Interview with Jonathan Delacour

Jonathan Delacour: What keeps me here is that I don't want to seed the ground to the people I work with, and for whom I work for a living in developing commercial Web sites. I don't want to allow them to think that it's just another way of delivering content to consumers. Which is largely how it's thought about.

Interviewer: We have a responsibility to explore all of the new technology's potential for human meaning rather than watch it turned into another broadcast system.

Jonathan Delacour: Yeah, and who knows? I'll be interested to see how it turns out. I told you that I'd showed La Japonaise to the representative of the funding agency? I felt after two years I should show him something. I sent him the URL, and a couple of days later I got back an email message from him. He thought the content looked interesting enough, but it seemed to be this kind of random set of stories. He would have been happier if there was more of a sense of beginning and closure.

[laughs]

Interviewer: So he missed the point.

Jonathan Delacour: Yeah, exactly.

[laughs]

Interviewer: You've launched is an exploration in Japanese literature for a population that has not the freaking slightest idea what you're talking about. And there may not be a population that knows what you're talking about.

Jonathan Delacour: [laughs] This was difficult because I really believe that the whole point of the project is connecting with an audience. I'm not the slightest bit interested in kind of purist attitude toward art making which regards the audiences as being secondary or no importance. I think audience is really important. But I couldn't help feeling that, he said to me that "You've made this apple and it's a really lousy orange."

Interviewer: Let's close this discussion by talking about future directions.

Jonathan Delacour: One of your questions that you forwarded me by email sparked a response. You asked what defines a digital work. I realized that for me, it wasn't just that it needed to be produced digitally, it needed to be delivered digitally.

A video edited by computer and output that to video tape, that's not digital storytelling to me. I am interested in a different kind of delivery mechanism. Not necessarily the Web on a desktop computer, as much as something that people can carry around with them. Like the digital books that Xerox Parc's Alan Kay imagined. The idea is that you have something that combines the strength of digital, the way in which you can construct stories digitally, with the intimacy of the book. But it's important that it's not a book. It's a computer of some sort. And even though you may not be always connected to the network, it loses its point if you don't connect it to the network.

Interviewer: And on that note, we will conclude this interview.