When associate professor Matt Soar came across Florian Thalhofer

’s award-winning interactive/database narrative software, he

told the Berlin-based media artist that Steve Jobs might come

calling.

Steve Jobs didn’t call, Thalhofer reveals, but Concordia did.

Soon after, Soar and Gagnon launched the Concordia Interactive

Narrative Experimentation and Research Group with core

researchers from design and computation arts, history and

communication studies: Monika Kin Gagnon, Jason Lewis, Tim

Schwab and Elena Razlogova.

Funded by FQRSC, CINER-G (pronounced synergy) and Thalhofer

teamed up to redevelop the innovative software with programmers

David Reisch and Stuart Thiel.

At the centre of it all is Korsakow (pronounced Kor-sa-kov), a

free application for creating interactive, non-linear films

using databases. Think of it as a Choose Your Own Adventure book

in video format but without fixed paths: a cloud rather than

series of branches. The director inputs clips, tags them with

keywords and makes a rough skeleton. The viewer can chart out

their own trajectory, following whichever meanings and

associations interest them most.

Thalhofer started experimenting while studying at the Berlin

University of the Arts.

“I didn’t know about filmmaking. I didn’t know how to

properly build stories. I did everything wrong,” he says. “By

doing everything wrong, I invented a new path.”

After a few years of creating K-films, as they’re called,

Thalhofer found himself at a standstill; he had ideas about

where to take Korsakow but didn’t have the programming

expertise to see it through.

When Soar and CINER-G became involved, they provided the

necessary framework to overhaul the system and launch a brand

new open-source version, which was released in July 2009. (They

joke that version 5.0 was such a marked improvement on version

3.0 that they skipped the fourth altogether.)

“I’m always on the lookout for new ideas and new platforms for

creative expression,” says Soar, who is currently working on an

experimental K-film while on sabbatical in France. “There’s

nothing quite like Korsakow out there. With a weekend and a

modicum of skill, anyone can make a K-film. It’s about

accessibility.”

Gagnon from CINER-G agrees that user-friendliness is a key

aspect. She is using Korsakow to create a multimedia archive of

her late father Charles Gagnon’s experimental work.

Based on notes he’d left, she finished his own film, R69, which

premiered recently at the Festival international du film sur l’

art. In the process, she came across photos, paintings, and

papers, plus a 47-minute broadcast that her father recorded by

scanning up and down the radio dial when Pierre Laporte’s body

was found in 1970.

“This amazing document might disappear into archives where only

specialists might see it,” Gagnon says, noting that so much

material is lost on the cutting room floor in conventional

filmmaking. Her project, Archiving R69, will premiere online in

the coming months.

Student Pauline Béraud learned how to make a K-film in an

advanced intermedia class – one of four production streams in

communication studies. Sur la Pointe des Pieds is made up of

short clips featuring professional ballet dancer Klara Houdet.

“People click. If the scene is not interesting to them, they

can keep clicking,” Béraud says, who presented her work at the

Arts and Science Undergraduate Research Day on April 9 and even

got some scientists interested, which she calls “a little

victory for me.”

While conventional films can be effective means of driving home

specific points, Thalhofer believes K-films lead to more

questions, not answers.

“We live in a world with many complex problems. We need many

solutions,” he says. “Korsakow is a thinking tool to create

possibilities and thoughts.”

CINER-G is planning a major international symposium at Concordia

May 13 to 15, 2011, with emphasis on research-creation for

scholars, artists, programmers and more.