What happens when you bring together filmmakers, web developers and designers for a weekend of story hacking? Gilles Pradeau is a filmmaker working on a open-source web documentary about participatory budgeting. Philo van Kemenade has a background in Artificial Intelligence and video production and merges these practices in interactive storytelling on the web. Introduced via the mailing list of an open source web tool, Gilles and Philo joined forces to organise an interactive video workshop at a hack space in London. Since May last year, they organise Popathon - a series of hackathon events that encourages multidisciplinary experimentation in the field of web-native storytelling. By bringing together different skills in a time-pressured environment, teams have the opportunity to experiment with the cabability of the web as a narrative mechanism. At the end of the weekend each team has an interactive prototype that is presented in a live demo and shared with the world by releasing code open source.

The process of collaboration and experimentation isn't always easy or self-evident, not least because of differences between the various backgrounds involved. Philo and Gilles have been fortunate to explore the storytelling hackathon format in partnership with local communities in cities such as London, Lisbon, Paris and Barcelona, each of which with their own lessons. 

Gilles and Philo are taking part in this year's i-Docs festival, convened by DCRC so we've seized the opportunity to bring them in to share some of the lessons they learned from organising an international series of storytelling hackathons and discuss the relevance for web documentary with the lunch time attendees. They'll also take the opportunity to demo some of the projects created during the weekend-long hackathons.

This Lunchtime Talk is part of Open Studio Friday, which takes place at the Studio every week.

Do you want to find out what is going on at the Pervasive Media Studio? Are you interested in meeting our residents, talking about a specific project or curious about pervasive media? Why not pack a sandwich and join us for one of our Lunchtime Talks and Open Studio Friday.

Lunchtime Talks are informal presentations by Studio residents and associates. They normally take place at 1pm on Friday, are free and open to everybody who’s interested in what we do.

After the Talk, we also invite you to stay with us for the afternoon to continue the conversation or work on your own projects. We provide chairs, tables, wireless and a great space. You bring what you need to work with (laptop/mobile). Our open afternoons close at 5pm.

Let us know if you’d like a tour of the space and we'll be happy to show you around. Send an email to admin@pmstudio.co.uk