/a>.\u00a0 We value and encourage interdisciplinary research and our mission is to bring artists, scholars and technologists together.\u00a0 People interested in this kind of documentary experimentation and environment usually find us. Our field brings artists and technologists together and our lab is well known in the field. We sit in a world-famous academic institution so scholars interested in interactive and immersive documentary usually find us too.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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