Interactive Documentaries: A Golden Age MARIAN F URSU and VILMOS ZSOMBORI Goldsmiths, University of London, UK JOHN WYVER and LUCIE CONRAD Illuminations, London, UK IAN KEGEL and DOUG WILLIAMS BT, UK This article is motivated by the opportunity presented by recent advancements in information and communication technology – particularly by faster broadband connections and faster digital media processing capabilities – to interactive television to extend towards and develop interactive storytelling or interactive narratives. This will give viewers the ability to shape and configure the programmes they watch, whilst watching, according to their needs and desires. Rather than consuming a predefined linear narration – represented by the traditional dramatic or factual programme – which has to address the potential audience as a whole, individuals or group of viewers can receive tailored made personal narratives. Each viewer can thus potentially become an active explorer of a narrative space rather than a receiver of a predefined narration. This article presents the production of A Golden Age, an interactive configurable documentary about the arts of the Renaissance in England, as a comprehensive illustration of the potential offered by interactive narrativity, but at the same time as a successful example for the employment of the recently developed, production- and genre-independent, ShapeShifting Media technology to the realisation of a good quality interactive narrative. The article describes the concept, the content production process, carried out from the outset with the aim of producing an interactive experience, and, finally, its authoring and delivery with the ShapeShifting Media toolkit. The focus of the presentation is on the design and implementation of the computational interactive narrative structures expressed in Narrative Structure Language (NSL), the declarative representation language underlying ShapeShifting Media. A Golden Age placed a distinct emphasis on the quality and style of each emerging individual narration, having aimed for levels at least comparable with those of (good quality) linearly compiled documentaries. NSL and the ShapeShifting Media toolkit provided the means to achieve this. A Golden Age is a production realised by Illuminations Television Ltd, London, in collaboration with Goldsmiths, University of London and BT over a period of more or less two years. Approximately 50 hours of rushes were filmed for its production. A Golden Age has already inspired the production of another similar documentary, Films of Fact, soon to be released in the public domain as an installation at the Science Museum, London, and, it is hoped, will continue to serve as inspiration for other interactive documentaries. Categories and Subject Descriptors: H5.1 [Information Interfaces and Presentation] Multimedia Information Systems; H4.3 [Information Systems Applications]: Communications Applications; H5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation] User Interfaces; D2.11 [Software Engineering]: Software Architectures – Domain-specific architectures, Languages; I2.1 [Artificial Intelligence]: Applications and Expert Systems; H1.2 [Models and Principles]: User/Machine Systems – Human Factors; J.7 [Computer Applications]: Computers in Other Systems; General Terms: Design, Experimentation, Human Factors, Languages Additional Key Words and Phrases: Interactive Media, Interactive Television, Interactive Storytelling, Interactive Narratives, Nonlinear Narratives, Computational Narrativity, Digital Storytelling, Interactive Documentary, ShapeShifting Media, Narrative Structure Language This research was supported by the integrated projects NM2: New Media, New Millennium (FP6 IST-004124) and TA2: Together Anytime, Together Anywhere (FP7 214793), partly funded by the European Union’s research Framework Programmes 6 and 7. Authors' addresses: Marian F Ursu and Vilmos Zsombori, Narrative and Interactive Media Group, Department of Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London, SE14 6NW, UK; John Wyver and Lucie Conrad, Illuminations, 19-20 Rheidol Mews, Rheidol Terrace, Islington, London N1 8NU, UK; Ian Kegel and Doug Williams, Future Content Group, BT, Adastral Park, Ipswich, IP5 3RE, UK. Permission to make digital/hard copy of part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage, the copyright notice, the title of the publication, and its date of appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of the ACM, Inc. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. © 2008 ACM