Interaction and collaboration.

Being fond of the interactive medium seems to imply that I suck at directing. For me this medium is about exploration and curiosity. And when I work with other people, I’m curious how they will interpret their role. In a way, I’m happy to accept whatever they do, especially if it’s different from what I expected.

This makes me a lousy director. But it’s exactly how I approach the medium: I want to create circumstances without any expectations of how players will act in them. I am curious how they will respond. I want to see how people respond, to see if there are things in common in our responses, and to be surprised.

What was experienced as lack of control by my colleagues web designers back in the day, I always found liberating. I liked that users could change the size of the browser window to change the composition of the page. I actually actively designed for this in some cases.

The surprises that can happen during interaction are what interests me most about this medium. I don’t want to direct somebody’s experience. I want them to have their own experience. Even if it is different than mine, or what I envisioned as creator, it’s vastly preferable for me if the experience was personal. I think this is related to the importance of agency.

But this openness makes it very difficult for me to tell the people I collaborate with what to do. I’d rather adapt my design to their contribution than force them to do what I expected. So I’m very happy that composer Walter Hus took on the role of directing Christophe Poulain when recording the voice of the male character in Bientôt l’été. I loved everything the actor said, but Walter remained critical and made him repeat things over and over until it sounded right. Of course this was another way for me to let go. He just happened to have the same taste as I did. Not sure what I would have done if he didn’t.