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| Photo taken from the production, courtesy of the NFB. |
A similar theme underlies the new interactive media project A Journal of Insomnia launching soon from the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). Journal of Insomnia goes live with a nocturnal premiere on April 18th when it debuts at the Tribeca Film Festival’s inaugural Storyscapes program. Insomnia, appropriately enough, invites users to wake up when most people are going to sleep.
The NFB held a preview of A Journal of Insomnia today at Camera Bar in Toronto (which is much
like an upscale SAW Video but with a legit screening room and a less hipstery vibe).
A Journal of Insomnia is a cutting
edge new project from the creative shift at the NFB that advances new modes of
audience engagement in the digital age. The project, conceived by Hughes
Sweeney, is a one-of-a-kind endeavour that involves its audience from the early
stages of pre-production right through to exhibition. A Journal of Insomnia takes interactivity to new heights, as the
public is actively engaged in both production and reception, versus the mostly
one-way “choose your own adventure” style stories that have dominated
transmedia content.
Many bloggers and social media junkies can probably relate
to the stories offered by the roster of insomniacs in A Journal of Insomnia. Several thousand people shared their stories—often
quite intimately—when the NFB offered a call for participants. These tales,
captured as diaries through micro-sites and videos, reveal the state of mind
that arises when one’s biological clock runs in a time zone different from
everyone else’s. A Journal of Insomnia
gets really meta, however, by having users experience these stories on an
insomniac’s sleep schedule. To experience the project, users simply log on to www.nfb.ca/insomnia and then select a twilight
time slot. Users then receive a phone call on the selected time between 10 pm
and 7 am (when most people are usually asleep), which wakes them up in the
middle of the night and prompts them to experience insomnia night-owl to
night-owl.
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| Photo by Josée Lecompte |
The project also works as a live installation. A Journal of Insomnia will go live as an
interactive installation at Tribeca at the same time that it goes online. The
live version of Insomnia appears as a
large black box in a dark room. Users enter the box and are greeted by
questions from an insomniac that appears on a video screen. Other participants
watch from the outside and study the Q&A between the insomniacs and the
participant. Unlike watching Tilda Swinton sleep in a glass box, A Journal of Insomnia displays people
awake and re-creates the sense of anxiety one has over sleeplessness.
The project therefore puts lived experience as a new form of
storytelling. Both the confessional and the act viewing show the kind of life
that exists after dark. The Internet never sleeps, and it’s a hub for intimacy
and connectivity for those who want to escape society’s clock. Moreover, the
project could easily keep users up all night, whether they explore the web of
stories for hours or venture elsewhere and feed on the Internet’s
addictiveness. A Journal of Insomnia
seems like something out of a Cronenberg movie (either David or Brandon). The
underlying message of the interactive project, however, is that insomnia is a
symptom of society; it’s an indication that the structures, routines, and
scheduled activities of everyday life create unintended mental health issues. A Journal of Insomnia could create
sufficient awareness of mental illness through its innovative interactivity
that re-creates sleeplessness as an avenue for understanding.
The installation will
be open in New York City April 18-21
at the Bombay Sapphire House of Imagination.
The web version will
be available at nfb.ca/insomnia on April 18th,
2013.
